Digilent has posted an excellent introduction to the chipKIT Basic I/O Shield on their blog. It starts with a video that describes the general features of the board, and shows how to download the software library and documentation. The post also includes 4 sample projects that demonstrates how to get started using the board.
The Basic I/O Shield is designed to work with the chipKIT Uno32, uC32, and Max32 base boards. For more information, check out the blog post here:
http://blog.digilentinc.com/index.php/getting-busy-with-projects-and-the-chipkit-basic-io-shield/