Book Creator App: End of Unit, End of Year, Projects, Endless Possibilities

A few students and teachers in our school have dabbled in creating with the tremendously popular Book Creator App.  Currently, our Civics students are experiencing our school's first full implemented Book Creator App learning opportunity.

The Civics instructors created templates to assist students with the gathering and publishing of information.  With the great features of "open in" and "combining books", both found on the iPad, the workflow was efficient.

Finally, students collaborated with their group to create a final product which was published to Canvas for easy evaluation.

The templates were placed on Canvas and students easily "opened" them in Book Creator to add their information!
SEE THE TEMPLATES

The presentation below was given to the students in a 10 minute time frame.  Each slide represents features of the Book Creator app that will help the students create a quality product.



Learn more about Book Creator features!

Book Creator Exporting Options Using Google Drive

Our sixth grade teacher, Mr. Pratt, a model classroom teacher in our district will be utilizing the Book Creator app for an upcoming creative learning opportunity for his students.  As always, it is important to develop/create/understand the work flow of completed project to a sharable format.

To understand the workflow I created a Stick Around App book using the Book Creator app.


On Monday, November 25, 2013, I blogged about illustrating a Book On an iPad or Online and the Book Creator App for the iPad was a choice.  Since then, I haven't revisited the app.

Today, I created a book about the Stick Around App in high school Anatomy and pushed the three different types of final products to Google Drive.  These final products are placed in a shared folder.  Students and teachers can "open in" the file from Google Drive to iBooks or any other application.  Of course, this is an app smash.

This tremendous App Smashing presentation from Miami Vice helped in the process.

View The Process



VIEW THE THREE DIFFERENT PUBLISHING OPTIONS

My Final Creation

Book Creator App on iPad Export as Movie and eBook

Book Creator App on the iPad which we have used since 2014, will be our creation tool of choice to create both videos and eBooks for "7 Minute Workouts" developed by students.  We chose the app because it can be published as an interactive eBook (suitable for the iBook app), a PDF, or a movie.  All of this can be sent to our Google Drive for sharing!  We also wanted the ability to have words, images, drawing, and embedded video.  Lastly, we wanted to try a different creation tool.  Readers of iPaddiction know that Explain Everything is a go to app, because it's that good!  We'll allow students to use this app to broaden their creativity toolbox. 

The Movie

The ePub Book that can be opened in iBooks. At this time, we are not sending books to iTunes so the iBooks are not interactive.

The PDF book that can be opened anywhere. Video examples of exercises won't work.

During the day, I team taught with Mrs. Logue and Mr. Karcz.  I taught two of the classes while Mrs. Logue observed.

During the third class, Mrs. Logue taught the entire technology piece.  I supported her a few times during her presentation.  However, she did a great job of teaching with confidence.  This was a perfect demonstration of the gradual release teaching strategy.

AP Biology Books For Elementary Students Using Book Creator

In the past, students have created books to read to elementary students via a hard cover book.  While this was an option this year, we also gave the students an option to use the Book Creator App.



The students traveled to one of our local elementary schools to read them this morning!

Illustrating A Book On an iPad or Online

A teacher recently sent me this:
I was wondering if you knew of any apps for students to create scenes?  Students have written stories in Jenny's class and we were thinking they could illustrate a story/plot outline of five scenes (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution).  I threw out a couple examples, one using Google drawing and another using a free Photoshop type program that I have installed in my lab (Serif), but was wondering if you knew of another program for iPad or web-based.

iPad Options:

• Book Creator for iPad: Illustrate pictures or add photos--combine with text or having the pictures standing alone creates a great book

• Draw-n-Show: an amazing free drawing tool.  Create multiple pictures, take screen shots, and place the pictures into Haiku Deck, Explain Everything, or iMovie

• Penultimate: An incredible free drawing tool that integrates with Evernote.  Learn how to be effective in Evernote.
• DrawPad:  Easy, free.

Web Options:

• Google Draw: if you are a GAFE, this may be THE option.  It's located in your Google Drive. Create a Google Doc, a page for each drawing, and insert a drawing on each page.
• Draw.io: Looks like Google Docs, connects with Google Docs! Insert picture and annotate it.  Drag and drop numerous figures and add to them. Search images and drop them into your drawings.
• Draw Island:  Free, numerous drawing options, download images, no username needed

Impact On Students

• Creativity: Students connect the words from their stories with images.  They create the images completely on their own.
• Critical Thinking: Students must determine the level of clarification that their drawing will relate to their writings.  Some students may work to make the drawings completely clear, others may decide to make the drawings more abstract and left to interpretation. 

Library Media and Technology Integration Specialists Raider Camp

Yesterday, was an incredible day in which educators from our district were able to meet and brainstorm!  As library media specialists and technology integrators, we discussed a number of items.

• Summer Updates:  As a group, we need to be ready to answer all of the questions that staff members will have as it pertains to technology updates.  Our IT staff has put together some resources to aide in the transition.  Because we are allowing teachers to add information they would like we provided...
• A Back To School page
• Summer Information page

• Project & Process
• The graph above is a great graph that explains the process of projects
• Will share with teachers to keep them informed of the progress
• Most Important - After imaging Information
• When teachers return, their computer desktops will look different
• We need to facilitate their transition
• Learning: We spent a great deal of time teaching each other and learning from one another

• iBooks Creator - create on Mac, read on iOS mobile device
• iTunesU - Create in Safari, read on iOS mobile device
• Google Plus - open to our staff - instant help desk with shared screen
• Chrome Webstore - our leader created this which ROCKS
• Freedom Flix & True Flix - video resource options (paid)
• NETS and ITLS 
• Discussed what we were doing well and what we needed to work on
• We needed to read 
• Transitions to Digital Media
• ISTE.NETS-S

I am so thankful to be a member of this dedicated group of individuals who have one purpose:

Serve Educators!  

We are willing and eager to help with technology integration in the all classroom settings & to find a great book for students and staff!

Day 2 begins today with another great opportunity to learn and grow!