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!

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 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.

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

English 10 Show What You Know Instead of Semester Exam

Because of Tony Vincent's tremendous work with the Show What You Know infographic, our English 10 (E10) students are going to demonstrate learning through THEIR CHOICE of creation tools.  Students were given the opportunity to read an SSR (Silent Sustained Reading) book of their choice throughout the semester.  While describing the actions and events of the book, students are to think and contemplate how their personal book related to books that were read in class, i.e. "To Kill A Mockingbird".  They will demonstrate their knowledge through a "presentation" to the class.  However, the "presentation" is NOT a stand up and read event.  We want students to provide SOME visual, but not too much as they are to provide audio insight into their knowledge as well.

This morning, I presented nine different tools under four different headings:

• Collages
• Comics
• Posters
• Slide Presentations

With only a visual and a few tips, students can choose what they want to create.  They were also challenged to "Smash Them".  Can they create something in one tool and combine it with another tool?

We printed the document, so they were able to take the web address with them.

The presentation for the students is below.

Impact On Students:
Creativity:  Choosing the correct tool for the presentation is not the only task.  Designing a quality product that describes the reading and how it ties into books from the class takes creativity.  Limiting the words so as to not overwhelm the viewer also takes creativity.
Critical Thinking: By limiting the amount of specific directions about each creation tool, students will need to learn, master, and use the tools correctly that are provided within each creation tool.

*Thank you Tony Vincent for creating such an incredibly useful tool.  Without it, I would have not been able to create what I did within a short amount of time.

Haiku Deck On Web For Book Publication

I searched for a web tool that students could write a book about Canada and would, according to a middle school teacher,

• Drag and drop pictures or easy to insert pictures from web or upload
• Easy to add text
• Embed on blogger
• Log In with Gmail or easy to create an account
• Chromebook or laptop/desktop

I tried Google Drive tools and couldn't get into the template gallery according to an error message.

I tried widbook.com and it was a social site that I didn't think students needed to mess around with.

I tried storybird.com and it was also a lengthy sign up process and constituted social networking.

The above products, while great in their own right, didn't meet most of the criteria that the teacher was looking for.

I decided to look at Haiku Deck for creating an online book.  We have used Haiku Deck for a number of other creation projects and I believe this tool will work for creating a book. View short book.