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Book Creator cover for a K-12 Summer Reading Journal template
End of Year

End-of-Year Ideas and Summer Reading with Book Creator

by Stevie Frank
written by Stevie Frank

Summer is knocking on our doors! The weather is getting warmer, days are getting longer, and the promise of sleeping in is just within our reach. But, we’re not quite done with the school year! How can we keep the momentum until the end? As a former classroom teacher, I had canned assessments in the form of essays, worksheets, or quizzes that could quickly be graded and inserted into the gradebook. But, I learned that students didn’t find those types of assignments motivating to complete, especially with the promise of summer break creeping in. I quickly realized I needed exciting end-of-year projects and activities to engage all my learners and get us to the finish line. And then, there’s the “summer slide.” What can we do to prevent it? Let’s explore some of my favorite end-of-year and summer resources by Book Creator!

1. End-of-Year Ideas with Book Creator

I always enjoyed having my students reflect on their favorite parts of the year on a paper copy “year-in-review” packet. However, I found these packets were becoming out-of-date and expensive to purchase online. So, why not integrate some technology? It’s true that finding the right tool to connect state standards with meaningful assessment is difficult at best, especially when it comes to end-of-year projects.

There are so many shiny objects out there, but some stand out to me. One tool I kept asking for when I was in the classroom was Book Creator! Book Creator is an online platform for students to create their own books, presentations, or portfolios. Teachers can also create their own templates and have students work in these more guided experiences. Students can add text, customize colors and organization, add maps, and so much more. 

New templates to introduce your students to Book Creator
Screenshot by Emily Horn | New Templates to Introduce Your Students to Book Creator

The first time I laid eyes on a 2nd grade student recording themselves reading their very own self-created book, I was in awe. This student was diving into the DOK level 3, explaining their writing process! This was a tool worth learning more about. What I appreciate about Book Creator is their extensive vetted list of resources available to teachers. You don’t have to start from a blank book, you can check out their resources under “Discover” or use one of their templates. There’s even a list of ideas, complete with templates, that you can use with students for end-of-year projects, activities, and reflection. 

2. Book Creator Summer Reading

Ending the school year on a high was important for me as a classroom teacher. But I found myself spending loads of time searching for summer activities for my students, not to mention spending lots of personal money. I wanted to prevent that “summer slide.” Parents would start emailing me to ask what they could do over the summer, and my answer was always: READ! Building background knowledge on an array of topics is one of the strongest ways to help with reading comprehension.

I’d make copies of packets of graphic organizers we worked on throughout the school year and send them home with students. Did these copies ever actually make it home? That’s debatable. So, when Book Creator and I started to share ideas about how to help prevent the “summer slide”, I knew just what to do! 

Listen to My Ed Tech Life’s Podcast “Book Creator: Igniting Summer Reading with Stevie Frank“

I helped create summer template books for Book Creator that are housed in the Discover tab of resources. I included all my favorite, engaging graphic organizers and equitable resources for students to find books online over the summer. I put the bones together and, of course, the Book Creator team came in and made it beautiful! Check it out!

Explore Book Creator’s Summer Reading Books!

I took out all the hard work in creating a parent letter home, created a video for students on how to work through the book, and even made some videos to help support you in getting it out to students and their families! It was a labor of love, one that I wish I’d been able to create for my own students.

I hope you enjoy using Book Creator for end-of-year projects and activities and to prevent the summer slide! Leave us a comment to tell us how you’ll use Book Creator with students. Have a favorite template or activity book? Share that with us, too!

Read about Book Creator’s Summer Reading Journals: “Jump, slide & dive into an adventure this summer with Book Creator!”

Featured Image: Provided by the author; created by Book Creator

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Back to SchoolEnglish Language ArtsWeb 2.0 Tool

Five Creative Back-to-School Activities with Book Creator

by Dr. Monica Burns
written by Dr. Monica Burns

Are you heading back to school? Use Book Creator this school year to take a creative spin on your back-to-school activities! It’s a powerful creative tool for students of all ages. Students can record their voices, capture video, and add text, emojis, shapes, and images to the pages of an interactive book.

What’s New in Book Creator?

This school year, you are in for a treat. There are lots of exciting new updates in Book Creator. If you checked out this recent post on Book Creator’s blog, you already know some of the fantastic features you can access this school year.

In addition to a newly updated certification program, when you open up Book Creator, you’ll find a great new commenting option this summer. If you’re committed to giving feedback to students, you can add comments directly to student pages. 

How does commenting in Book Creator work? You’ll now see a talk bubble with a + sign on each page in a student’s book. When you tap this button, you can add feedback to a student’s page. The options include using video, voice, text, and more!

Page 3 of 6

Five Back-to-School Activities

Book Creator is a favorite creation tool for all parts of the school year, but as you head back to school, these five activities are perfect for the first few weeks.

#1 – Set up a portfolio.

Students can use this remixable template or start from scratch to make their portfolios. Although their portfolio will grow over the school year, they can set it up during the first few weeks of school and design a cover. Simply hit the remix button and a copy will be added straight into your Book Creator library.

#2 – Share a favorite place.

When I introduce teachers to Book Creator, this prompt is one of my favorites for helping educators get to know this powerful tool. Of course, you can use this prompt to introduce students to Book Creator, too. It’s an excellent way to share a place they love and get to know their classmates. Book Creator has a great Travel Guide (which you can remix), and you can also add a Google Map to showcase where in the world their favorite place is!

Postcard Travel Guide

#3 – Set goals.

The beginning of the school year is the perfect time to set goals. Have students create a book highlighting three goals they have for the fall. You might make an example with three of your own goals to share with students and revisit the books during the first few months of the school year. How about adding a Canva Book Cover straight in? Book Creator integrated Canva as well as other apps like Giphy, Bitmoji, 3D Models, and more earlier this year.

Book Creator and Canva

#4 – Work together.

Introduce collaboration to students at the start of the school year. You can start small with just two students working on a book together. This activity provides an opportunity to discuss digital citizenship skills and expectations for navigating digital spaces.

Book Creator Collaboration

#5 – Share a passion.

Learners of all ages like to talk about their interests and passions. Encourage students to share something they love like a favorite activity, book, sport, animal, or other topic they can write about. You might give students an outline or table of contents for this creation. Try out one of the 18 templates and themes that are integrated into Book Creator to provide choice and enhance creativity. 

Book Creator Templates

Ready to get started with Book Creator? To kick off the school year, use one of the ideas in this post or remix this ready-to-use template designed with back to school in mind. Make sure to share your student creations, teacher examples, and ideas for using Book Creator on social media! Tag @TCEA, @BookCreatorApp, and @ClassTechTips in your posts.

Upcoming Webinar

August 11: Join Monica Burns for a special webinar with Book Creator, 9 Creative Back-to–School Activities. Use this link to grab your free spot.

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comics
ESL/ELLGood Teaching

Comics and Graphic Novels: An Imagery Invasion

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Walk through a paper bookstore and you’ll find a huge section dedicated to graphic novels. Like many children of yesteryear, I grew up reading comic books. Everything from Avengers to Superman and Batman came alive as I sat on the floor of the Army Post Exchange (PX).

Today, that experience is less common. Comic books, as well as graphic novels, remain of interest to all. Whether at home or in the classroom, students themselves can create content-specific graphic novels. In this blog entry, we’ll explore a bit about the background and research, as well as how to make them.

comic

View the images above, created by Jessica Abel. Her work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Is There a Research Connection?

John Hattie points out that imagery is a part of surface learning. Surface learning “includes subject matter vocabulary, the content of the lesson” (source). Imagery (d=0.51), as a surface learning strategy, involves the presence of visual content.  That’s important due to the Modality Effect:

The modality effect refers to how learner performance depends on the presentation mode. Improve learning when you present textual information in enhanced mode. That is, when text includes auditory format, and/or visual materials. Visual materials could include a graph, diagram, or animation. Source: Visible Learning Meta  X database

Comics and graphic novels take advantage of the dual processing of information. Both the text and visual imagery combine to speed processing of information. Also, consider how you can use comics and graphic novels for second language instruction; here are a few:

  • Teaching vocabulary development
  • Familiarization with idioms
  • Introducing culturally-relevant material (source)

Learning opportunities abound with graphic novels, so why not give them a shot?

Why Graphic Novels?

Graphic novels, like comics, combine imagery with text. Some refer to graphic novels and comics as “visual narratives.” Reading and analyzing graphic novels adds depth and complexity.

With graphic novels, students use text and images to make inferences. They also synthesize information.  In this form of literature, the images and the text are of equal importance. The text would not make sense without the images, and the reverse is true as well. (Source: Leslie Morrison, Adapted from The Research Behind Graphic Novels and Young Learners)

As Leslie points out, there is inferencing and synthesizing going on. Tracy Edmunds says:

Graphic texts are complex, effective teaching tools. Readers must receive information. They also must interact with both text and images to construct meaning.

Josh Elder captures this perspective in The Case for Comics in the Classroom. Engagement occurs in comics since comics show only the essential actions. Readers have to “read between the lines of each panel of even the simplest comic.” If not, the comic does not reveal its story well.

Creating Comics and Graphic Novels

There are definitely benefits to analyzing and reading comics and graphic novels. But what about making them?

Creating graphic novels and comics can be tough work. You can see how one comic gets created. Let’s explore some quick, inexpensive tools you can use:

Approach 1: Google Slides or PowerPoint

In chatting with Lisa Cupples, a TCEA Online Course Creator, she shared what tools she uses. As you might imagine, one that is a favorite is Google Slides. “We all have access to it, including the students.”

Here are a few video tutorials on making comics with Google Slides:

  • Amanda Werner’s Tutorial. Learn how to change slide size, find and crop pictures, and insert speech and thought bubbles. You also will learn to change the background of slides and then print six slides per page. At the end, you have a comic strip.
  • Richard Byrne’s Tutorial. Create a three-panel comic strip in Google Slides, pulling in images from other locations.
  • Erifili Davis’ Tutorial. Learn how to create a comic strip on a smartphone using the Google Slides app.

Familiar with Bitmoji? You can use Bitmoji characters to create a comic strip, then drop them into Google Slides. You can create panels for your comic or graphic novel in Google Slides. Then fill them with Bitmoji scenes.

Prefer PowerPoint to Google Slides? This video walks you through some amazing options:

Approach 2: Make Beliefs Comix

The Make Beliefs Comix allows you to work via a web browser. You can create an account with your Google login. This easy-to-use comic strip maker offers limited features. That said, there’s a lot you can do with what it does offer. You can see the composition window below:

comics

Approach 3: Book Creator

No list of comic book creator software would be complete without Book Creator. You can easily combine text, images, and audio to create comic books and graphic novellas. This program is a joy to use via a web browser or an iPad. And making comic books is easy for children of any age. Consider this page from the Invasion of the Cookie Snatchers. As you may not be able to see it, there is video embedded in the “Cookies…” panel.

comics

If you thought creating comic books and graphic novel content was a waste of time, think again. These creative activities offer powerful learning possibilities for inferencing and synthesizing.

Looking to learn more? Check out these episodes of TCEA’s podcast, the Ed Tech Club:

Feature Image: Mitosis Alert. Available online at Book Creator.

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UDL
ChromebooksGood Teaching

UDL Chromebook Opportunities for Learning

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Classrooms are diverse. Curriculum needs to be designed from the start to meet this diversity (Source:Universal Design for Learning (UDL) video). Several Texas districts have adopted Chromebooks. How can UDL play a role?

One way includes ebook creation with tools like Book Creator. See the connections that can be made between UDL and Book Creator. Before we do that, let’s revisit Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

UDL

What is UDL?

Universal Design for Learning is about reducing barriers to achievement. Learning preferences, learning strengths, and abilities are some of those barriers. It can help with personal interests and/or levels of engagement and has three guiding principles:

  • Engagement – Engaging learners. This is about motivating others to learn (Source).
  • Representation – Giving learners different ways to acquire information and knowledge.
  • Action and Expression – Demonstrating what they know in many ways.

“These three priorities align with different neural networks. They answer the “what,” “how,” and “why” of teaching and learning,” says Jules Csillag in How to Use Technology to Support UDL. Let’s examine how one of these priorities aligns to a tool like Book Creator.

Did You Know about Book Creator?

Reading and creating ebooks can support UDL. One ebook maker tool is Book Creator. I featured it in this blog entry on Creating gBooks, er, eBooks Just Got Easier. An excellent tool, Book Creator allows for collaborative ePub creation. Students have created over 15 million ebooks. It works on Chromebooks, iOS, Android, and Windows devices. Book Creator allows you to create a simple ePub without media. You can create an enhanced ePub with video, audio, and more embedded. Read their blog for TONS of ideas.

universal

Supporting UDL with Technology

Countless technologies are available to educators. One technology, popular on tablets, became available for Chromebooks. Let’s explore  one of priorities of the UDL guidelines and checkpoints with Book Creator in mind.

  • Engagement
    • Access: It’s important to “optimize individual choice and autonomy” (UDL Checkpoint 7.1). Educators make this happen for students with voice and choice. One choice students could use to produce content is Book Creator. The ability to embed audio, video, images, and text on the page engages students. Students can exert control over “the color, design, or graphics of layouts.”
    • Build: From this perspective, it is important to “create cooperative learning groups with clear goals, roles, and responsibilities” (UDL Checkpoint 8.3). Constructing ebooks provides rich opportunities for cooperative groups. Challenged to combine text, images, audio, and video, students can create various products such as interactive stories, digital portfolios, research journals, poetry books, science reports, and instruction manuals. Book Creator makes comic adventures possible, too (Source).
    • Internalize: Assisting students in facilitating “personal coping skills and strategies” (UDL Checkpoint 7.2). These strategies can be blended into cooperative learning group dynamics. Students can learn how to behave and work together more effectively over time in cooperative learning groups.

More connections are possible for Representation and Action and Expression, too.

Making More UDL Connections

As you consider UDL guidelines, remember that Book Creator can accomplish the following:

  • Student books can be read aloud via text-to-speech capabilities.
  • Book Creator can highlight words as they are read.
  • Students can set the pages of the book to turn on their own.
  • Readers can choose a language or voice, as well as control the speed of reading.
  • Students can auto-play any media.

Ready to learn more about UDL and Book Creator? Get the Chrome browser add-on.

 

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Photo by Anna Demianenko on Unsplash
Content AreasGood TeachingGoogle Tips and Tricks

Creating gBooks, er, eBooks Just Got Easier

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Creating ebooks just got easier with the addition of new tools. If you haven’t kept up to date, you’ll want to read this blog entry. We will demystify key elements such as locating ebooks, ebook formats, converting eBooks, three fun approaches to creating ebooks, and copyright-friendly media. Ready to get started? If so, let’s begin!

1- Locating eBooks

Below, you will find some sites I have used in the past to find non-DRM (Digital Rights Management)-formatted ePubs. Finding non-Digital Rights Management (a.k.a. non-DRM) books can be a challenge for schools. This may be why OverDrive is heavily used in many libraries, and solutions like BiblioTech are quite popular.

As in any library or book store, there exists content that may be inappropriate for younger readers. Have learning conversations with students and parents when counseling that they “find free stuff” to read on the web. With that caveat in mind, I have tried to link to the Children’s/Juvenile section of each ebook distributor below.

Did You Know? You can get free audio versions of traditional books via LibriVox. Why not use a QR Code to link directly to a story’s audio version? Or have students make their own!

2- eBook Formats

eBooks come in a wide variety of formats. Let’s review them, shall we?

ePub

ebooksEPUB is an ebook file format with the extension .epub that can be downloaded and read on devices like smartphones, tablets, computers, or e-readers. It is a technical standard published by the International Digital Publishing Forum. Wikipedia

It is the standard format for these book publishers/sellers:

  • Amazon Kindle Fire (not previous versions of Kindle, though)
  • Apple iBooks
  • Barnes and Noble
  • Kobo

It is easy to make ePub-formatted documents. In fact, many word processors like Google Docs, Microsoft Word, and OpenOffice/LibreOffice support the export of documents to ePub format. Read about how Jonathan Moeller, one of my favorite authors, uses  Sigil (a free cross-platform tool) to create/edit his ebooks.

ePubs come in two formats:

  • Standard (without media like sound/videos) (text/images are included)
  • Multimedia ebooks which feature sound/videos/text/images

Some eBook readers that work well with this format include Aldiko, Lithium, iBooks, Google Play Books, Freda, and Kindle. Some web-based tools include Readium or ePub Reader for the Chrome browser, and ePUBReader for Mozilla Firefox browser.

Mobi

ebooksMOBI is an e-book file format with the extension .mobi that can be downloaded and read on devices that support the Amazon Kindle app. The format, customized by Amazon, is often used by Amazon’s ebooks and on little else. There are various programs for making a .mobi ebook file and Amazon provides some tools you can take advantage of. “You can upload and convert your eBook manuscript file from several supported formats. Before you publish, browse the topics below to learn more.” Learn more at this link.

Some ebook readers that work well with Mobi format include Aldiko, Lithium, iBooks, Google Play Books, Freda, and, of course, Kindle.

PDF

PDF is not an ebook format. Rather, it is a format that seeks to capture the printed version of a document, capturing the look-and-feel of the printed item as if it had appeared on the author’s printer. A large percentage of documents presented as ebooks appear as Adobe Portable Document Formats (PDFs).

The reason PDF is not an ebook format is that it was never designed to appear in eReaders or reshape itself into a format viewable in such a device. It CAN be viewed on most modern devices, however.

Considering what version to publish ebooks to? The best answer is that ePub is the best format to create ebooks in. You can convert most documents into the ePub format and it will work on almost all devices using an eReader piece of software.

3 – Converting eBooks from One Format to Another

ebooksNeed to convert ebooks from one format to another? Use Calibre, the free, open source software that works on any computer (not Chromebooks, though). Here’s how it’s described:

Using Calibre to convert is very easy.

  1. Plug in your ebook reader.
  2. Open Calibre and click the “Add books” button on the top left. Select your book.
  3. Click open. Select your book in the library list. By now, Calibe should have detected your ebook reader.
  4. Click “Send to device” from the middle of the top toolbar.
  5. Calibre is smart enough to know if the book is in a format supported by your reader. If it’s not, it will ask you if you want to auto convert it. Say yes, and it will take care of the conversion and put the book on your reader.

Calibre worries about the formats and converting for you. Auto conversion is the easiest way to go and, in most cases, will be all you need to do. Here is a short video explaining how to use Calibre:

4- Creating eBooks: Fun Approaches

There are several approaches you can take to create ebooks in your classroom. Let’s explore a few, as well as learn about a new one from Apple that just became available.

Approach #1 – Book Creator

If you haven’t used Book Creator, it is an excellent, collaborative ($) ePub creation tool boasting over 15 million ebooks. It works on Chromebooks, iOS, Android, and Windows devices. Book Creator allows you to create a simple ePub without media or an enhanced ePub with video, audio, and more embedded. Read their blog for TONS of ideas.

This versatility means you can create content on an iPad/iOS device and share it with a wide variety of audiences. You can also share it to cloud storage (e.g. Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive, or iCloud).  It also supports the creation of digital comic books, something your students will love. That’s amazing!

Check out my ebook on App-Smashing, created with Book Creator.

Approach #2 – Google Docs to ePub

EPUB is the most widely-supported file format for publishing accessible documents and digital books, allowing people to consume long-form content in their preferred apps on a diverse range of screen sizes and devices, including smartphones, tablets, and ereaders.

To make it easier for authors, publishers, and academic institutions to create works that can be consumed digitally, today we’re launching the ability to export Google Docs files as EPUB publications. Simply go to the File menu > Download as > EPUB Publication (.epub). (Source)

Here are two ebooks created in Google Docs using the ePub export.

What documents could you take and export to ePub format to make them easier to read on mobile devices?

Approach #3 – Google Slides to PDF

Use Google Slides as a collaborative ebook development tool. Ready to get started? Follow these four easy steps outlined in this TCEA blog entry, Google Slides Ebook Creation in Four Quick, Easy Steps:

  1. Customize the slides
  2. Add content
  3. Download as a PDF (or publish online as a Google Slides)
  4. Share the ebook

Here’s another guide to ebook creation from Texas’ Kasey “Shake Up Learning” Bell.

Use one of the many available ebook templates available in PowerPoint to create your own Google Slides ebook.

Tips for PDF eBook Creators

Here are some tips from two ebook authors, Erfili Davis and Jennifer Gonzales. Check out Erifili Davis’ blog entry on the topic of ebooks with Google Slides. She’s created some great video tutorials and a free template packet (click link to make a copy) you can start with. Read Erifili’s six tips to help you (or your class) create your first ebook using Google Apps for Education. As she points out, “These techniques are just as useful to anyone looking to self-publish an ebook, including general users of the free Google Drive and Google Apps for Work users.”

 “With Google Slides, students can create a simple ebook that includes text, photos, videos, and links,” says Diana Benner in this TCEA TechNotes blog entry. “They can even create or select themes, templates, and layouts for their book. Once created, the ebooks can be shared with other students, both locally and around the world, for feedback.” Find more ideas online at this blog entry to find out about more ideas.

Apple Announces ePub Export Function

“The update to Pages brings some of the features of Apple’s book creation app for the Mac ‘iBooks Author’ to the iPad for the first time,” states the Book Creator blog entry. Apple’s Spring 2018 Education event made this news public. “With Pages, you can export your documents in EPUB format so they can be read using iBooks on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or with other third-party EPUB readers,” says the Apple website where you can read up on the process.

Make Computer Voice Narrated Audiobooks (Updated: 7/28/2019)

Wish you could turn student-created ePub files into narrated audiobooks? Or, make any ePub into an audiobook? You can on your Windows 10 computer. Take advantage of the Freda ebook reader’s built-in audio reader. First, save your Google Doc file as an ePub file on your computer. Then, open the file using Freda ebook reader. Once the file is open, have Freda read the file to you.

When you first ask Freda to read an ebook to you, you will see the following…you’ll want to choose READ ALOUD:

You can choose several voices (Microsoft David, Zira, or Mark) when having Freda read the ebook to you, as shown below:

Try out the different voices to see which you prefer.

The next question to consider is, How to record Freda reading the ebook to you? To accomplish that, you’ll need to get the free, open source audio editor, Audacity. Once you have it installed on your Windows 10 computer, you will need to adjust some of its settings. You’ll need to set the preferences as shown below:

Make sure to change the Recording settings to ENABLE “Sound Activated Recording.” That way, you can turn on Audacity, have it record once you turn on Freda to read aloud.

This will allow you to record audio from your Windows 10 computer as Freda ebook reader reads the book aloud to you. Here’s what that looks like:

Listen to Microsoft David read About Carroll.

Ready to Begin?

“Student-centered products enable learners to showcase their new knowledge and skills in relation to a particular topic in an infinite variety of ways,” write the authors of Digital Media in Today’s Classrooms. Charge your students with tasks that require creativity, analysis, and application. Get started now!

 

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