The Grade 7s used Book Creator to present their Diseases projects

The Grade 7s worked on a Diseases project in class and presented their individual research as a hand-drawn project. I thought it would be great for them to take their research and use it to create digital books in Book Creator.  The final step would be for them to also narrate their projects in Book Creator. 

I have written a post about how to use Book Creator in another part of this blog: https://bit.ly/3xx24Vt .

The Diseases projects turned out well in Book Creator.  You can visit our Grade 7 library on this link, https://bit.ly/3FY3Fqj and read (and listen to) some of the books.  

Create stories from selected images and publish them in Book Creator (Grade 6)

One of the things I love doing at school is getting my students to write stories in different ways. I want them to see themselves as writers, able to tell and write amazing stories that hold the attention of whoever is listening.

I used the following process with Grade 6.

The elements of a good story

Our story lesson concentrated on the elements of a good story – characters, setting, a plot, a conflict, and a resolution to the project. We practised this in different ways orally in the lesson.

Find the story in a selection of art

Some time ago I downloaded some wonderful Creative Commons stories from the African Storybook website. I removed the words, but kept the art and details of the original stories as a Creative Commons requirement. I put the art on to PowerPoints and I numbered the stories. Each student chose a number. Their task would be to turn the pictures into their own story and make sure they included the elements of a story. Here is an example. The following art was from a story from the African storybook website called ‘Bongsa and her landlord – best friends’ by Roth Odondi. The illustrator is Rob Owen. Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0. https://bit.ly/3EkaRgr 

                

Using Book Creator as a publishing tool

How would they present their stories? I felt that they should get to know the wonderful program Book Creator which is a free program.  I created a PowerPoint of instructions that they could follow and off we went into our storytelling adventure. The final step would be for them to narrate their stories in Book Creator. 

The result was very pleasing. Book Creator set the stories out neatly in a bookshelf. 

You can visit our Grade 6 library on this link, https://bit.ly/3gLYU8k , and read (and listen to) some of the stories. 

I love Book Creator

 I love Book Creator. You can do so much with it in a classroom.  The limited version is free for teachers and students to use. So awesome!

What is Book Creator?

Book Creator is a program one can use as an app in Google Chrome, in iOS on the iPad,  or as a browser app. Itois an amazing program that enables students to create and read multimodal digital books. They can do this so easiy and end up with an amazing digital resource. My students love it. They use it on their Chromebook browsers.  It is an ideal tool for enhancing student engagement through story creation and multimedia design. This YouTube video explains Book Creator so beautifully. 

 

What can you do with Book Creator?

So far I have used it with classes for presenting their stories and for presenting their projects. The results have been so inspiring. I will be showing examples in later blog posts. But there is so much more one can do with Book Creator at Primary school level. Take a look through this e-book. It gives ideas of what you can do with Book Creator in an elementary classroom.

Using Book Creator in the Elementary Classroom

Click to read this book, made with Book Creator

https://read.bookcreator.com

How do you use Book Creator?

Jen Jonson gives a really great tutorial on how to use Book Creator, so I am going to embed it here. 

Try it out! you'll fall in love with it, like I did!

The wonderful e-book creator app, Book Creator, is now available on Android!

There was so much excitement on Twitter yesterday! Why? One of my favourite writing apps on the iPad is BookCreator and there were many tweets yesterday announcing that this app is now available for Android! The Book Creator blog made this exciting statement yesterday about the product,  ‘With over 4 million books made on the iPad with Book Creator, we’re very excited that from today anyone with an Android tablet can create, share and publish their own beautiful ebooks.’

What can you do with Book Creator on Android?

• Add pictures from the Gallery, grab them from the web, or snap from the camera. Then move and resize them with your fingers.
• Edit text using the onscreen keyboard, and apply rich formatting to make it look great.
• Narrate your books and bring them to life.
• Record and import video.
• Layout your book exactly as you want with guidelines and snap positioning.
• Preview your books with the built in reading mode.
• Upload to Google Play Books for reading across all your devices.
• Collaborate on book creation with the simple import and export to Google Drive.
• Send your books to your friends over email.
• Become a published author – export your books as fully standard ePub 3 files ready for submission to Google Play and Apple’s iBooks Store.

Introductory video
This short video shows Book Creator in action:




A showcase of books made with Book Creator on Pinterest
This board entitled ‘Made in Book Creator’ shows a few of the lovely titles that have been created using Book Creator http://goo.gl/rzbKoa 

Book Creator on Facebook
Book Creator also has a Facebook page with many ideas on it  https://www.facebook.com/bookcreator

Further reading
The Internet is full of lovely blogposts about how Book Creator has been used in a classroom

• Creating and publishing a collaborative ebook: librarian Karin Hallett takes us through the step-by-step process her students went through to create history ebooks.
• Book Creator for the iPad: Book Creator - the simple way to create beautiful e-books on the iPad. This video shows you how to create an e-book from scratch and read it in iBooks in just a minute and a half.
• Book Creator adding to the learning experience in South Africa It is humbling to realise the impact that Book Creator has in schools around the world. This story comes from a librarian in South Africa.
• Kids Teaching Kids with Book Creator: One kindergarten class teaches another kindergarten class how to use Book Creator
• How to Use Book Creator on iPad: A snapguide tutorial
• 4 compelling ideas for using Book Creator in the classroom: Technology Coach Chris Loat shares his ideas on how Book Creator can be used effectively in the classroom.
• Book Creator helps 8-year-old new to English:Teacher Emma McCluskey tells the story of how an iPad with Book Creator helped a student to create a book 6 months after arriving in her classroom with no English.

Book Creator for Android costs R25 which could be a big expense in a South African classroom  but it really is worth getting to grips with this app.