Book Creator - The Swiss Army Knife of Apps

Book Creator is am amazing app. It is incredibly versatile much as the famed Swiss Army Knife. You can use Book Creator to create a single student story, a collaborative book, a reflective journal, a science notebook and so much more. Book Creator plays well with others so it is a snap to insert voice, music, drawings (we love Doodle Buddy for this), photos, video, Explain Everything, text, Tellagami and other animations to make your book come to life. Best of all, you can upload the Book to the iBooks store or share as a movie.

Here's an example of a Mother's Day class book. Each student took a photo of his or her best handwritten Mother's Day Poem, a photo of themselves, an audio recording reading the poem, a Doodle Buddy portrait of mother and child and a recording of a heartfelt message to mom. Simple to pull in those two pages from each student and a true treasure for any mother. It captures the student's handwriting, message, art work and a lovely photo of the child. I have a dozen large red boxes filled with my children's construction paper projects, art work, etc. but I would kill to go back in time and capture their voice and thoughts about the project at that time. Book Creator makes this process easy. 

Which brings me to my next favorite use, a reflective journal. We use Book Creator as our ePortfolio from PreK through 2nd grade. Our students have always used their portfolios at the end of the year student led parent conference but it's difficult for the little ones to remember why a certain project meant so much or what they learned from it. We still maintain all of their work done by hand but now we put it into a continual Book Creator book and record their reflection at that time. All of these projects get loaded into their ePortfolio Google Site which follows them through 12th grade. What an amazing documentation of their learning over time! 

We've also had teachers use Book Creator for nonfiction reports like our State Fair books in 3rd grade. Students love that there is no creative ceiling. They can insert license free images from the web, their own art work, all of their proofed text and then add clever placement, voice recordings, state songs and video to make their books come alive. So very different from our old big poster project. 

We love that Book Creator lets us "app smash" with our other core apps such as Explain Everything, Doodle Buddy and iMovie. Out students love using Book Creator during their free time as well. Just the other day, two boys brought in their some of their toy figures including Darth Vadar, Batman and several variations of GI Joe. They used Stop Motion Animation and created a book from a spur of the moment story imagining how their toys would interact with each other.

Give Book Creator a try today. It works for any curricular area, any grade level. You are only limited by your imagination as this app IS the Swiss Army Knife app. 

Author! Author!

Kids produce the most amazing work when they are publishing from their interests, whether profound or silly, the amount of material posted by 6 to 24 years of age on YouTube, Twitter, Blogs, Vine, is incredible. Here is one sample of an amazing remix a young man did of his mother gardening - it is poignant, witty, funny and sweet.  This is his passion and now his profession. Are we helping our students to realize the difference they can make in the world now?

Media publishing is not the market students aim for now. In today’s world, the world has become the refrigerator – that is, instead of posting your child’s work on the refrigerator where only some family and friends see it, now kids can publish their work to the world – and hey, so can teachers!  There is an amazing amount of books written by teachers and by students out there.

Book Creator on an iPad and iBooks Author on a Mac and two of the easiest ways to publish a book from a few pages to a massive tome. Both tools are easy to use. Students take greater pride and put more effort in their work when publishing to the world. See Jon Smith’s experiences below and review Jeremy Reid’s presentation and let us know what you think. We are happy to provide tutorials or provide some online learning. There are scads of teachers out there who send out links to their students blogs, books or other type of publishing through the Twitter hashtag #comment4kids or #commentsforkids encouraging the world to provide feedback to their students. Their students report how helpful and encouraging the feedback is and how inspiring it is knowing that someone else in the world took the time to read their work, or watch their video. Let me know.

Jon Smith is a champ at getting students work published – check out the amazing number of books at http://mrsmithtrt.weebly.com/class-ebooks.html

He tweets about the kids’ books all the time resulting in over 21,000 downloads!!!!! Now, if you were one of those students, would you feel validated? Yes! Would you be eager to write your next book? You bet!

Fostering Creation Using iPads for Student created ebooks and iBooks by Jeremy Reid:
http://www.slideshare.net/jjjreid/using-ipads-to-create-student-created-ebooks-and-ibooks

Design Thinking and Visible Thinking and iPads

 

Who wouldn't want to implement a process that helps to build resilience and empathy in students? Design Thinking does just that but it needs to be so much more than a process to be effective, it needs to be cultural.

I am so fortunate to be in an environment that has successfully developed a culture of thinking through the work of Project Zero at Harvard, more specifically though Ron Ritchhart's and David Perkins's Making Thinking Visible. When students are able to articulate their thinking, guided by established thinking routines, across curricular boundaries, they both deepen their understanding of the content itself, as well as develop strong metacognitive and critical skills. When I walk down the hallways of our buildings, it is easy to see the evidence of student thinking everywhere about everything. Our walls have become learning spaces for all. 

About three years ago, I started reading and learning about Design Thinking and it felt like a perfect fit with Visible Thinking. Interestingly, Project Zero has adda component on Design Thinking to its collection of research projects. Several years ago I journeyed out to California, hotbed of design thinking and maker spaces, and was lucky enough to attend  Nueva School's Design Thinking Institute as well as the Design, Do, Discover event at Castilleja School. My brain felt like it was on fire - I could really see the possibilities of layering design thinking on top of visible thinking, especially in the areas of work in the Fab Lab. One process feeds the other and elevates the results to new levels.

What if you took this combo live with iPads?  It was with great interest that I read Richard's post on Design Thinking with iPads. I've been a fan of @iPadWells ( +iPadWells NZ  ) work on iPads for quite some time and this post provides a great summary of design thinking and how one could create lessons and a workflow for the process using an iPad.  I love his design challenge prompts such as design an app that would have helped George Washington win the the American Revolution in half the time. 

Using various brainstorming apps that make thinking visible such as Padlet, help spur the thought process. Design thinking is best when it is a communal process. I think of the work going on in the new Burlington Maker Space where ideas come to life and where makers get feedback from their neighbors who may be an electrical engineer or a mechanical engineer or a plumber- the idea being that design is a constant iterative process and that the smartest person in the room is the room so creating a space where different members of a community can come in and work on ideas breeds innovation and creativity. Why not do the same in the classroom? 

How to Make Deep Meaning Making for Students

If what Tom Wujec (and cognitive scientists) say is true, we learn or make meaning through 3 ways: Ventral Stream (recognizes the “what” of something that your brain has previously labeled with a word “as in “Oh, that is a chair.”, Dorsal stream locates the object in physical space {the teacher’s desk is to the left of me, the projector is in front of me-the mental map our brain is constantly creating of our surroundings or of multi-part images like infographics or slides), and the third part is the Limbic system – it is our “gut” area – where we have emotional reactions to it. So, Tom speaks to how the EYE visually interrogates what we look at, the BRAIN processes  this in parallel with bits of information asking questions to create a unified mental model it enriches meaning, and the HEART [limbic] where we attach an emotional reaction all act in conjunction to activates a different part of the brain, for deeper learning. Wujec suggest that if we want others to create this deep meaning making, we should practice these 3 elements in our presentations:

• Use images to clarify ideas
• Interact with images to create engagement
• Augment memory with persistent and evolving views

Wujec promotes the idea of “visual strategic planning” where everyone puts their ideas up for others to see- the act of "collectively and collaboratively building the image transforms the collaborations – it is a shared mental model” which develops much deeper meaning for us or for our students.

So, if Powerpoint is dead, then what can you use to help students involve all three areas of the brain as they are learning? Here are some suggestions which I have written about before in our Tuesday Tech Tips:

Creating Multimedia Timelines: http://practicaledtech.com/2014/11/17/practical-ed-tech-tip-of-the-week-creating-multimedia-timelines/

Thinklink: create interactive images that can contain pics, video, links etc. http://www.thinglink.com   [incredibly easy to use]

Haiku Deck – visually stunning presentation tool amiable web version or app https://www.haikudeck.com

Visceral Video: short videos like The Black Death in 90 Seconds involve all three elements. Here is the example: http://www.nextvista.org/the-black-death-in-90-seconds/
Think how you can create an experience like this for your students or have them create it!

Tellagami https://tellagami.com it’s like creating an avatar video – very easy to use – iOS or Android app available in our app catalog.

Padlet Wall – you can always use post-it notes to promote Visible Thinking but you can also do it through technology, Padlet is like a virtual sticky note wall – easy to use and you can archive it for your students. http://padlet.com

Google Maps – gets better and better – check out Richard Byrne’s lesson on Google Maps: http://richardbyrnepresents.com/geography-beyond/

123D app Lets you create 3D scans of any object: www.123dapp.com

Book Creator app (www.redjumper.net/) or IBooks authoring tool (https://www.apple.com/ibooks-author/): put it all together in a way that allows interaction, great images and persistent, evolving views to deepen and reinforce learning.

Questions? Let me know.

SAMR - Swim Don't Climb

Although spooks and goblins are fast approaching, there is nothing scary about today’s tip: SAMR

Think of SAMR as a guide to help you elevate your game. Given the huge investment we put into technology, coupled with the fact that our students today learn differently, we need to both take advantage of the fab tech tools at our fingertips and teach in a way that really targets today’s learners. SAMR stands for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification Redefinition. Watch the quick student/teacher video below (thanks to the brilliance of Rich Colosi):

I like the metaphor of SAMR as the swimming pool versus the ladder (Carl Hooker - you are brilliant!). Even if you are the world’s biggest techie, you will still have some of your work “below the line” (the low end of the pool), however, if you feel that all or most of your work is “below the line”, then it is time to step up your game. I know, I know – you’re saying to yourself - “Oh Joan, it’s so easy for you! I have a hard time learning those tools. I don’t have any time to learn.” 

Hello, it is NOT easy for me. I worked very hard to learn how to use technology in my classroom. I taught math, language arts, and history for a long time in the 2nd largest public middle school in Connecticut. I spent a lot of time going to conferences, taking classes, spending time on Twitter, visiting colleague’s classrooms, learning from my students, anything I could do to develop the best learning environment in my classroom so that I could properly prepare my students for this brave new world. IT WAS NOT EASY! You must be willing to invest the time. 

We have one-on-one help available anytime. We are happy to team teach. Twitter is 24/7 free PD. You have colleagues all around you (and around the world) who are learning. When will you find the time? When will it become a priority? Learning how to implement technology is not easy but once you are in, you are hooked. Really learning how to use technology, to work on becoming digitally fluent, is key for your own personal survival. Soon your entire home will be “smart”, people you love will expect you to be able to communicate using certain tools, you will need to make appointments, shop, watch entertainment, all with using more sophisticated technology. Take that first step toward teaching “above the line”. You have a whole support team here ready to cheer you on. Make some time to learn about our fabulous databases. Get some coverage and go visit some of your colleagues. I am blessed as on walkthroughs, I get to see classrooms in action from PreK-12 – there is a lot of AMAZING stuff going on. People are generous here – take advantage and make time. You are worth it. Your students are worth it.

Here’s some inspiration: Teaching is both a science and an art, and many teachers around the world spend endless hours perfecting their professional practice. At TEDActive 2013, a few teachers from the United States offer some tricks of the trade they've learned (and continue to hone) along the way. 

Here’s a home grown example in Laura Fitzpatrick’s 1st Grade classroom: 

(yes, those are 1st graders making their own QR codes).

Be inspired. Ghandi had it right: Be the change you want to see in the world. It’s not easy, but it is worth it.

Let me know how I can help.