Are you an Author? I think everyone is an author but they just haven't all published yet. Everyone can be an author and publish their story quite easily using the iPad app Creative Book Builder (CBB) which is my all time favorite eBook publisher. As students get older, and if they have a mac computer, iBooks Author I'm sure will be their tool of choice. It's more involved and amazing customizable features that are hard to ignore when you get into serious book publishing. For elementary and even middle school CBB or Book Creator are fine choices to give students that incredible feeling of publishing and sharing their work with a wider audience. Rushton Hurley said, "If students are sharing their work with the world, they want it to be good. If they are sharing it with [the teacher], they want it to be good enough."
Here are the steps to create and share an iBook using the iPad apps Creative Book Builder and Google Drive:
1. I started the lesson with passion and excitement over the possibility of each student becoming an iBook author and publishing their book. Kids can relate. They've read enough books by 5th grade and even have a favorite author or two and now it's their chance to create a book and read it in the iBooks app on their iPad. Woo Hoo! Can you imagine the expression on their faces? In third grade they write a fabulous book about an animal they research and one color paper copy is printed. They're limited on the number of images and text so everything fits neatly. Students also have a limited audience since publishing more color copies and distribution can be expensive and time consuming. I love writing and publishing electronically for just those reasons. Sharing to a wider audience more easily and freely with fewer limits on the actual work students produce.
2. Introduce and discuss the poetry that you want your students to write. Share examples of a book already created and samples of other poems for inspiration. Creating two class Google shared folders will help you stay organized: one that is read only and the other with edit privileges for everyone. Use the read only folder to share out information with the whole class. Use the "Can Edit" folder for students to move their ePub file into after they publish their book in CBB.
Side note: There are some nice iPad poetry apps you might consider exploring before settling in to have your students write their poetry book.
A. Writing process: Use Google Drive app, student creates a shared Google Doc with the teacher. Teacher creates a shared ("can edit") folder with students for finished ePub files.
B. Students write; teacher comments; students revise; final teacher approval.
C. Copy text into Creative Book Builder app. We used the "Classic Layout" option so that there was a table of contents. If you don't need a tale of contents, I recommend using the "Fixed layout" because it's super easy to manipulate the material.
D. In the CBB app:
- Create a new Book - Title and Introduction
- Create new chapter, "Alliteration", create paragraph text, copy and paste text from the Google doc, insert images from camera roll or search fro an image within the app, add voice recording from within CBB of student reading the poem.
- Create a new chapter for each figurative language term.
- Publish, share (upload the ePub to Google Drive using the Preview option, print (PDF option if needed): Publish the ePub to be opened in the iOS device in iBooks.
-Start with Publish, ePub
-Preview ePub using Open in iBooks. Review it. Some images may need to be resized. Revise, re-generate ePub book.
Upload ePub book to Google Drive share class folder.
A few notes:
Distribution of ePub/PDF files within the class: In CBB select Publish, then Preview, Open in ANother App, Google Drive. Another option is eBackpack which provides options to grade it and share it in a group folder. There are eBackpack parent codes for logging in so it could be shared with family.
Parents can ask their child to show them their book in the student's Google Drive account and peruse it there.
If you want to share ePub files with parents who do not have an iOS device so iBooks isn't an option for them, offer Readium Chrome browser extension to read ePubs in the web browser. Or students can publish a PDF version of their book and parents can open the PDF file, but the audio file(s) is missing.
Writing process: To save time a teacher might skip the revision cycle and just have students type directly into the CBB app. Once students publish and share the ePub teachers can provide feedback verbally or using eBackpack.
Glossary: To add a glossary from an existing ePub Book in Google Drive, add the book in CBB using the import feature. Once the Glossary book is in your book list, open the book you are working on, select Glossary. Double check settings for one item per page option so that it is OFF. It looks better but change that if you don't like it.
I hope these steps help you so that you can create a book now, at least with a little more assurance that it isn't too hard and anyone can be a published author with a book you can read in iBooks. If you write a book, please share it in the comments below. That would be awesome! The Figurative Language book I created as a sample with the 5th grade Meadows teaching team is here. Also, video tutorial How to Share a CBB Book Using Google Drive that I made can be found here.
Here are the steps to create and share an iBook using the iPad apps Creative Book Builder and Google Drive:
1. I started the lesson with passion and excitement over the possibility of each student becoming an iBook author and publishing their book. Kids can relate. They've read enough books by 5th grade and even have a favorite author or two and now it's their chance to create a book and read it in the iBooks app on their iPad. Woo Hoo! Can you imagine the expression on their faces? In third grade they write a fabulous book about an animal they research and one color paper copy is printed. They're limited on the number of images and text so everything fits neatly. Students also have a limited audience since publishing more color copies and distribution can be expensive and time consuming. I love writing and publishing electronically for just those reasons. Sharing to a wider audience more easily and freely with fewer limits on the actual work students produce.
2. Introduce and discuss the poetry that you want your students to write. Share examples of a book already created and samples of other poems for inspiration. Creating two class Google shared folders will help you stay organized: one that is read only and the other with edit privileges for everyone. Use the read only folder to share out information with the whole class. Use the "Can Edit" folder for students to move their ePub file into after they publish their book in CBB.
Side note: There are some nice iPad poetry apps you might consider exploring before settling in to have your students write their poetry book.
A. Writing process: Use Google Drive app, student creates a shared Google Doc with the teacher. Teacher creates a shared ("can edit") folder with students for finished ePub files.
B. Students write; teacher comments; students revise; final teacher approval.
C. Copy text into Creative Book Builder app. We used the "Classic Layout" option so that there was a table of contents. If you don't need a tale of contents, I recommend using the "Fixed layout" because it's super easy to manipulate the material.
D. In the CBB app:
- Create a new Book - Title and Introduction
- Create new chapter, "Alliteration", create paragraph text, copy and paste text from the Google doc, insert images from camera roll or search fro an image within the app, add voice recording from within CBB of student reading the poem.
- Create a new chapter for each figurative language term.
- Publish, share (upload the ePub to Google Drive using the Preview option, print (PDF option if needed): Publish the ePub to be opened in the iOS device in iBooks.
-Start with Publish, ePub
-Preview ePub using Open in iBooks. Review it. Some images may need to be resized. Revise, re-generate ePub book.
Upload ePub book to Google Drive share class folder.
A few notes:
Distribution of ePub/PDF files within the class: In CBB select Publish, then Preview, Open in ANother App, Google Drive. Another option is eBackpack which provides options to grade it and share it in a group folder. There are eBackpack parent codes for logging in so it could be shared with family.
Parents can ask their child to show them their book in the student's Google Drive account and peruse it there.
If you want to share ePub files with parents who do not have an iOS device so iBooks isn't an option for them, offer Readium Chrome browser extension to read ePubs in the web browser. Or students can publish a PDF version of their book and parents can open the PDF file, but the audio file(s) is missing.
Writing process: To save time a teacher might skip the revision cycle and just have students type directly into the CBB app. Once students publish and share the ePub teachers can provide feedback verbally or using eBackpack.
Glossary: To add a glossary from an existing ePub Book in Google Drive, add the book in CBB using the import feature. Once the Glossary book is in your book list, open the book you are working on, select Glossary. Double check settings for one item per page option so that it is OFF. It looks better but change that if you don't like it.
I hope these steps help you so that you can create a book now, at least with a little more assurance that it isn't too hard and anyone can be a published author with a book you can read in iBooks. If you write a book, please share it in the comments below. That would be awesome! The Figurative Language book I created as a sample with the 5th grade Meadows teaching team is here. Also, video tutorial How to Share a CBB Book Using Google Drive that I made can be found here.
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