Here is the Collaborative Classroom eBook on the iPad Step-by-Step guide in an easy and more visual format to download and share with your students and colleagues.

Collaborative Classroom eBooks on the iPad

Previously, I have published the following posts about creating eBooks:

• Create your own eBook (on the computer ) for the iPad 
• First Graders first iPad Encounters
• Students Create ePub iPad Book for the World

More and more classrooms are wanting to take their already created content and turn it into an eBook to share with parents, grandparents and the community who own eReaders.

Here are some possible ideas to create content:

• Any Unit of Study
• Book Report Anthology
• Poem Anthology
• Visual Quotes Collection
• Create your own Textbook
• Essay Collection about a Specific Topic
• Drawing/Painting Collection
• Portfolio

So, how do you create a collaborative CLASSROOM eBook? If you only have one iPad available, it is not such a big problem.  Each student waits for a turn to add their page(s) (or double page) to the book as the iPad gets passed around. What if you have a class set of iPads and you want all your students working on their pages at the same time?

Here is our Step-by-Step procedure (we are using the BookCreator app).

1. Students work on their individual iPads or on group iPads
2. Students create page(s) for the collaborative book by inserting images and text.
3. In order to be able to insert images, the images need to be in the iPad Photo Gallery.

To get images into the gallery, students can:

• search for public domain or creative commons images on the web (via Safari) and save the image to the iPad Photo Gallery by holding a finger for a few seconds on the image until a drop down list pops up > choose “Save Image”. This will automatically place the image into your Photo Gallery.
• Take a picture with the iPad’s built in camera (iPad2). Once the picture is taken, it is automatically placed into the iPad Photo Gallery. This works great if students have illustrated a picture on a paper that they want to include in their eBook
  

• iOS5 allows you to edit your images directly in the Photo Gallery. Students can rotate, enhance, take red-eye out and crop the image before inserting it into their BookCreator page.
  

To insert an image into the BookCreator app, tap the icon on the top right of the app and choose the image from the camera roll.

4. To insert text into the page, students tap on the Text icon on the upper right of the app.

• A keyboard will pop up for students to type in their text or they can copy and paste a text they have written in an email, document or blog post, etc.
• To copy and past, simply go to the text that you want to copy, hold you finger on the text for a few seconds, choose select or select all, then choose copy. Go back to the text field in BookCreator, hold your finger down in the text field for a few seconds and tap the paste bubble to insert the copied text.

5. To edit or delete an image or text, tap on the “i” in the upper right of the BookCreator app.

• edit the size of the text
• edit the font of the text
• edit font color
• edit the alignment
• choose bold, italic or underlined

You can also edit the background color of the page, by tapping the “i” when there is no text nor image selected previously.

6. Once students have created their page(s), they will take a screenshot of each page, edit the image and email them to the teacher, who will collect all the images to create a “main” book with the BookCreator app on a specified “main” iPad.

Screenshot

• Taking a screenshot: Hold down the On/Off button at the same time as the “Home” button. You will hear the sound of an image taken as well as see the screen disappear for just a second and then return.

Edit Image

• The image just taken is automatically placed into the iPad’s Photo Gallery.
• Tap “Edit” and choose “Crop” to format the image to include ONLY the page. Drag the four corners of the crop box  to crop out the time, etc on top bar as well as the arrows on the left or right side. Choose crop then save.

E-Mail

Once the image is cropped, it is ready to send as an e-mail attachment to the “main” iPad. The “main” iPad is the one that will pull in all the individual student pages and create the final copy of the eBook.

• Tap anywhere on the image. A top navigation bar will pop up for a few moments. If you lose it, simple tap the image again.
• Tap on the icon with the arrow on the top right of the Photo Gallery, then choose “Email Photo”.

• type the email address of the “main” iPad in the “To:” section.
• enter a subject line- Student’s name or anticipated page number in the final book.
• tap the send button

7. On the “main” iPad:

• open each email from students and save the attached image into the photo gallery (by holding down one finger until “Save Image” button pops up)
• all the images will be saved in the “main iPads” Photo Gallery
• open up the BookCreator app and insert each student image on a new page, arrange pages in desired order, add a creative book cover with title and authors’ names.
• open finished BookCreator file in iBook to read collaborative classroom eBook.

Downside: Since all the text on the pages are now images, the built-in dictionary in iBooks will not work.

Recently I had created a “Read-Along” book for our first graders to accompany their Magic Tree House podcast and am continuing  to have fun creating e-books for my iPad from Word Documents, pdfs and thematic blog posts from Langwitches. Next year, we will have an iPad cart to use with our students and I am looking forward to brainstorming more ideas and opportunities to allow students to create and organize their own e-books on the iPad.

• What are the advantages/disadvantages of creating our own e-books instead of purchased textbooks?
• What new learning opportunities can creating your e-book bring to your classroom?
• How can we integrate teacher-created e-books, personalized for students?
• Will student created e-books motivate, engage and empower learners?

Let’s put our heads together to think of the opportunities and possibilities. Have you already created and used your own e-books in your classroom. Please share your thoughts and ideas.

Download the Create Your own eBook for your iPad as a pdf

I have had several requests to create another How-To-Guide Flyers:
Create your own E-Book for your iPad
Making Your Own E-book For Your Ipad.

You are reading another post in the series “The Digital Learning Farm” based on Alan November’s work of “The Digital Learning Farm“, which he also outlines in his chapter of Heidi Hayes Jacobs’ book “Curriculum 21“.

Adapted from Alan November (pp.188-193), Curriculum 21 (ASCD, 2010) by Heidi Hayes Jacobs.

I am looking today specifically at the role of “Tutorial Designer”.

You can read previous posts of mine about Tutorial Designers below:

• ShowMe App for the iPad- Good Tutorial Designer App?
• Becoming good Tutorial Designers
• Tutorial Designers- Empowered Learners- Contributors
• Middle School Math Wiki- Students’ Thoughts
• Teaching is the Highest Form of Understanding
• Math Lesson? Empower Learners?

They say

If you can teach it…you know it!

We put 4th grade Math students to the “test”… well not really… No traditional test was required to show their understanding of multiplication. We asked our students to create a tutorial explaining multiplication to peers, future fourth graders of our school, etc. We started out with a lesson on Becoming good Tutorial Designers to show them examples of tutorial design techniques as well as to give them an understanding of the importance of clear and precise step by step directions.

In groups, students set out to write the scripts of their tutorials. Each group decided to use different tools to create a video visualizing the math problem and the step by step solution. We had one group creating a PowerPoint document, another one used sticky notes and the third group used various apps on the iPad to film and record.

The process of creating a simple tutorial was elaborate. From breaking the multiplication process up into individual steps, to being able to express these steps verbally and visually to creating a storyline around the math problem/solution to make it flow. We definitely spent most of the time fine tuning the step by step guide and rehearsing the script.

Recording of tutorial video

Now my question is:

Is it Worth it?

Do I have evidence that student created tutorials are worth the effort. An effort that takes (especially in the beginning) considerably more time than filling out a worksheet?

• I think about the service that student created tutorials provide to fellow classmates (or global peers)? Some students learn (listen?) better (different?) when the concept is explained by someone their age.
• I think about the skills that go into the development of  tutorials:
  • communication/verbal/language skills
  • critical thinking skills
  • creation skills
  • media skills
  • presentation skills
  • design skills
  • problem solving skills
  • empathy (How can I explain best, so SOMEONE ELSE will understand better?… How can I put myself into their shoes?)
• I think about the motivation to do your best, that comes with the knowledge that it will not only be your teacher or your parents who will see your work, but by sharing it online, you have a global audience.
• I think about the reward when you find out (verbal, via comments, tweets, embeds, etc.) that your tutorial helped someone else learn.
• I think about the collaborative construction of resources- the curation of information (watch for an upcoming blog post on that topic), when work from one year is added to the work from previous and future years?
• I think about the metacognition of the learning process, the documentation of the process and breaking it apart.

What is some evidence you see of “being worth our time” when students create tutorials to teach and learn?

Take a look at the final product of each 4th grade group.

4th Grade Multiplication Tutorial from langwitches on Vimeo.

4th Grade Math Tutorial from langwitches on Vimeo.

4th Grade- Math Tutorial- Multiplication from langwitches on Vimeo.

Watch this tutorial below as a movie or download it as a PDF file.

What is a techno-tale? A techno-tale is a digitally told story. There are many ways to create digital stories. One option is to create an illustrated book-style movie with students telling the story in their own recorded voices. 1. Decide if you will create a collaborative classroom story (each student contributing one page or part to the book) or an individual student story (each student illustrates and records the entire book). 2. Have students illustrate each part of the story. 3. Take pictures or scan in the illustrations. 4. Upload theses images to your computer. Organize them in one folder for convenient access.

5. Open up iMovie

6. Start a new project. File > New Project

7. Name the project and choose theme.

8. Drag and drop your previously saved illustration images into the project

9. In the soryboard area drag and drop the illustrations in the correct order.

10. Add or change transitions by dragging and dropping different transitions between two images.

Transitions

Text

11.Click on the Microphone icon, then choose a clip.

12. iMovie will start counting 3-2-1. Start talking, iMovie will record your voice.Push the space bar to stop recording.

13. The recording will be the purple rectangle underneath the image. If the audio recording is longer than the image, you can either change the length  (in seconds) of the image by  simply double clicking it…

… or move your mouse to the right side of the audio rectangle and drag it towards the left to adjust the length of the audio.  Listen to the audio clip again to make sure that no part of the recorded voice was cut off.

14. Once all images, transitions and audio recordings are in place, it is time to export your project file into a movie file that can be shared or uploaded to a video service online, such as Vimeo.

15. Choose the folder you want to save the movie to. Choose the size you want the movie to export as (Recommendation: Medium Size) and click the “Export” button.

Here are some example:

Second Grade Hebrew: Summary of Creation Story- Book of B’resheet

Kindergarten- Thanksgiving Story

Download the How to Guide- Creating a Techno-Tale in iMovie (pdf) Creating a Techno Tales w/ iMovie

All of our classrooms at MJGDS have their own blog. Several grade levels are piloting individual student portfolios based on a blogging platform.

• How do you keep up with all this information?
• How do you filter and organize it?
• How can you avoid having to go back to blogs to check if the owner has updated with a new post?

You can download this How-To-Guide for Subscribing via RSS & Google Reader to Classroom Blogs as a pdf.

According to Wikipedia an

RSS (most commonly expanded as Really Simple Syndication) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.[2] An RSS document (which is called a “feed”, “web feed”,[3] or “channel”) includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. RSS feeds can be read using software called an “RSS reader”, “feed reader”, or “aggregator”, which can be web-based, desktop-based, or mobile-device-based.

RSS Feed Icons

RSS in Plain English Video

Google Reader in Pain English Video

Start scanning websites you frequent often for different variations of this RSS feed icon. Some will have the icon listed in a prominent place on the website, others will just have a text link in the sidebar of footer of the page or some will have NO sign that there is an RSS feed available.

You can subscribe, among others to the following RSS feeds:

• ·      Blogs
• ·      Wikis
• ·      Google Searches for specific topics or keywords
• ·      Twitter feeds of individual users
• ·      Facebook feeds for individual users or pages

If you are not sure if  a certain page has an RSS feed available and you are using Firefox as your browser, you check for an RSS icon on the right side in the URL Address box. If a feed is available you can see the RSS icon, if there is no icon, then there is no RSS feed available for this site.

Create a Google Account (if you don’t have one already), sign in and and go to Google Reader- http://www.google.com/reader .

When you are at a website that has a RSS feed, you have a few options available to you.

Copy the URL (Web Address) of the site you want to subscribe to and then paste it into the  “Add Subscription” box

In your Firefox browser, click on the RSS icon in the URL Address bar

A dropdown menu will appear. Choose the RSS feed

Make sure you select Google from the dropdown menu, you might want to check off the option “Always use Google to subscribe to feeds”, then click the “Subscribe Now” button.

Click “Add to Google Reader”

Click on dropdown menu of  “Feed Settings”

Choose an already created folder or choose “New Folder” to create and name.

Your RSS feed will be filed and available in the Subscription Folders in the left sidebar.

A new and unread post will be shown in bold letters.

In order to read the post, click on the title. The post will drop down.

If you would like to read leave a comment on the post  or look directly on the blog click on the arrow  to the right of the post’s title.

You can also star, organize (tag), share or e-mail the posts by choosing and clicking on one of the icon at the bottom of the post in Google Reader.

Every classroom at my school has it’s own blog. Teachers are using it at various levels for parent/school communication, student work, two-way communication with commenting, documentation for classroom happenings as well as the hub and archive of classroom images, videos and audio.

In an attempt to include parents in the process, educate them in this new platform in addition to give students a chance to take ownership of their classroom blog, several classes are creating a tutorial video for their parents and grandparents that explains a few “blog” specific vocabulary words as well as highlights and models how to find information and navigate the classroom blog.

2nd Graders jumped immediately on board when I approached their teachers with the idea of creating such a video tutorial. I started out by doing a lesson with the 7 year olds about specific blog vocabulary we wanted them to use.

Blog Vocabulary

Their teacher made a list of all the words as well as the areas we wanted to highlight in the tutorial. Students then were assigned specific words or parts. We started to brainstorm, as a class,  the introduction to the tutorial.

• What would we say to get parents interested in watching the tutorial?
• How would we welcome them?
• How could we show them how to get to the classroom blog?

Collaborative Brainstorming

Students had very specific ideas and were adamant about certain words, their order and the way they wanted to say them.

Organization for Tutorial Video

The following day, in class, students wrote a short script of what they wanted to say using their assigned vocabulary words.

The Writing Process

Their classroom teacher  reminded her students about the writing process by pointing to their bulletin board on her wall.

1. Pre-Writing
2. Drafting
3. Revising
4. Editing
5. Evaluating
6. Publishing

Students then were assigned to practice their “part” as homework for the following day when we would be filming them with the Flip camera.

We had a blast creating the video (just hang around until the end to watch the bloopers ).

If you want to leave a comment for these 7 year olds, please add the location where you are from, so we can track it on a Google Map.

How could you allow your students to become their own  Tutorial Designers?

Here for your viewing pleasure:

I order to save time and space when uploading images to your blog, it is necessary to “RESIZE” your images.

You can download the How-To-Guide to Resizing Images for your Blog here. (pdf)

Like other digital files, images are being measured in bytes

The higher the number of pixels, the sharper the image and the larger you “could” print the image. Since we are uploading the image to the blog, there is no need to upload an image with a pixel size larger than 600 pixels in width. Usually the blog theme will not accommodate a larger pixel width than that. In addition most monitors will not show a difference in the image quality anyway.

How do you re-size an image?

The easiest way is to use a screencapture software, such as Skitch (mac) or Jing Project (PC).

http://skitch.com http://www.techsmith.com/jing/

(For this How-To-Guide, we will be using Skitch)

Once the software is installed on your computer.

1. Open up the image on your screen (with iPhoto, Finder or Explorer) and make sure it shows the exact size you want it to be on your blog.

You might have to use the Command + or – (mac), Ctrl + or – (PC)  or adjust your window to resize the image on your screen.

2. Now open up Skitch

3. Click on “Snap to start.

4. A Crosshair will appear.

5. Place Crosshair in upper left corner and drag a rectangle over the area you want to capture. Let go of mouse or trackpad to snap the image. You will hear a “picture taking” sound.

6. Drag and adjust the lower right hand corner of window to resize the image. Keep an eye out on the dimensions displayed on the lower left hand side.

7. Name the new image

8. Drag the image to your Desktop or to another place in your Finder.

9. Upload image to your blog by browsing to that location.

This is another How-To-Guide for teachers just getting started with blogging. It is a follow up to the “Getting to Know your Blog- A Beginner’s How To Guide” which includes

blogging vocabulary

differences between posts and pages

login to your Dashboard

add a post

add a page

edit a post or a page

add and organize links

add and arrange widgets on your sidebar

insert images

Below you will find the steps how to add a video to your WordPress based blog. You certainly can use the same procedure on other blogs which are not a WordPress platform (ex. Blogger).

I choose to upload videos not directly to the blog, but to a site  called VIMEO and then embed the video into a post.

There are other options like YouTube , SchoolTube, or TeacherTube for example.

You can download this How-To-Guide: “Adding a Video to Your Blog” as a .pdf file here.

1. Create the video as a .mov, .avi or .mp4 file
2. Go to http://www.vimeo.com
3. Log in

4.  Click on “Upload a Video”

5.  “Choose a file to upload”

6.  Browse for the video file, click the file name and click “Select”

7.  Insert a Title and Description (optional). Save your changes.

8. Once video has finished uploading. Click on green button to go to video.

9.  Highlight and copy the URL (Web Address that starts with http://)

10. Go to your blog

11. Log into the Dashboard

12. Create a new post

13. Enter Title

14. Paste the URL (Command V) into the body of blog post

15. Publish post. You will see the embedded video once you view the post

I have had the pleasure of working with the Kauai Pacific School and Martin J. Gottlieb Day School faculty this past month in getting started with classroom blogs. The familiarity of reading and writing in a blog platform varies tremendously. I found it very helpful to start out with a brief overview of the architecture and vocabulary of a blog.

Establishing common vocabulary

As I am continuing to support individual teachers and administrators in getting started with creating and maintaining their classroom or their own professional blog, it was time to create a comprehensive How-To-Guide.

You can directly download the entire How-To-Guide- Getting to Know Your Blog here as a .pdf file.

A Step by Step Guide on how to:

• login to your Dashboard
• add a post
• add a page
• edit a post or a page
• add and organize links
• add and arrange widgets on your sidebar
• insert images

on your WordPress platform based blog.

Difference between POSTS & PAGES
(from WordPress Support)

Posts

Pages

Added  this great list What kinds of pages are common on eduction blogs? on 9/4 from Stephanie Sandifer‘s blog Change Agency

The following lists are just general ideas and certainly do not include all possible page ideas.

For classroom blogs:

• Contact
• About
• Blog Rules
• Resources
• Classes (or individual pages for each class)

For professional learning education blogs:

• Contact
• About
• Archives
• Presentations and/or Workshops
• Resources
• How to Use This Blog
• My Portfolio
• CV or Resume
• Disclaimer/Disclosures

Login to your Dashboard

After you click “login” on your blog (usually the link is located on the bottom of your SideBar,

you will be directed to the following screen. Enter your Username and Password given to you by your administrator/ webmaster. In my current school, it is customary to have “firstname.lastname” as the username. This may be different in other schools.

The Dashboard

Once logged in, you will be taken automatically to your Dashboard.
This is where you will make any changes to your blog.

All About Posts

Take a look at the left sidebar of your Dashboard for “Posts”. Click on the upside down triangle next to “Posts” in order to see more options.

All About Pages

Take a look at the left sidebar of your Dashboard for “Pages”. Click on the upside down triangle next to “Pages” in order to see more options.

4 Steps to Writing a POST

4 Steps to Writing a PAGE

Editing a Post or Page

If you are in need of editing an already published post/page or a draft post/page, in the sidebar of you dashboard, click “Posts” or “Pages”.

Add and Organize Links

Take a look at the left sidebar of your Dashboard for “Links”. Click on the upside down triangle next to “Links” in order to see more options.

4 Steps to Adding a Link

Add and Arrange Widgets in your SideBar.

Each widget represents a different TITLE in Your SideBar.

Inserting an Image

In order to insert an image into a blog post or page, add or edit a post (or page). Make sure you insert your cursor at the point in your post (or page) you want the image to appear.

The image will be uploaded to the Media Library of your blog. Make sure that the image is not too large. It is a good idea to resize larger images (that came directly from your digital camera) BEFORE you upload them to your blog.