Creating a Classroom eBook with BookCreator

January 17, 2013 - Books, Collaboration, Featured Carousel, iPad

It is no secret that I am a fan of the iPad app BookCreator since its release in 2011. Our students have created several eBooks with the app.

boocreator

You can read about the creation, its process and even download the final eBooks on the following blog posts:

One of the most important features of the app is the openness and responsiveness of the developer Dan Amos. He truly is interested and flexible to accommodate educators and their special needs in the classroom.

Our wonderful librarian Karin Hallett, who blogs on Liquid Literacy (a must subscribe blog) published a step by step recount of her process of creating a classroom eBook with current first graders.  (Tip: the student reflection video is especially interesting and the “Book Author Checklist” (see below), Karin created for first graders, is useful:)

bookchecklist-bykarinHallett

Each student worked on their own iPad to create their eBook. We are working on stacking our eBook library with student created books, that will allow students to “leave a legacy” by making their books available for future students of their grade level. The challenge for us teachers was to combine each individual student book into one classbook. Each student book was to be a separate chapter.

Dan Amos had extended the new beta version of the new BookCreator to me and we were in luck that the ability to combine more than one book together was already included in the update.

Each student emailed me their eBook file, which I opened in BookCreator on my iPad. Once I had all eBooks in my BookCreator app, I simply chose to combine the books.

bookcreator-1-1

bookcreator-1

Again, Dan Amos was open to my suggestions to making the app even more intuitive and better for teachers wanting to create classroom eBooks. I had the following suggestions for him:

  • copy title page when combining books
  • being able select more than one book at the time to combine
  • being able to insert pages at specific points in the book, not just the end.
  • being able to duplicate pages

The app update is coming out of beta today and ready to be downloaded by everyone. I encourage you to upgrade quickly and start creating your own combined classroom eBooks!