Kick Off the Year with Book Creator

A new school year is always the perfect time to look for new ideas and tools to help me get to know my students and provide more authentic and meaningful learning experiences for them. As educators, we are focused on finding methods and tools to help promote the development of SEL, increase student engagement, especially in hybrid or virtual learning, and fostering creativity in learning. With Book Creator, we can address all of these using one very versatile and interactive platform.

Right on time for back to school, Book Creator released awesome features that make it an even better choice for educators looking to have students focus on SEL skills, in particular self and social awareness. Students can connect with other classrooms, get to know about their own classmates, focus on relationship building, just to name a few of the benefits.

Another great reason to explore Book Creator is because they have a recent partnership with Common Sense Education, and have made available three new books focused on digital citizenship activities. These books are part of the digital citizenship curriculum on the Common Sense Education website and can be added for free right to your library within Book Creator.

New features!

There are some new features that promote collaboration and creativity.

Let’s Remix! Books are remixable so when you find a book that you like, depending on the settings, you may have the option to download and edit the book.This is a great option for teachers or students who want to try Book Creator but may not have a lot of time to get started or need some inspiration to spark their own creativity.

Analytics! You can check out the analytics for the books. Ever wonder who is reading your work and where they are from? It’s great to learn about your global audience and exciting for students to create something authentic, meaningful and purposeful for their own learning and for sharing with others.

Voice search Adding images to Book Creator is easier through voice search. With a feature like voice search, students who are building their language skills or may be worried about proper spelling, can simply click on the microphone and complete a search. There are 120 languages available within Book Creator.

Image attribution When looking at digital citizenship and helping students to become digitally literate, it is important that they understand how to properly cite resources that they are using. With the image attribution now available, you only need to click on the “Inspector” and the attribution will be added to the page.

Safe search is important as we want students to interact in a safe environment and so images that you search through Book Creator are provided by Pixabay which has more than two million professional images. Each has been reviewed, is free to use and you always get the image attribution included. There are precautions in place that block unsafe images and image attribution is applied to everything that has been added to Book Creator.If an image shows up that is questionable, teachers can block it and flag it to the Book Creator team.

Templates!

When it comes to starting with new digital tools, it’s always a plus if you have templates available to choose from or resources that you can bring in to use as teachable materials in your classroom. Now Book Creator has SEL template books, which are activity books that help you to give students a chance to focus on self-awareness through an about me journal or well-being. It helps students to reflect on their learning and build essential digital skills.

Check out the two new templates just in time for the new school year. For younger students, the About Me template will be a great way to share stories and build relationships in the classroom. For older students, the “Empower the Learner Profile” template is a great option to help students to focus on self-awareness by ​​building a one page profile where they can share their talents, hopes, challenges, strengths and more with teachers and classmates.

8 ideas to try with Book Creator

• Have students introduce themselves and share the books in a classroom library.
• Have students collaborate on a classroom book. Be sure to include your own page for students to get to know you.
• As a school, teachers contribute to a faculty book so that students and families can learn about each other.
• Have students create a book to use as a digital portfolio or a journal that they can go through and evaluate their progress throughout the year.
• Have students create a book to explain something through project-based learning or genius hour
• Challenge students to retell a story in their own words with an alternate ending.
• Prompt students to write a book based on a theme being learned in one of their classes like English or history.
• Write a comic book

Want to try out Book Creator? The app is free and to check out the collaboration feature, sign up for a 90-day free trial.

Want to learn more? Join in the upcoming webinars here.

About the author

Rachelle Dené is a Spanish and STEAM: What’s nExT in Emerging Technology Teacher at Riverview High School in Oakmont, PA. Rachelle is also an attorney with a Juris Doctor degree from Duquesne University School of Law and a Master’s in Instructional Technology. Rachelle is an ISTE Certified Educator and serves as the past president of the ISTE Teacher Education Network. She was recently named one of 30 K-12 IT Influencers to follow in 2021.

She is the author of five books including ‘ In Other Words: Quotes That Push Our Thinking,” “ Unconventional Ways to Thrive in EDU” “ The Future is Now: Looking Back to Move Ahead,” “ Chart A New Course: A Guide to Teaching Essential Skills for Tomorrow’s World and her newest book “ True Story: Lessons That One Kid Taught Us” is now available. All books available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, or directly from Rachelle.

Follow Rachelle on Twitter @Rdene915 and on Instagram @Rdene915. Rachelle has a podcast, ThriveinEDU available at https://anchor.fm/rdene915

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Originally published at http://rdene915.com on August 5, 2021.