How I Use It
One of the most successful uses of this product was used in my class for a science task about solutions and mixtures. I put together a template that the children filled in as the lessons progressed. Each lesson the children added photos, voice notes, text, and movies to the book to demonstrate both understanding, and to ask further questions. The children found it easy to add ideas to the book - particularly those children who struggled to write the same amount. Because of the vast amount of information they could easily add to the book, the children gained far more out of the lessons than simply writing something down. The children’s movies, voice notes and photos demonstrated a far greater understand of the topic than I believed.
The only thing that made it tricky was the distribution of the book to the children. As I was outside of school at the time with no internet access, I could not send the book to them - this was an issue that I have since solved and I now make sure that this is sorted out before any outside excursions, or I now use airdrop as we are an iPad only school.
My Take
Book creator is a fabulous app that I would recommend to any teacher who has access to technology in their classroom. It opens up a wide array of ways that children to demonstrate knowledge to you, and can be structured using templates if required. Children can also take the app and run with it, creating concept books on topics from across the curriculum.
As I only use it on the iPad, and not on chrome, I do not know how well this app performs on chrome. For schools with iPad devices, this app performs remarkably well given the amount of functionally it has. This is a must have app for any school who is interested in using technology to enhance teaching and learning.
I would recommend some training with this app before using it in class. While it is relatively simple to use, creating templates and some other features (accessibility features, and deleting items), are not immediately obvious as you must use the ‘i’ in the top right corner - this was the only thing that my children did not immediately pick up on as they are used to holding down on a picture, or double tapping to bring up delete on an iPad.
My only criticism, therefore, is the deletion, and not making use of the pinch when resizing photos/videos. These are really minor issues in an otherwise excellent app. I hope to continue to use this app in my lessons as well a help others to use it.
