My Take
A few years ago I was looking for an app to help my students practice their writing skills. I read the article "6 iPad Apps for Creative Writing" by Monica Burns (2015) which listed Book Creator as "a great tool for creating a published piece of writing". I was intrigued and given the fact that I had just obtained a set of iPads from a grant, I quickly downloaded Book Creator and gave it a try. I was happy to find out that it was just what I had been looking for. It was easy to use and a great tool for my students to use during my ESL class. I have been using it ever since.
Book Creator is very user friendly. It provides access to 120 languages and it met my students' needs for translation, as needed. This product had great accessibility features such as speech-to-text for my younger students who don't know all the letters yet. It also was very simple to use with iPads for touch drawing, or just creating new pages, adding images, videos, links, etc.
I have been using Book Creator as a writing tool. Writing is a very difficult skill to learn for all students, especially for my English Learners. This app is very easy to use. My students access it via Clever in our classroom iPads, or their own devices from home. Book Creator provides access to 120 languages and it met my students' needs for translation, as needed. This product has great accessibility features such as speech-to-text for my younger students who don't know all the letters yet. It also was very simple to use with iPads for touch drawing, or just creating new pages, adding images, videos, links, etc. Our most recent project was creating books about our cultures. The students' families were involved in that as well.
Book Creator has had a great impact on teaching and learning for my English Learning students. Most recently, I used Book Creator during our hybrid learning model for the 4th quarter of the last school year. One of our units was cultures and it integrated ELA skills with the Social Studies concept of cultures. I modeled using Book Creator during in-person days in the classroom and gave students time to work on their books about their cultures independently or with their families' help during remote instructional days. I was amazed at how well the students did with this writing project. They were involved, proud of their work, and they shared their books with the class on the final day of the unit which served as their performance assessment as well. It was a success!
I have learned that Book Creator is so user friendly and liked by the students that I am willing to try and use it with kindergarten students this coming school year. The new features added to this app recently make it an awesome tool for practicing writing skills and publishing student writing even for the youngest students. I noticed that during the times we have used Book Creator in the classroom, all of my students were fully engaged while we were using this app to write our culture books, even the one who had been attending US schools for a little over three months and is at the beginner level of English proficiency.
How I Use It
I would use Book Creator as a writing tool. Writing is a very difficult skill to learn for all students, especially for my English Learners. This app is very easy to use. My students access it via Clever in our classroom iPads, or their own devices from home. Book Creator provides access to 120 languages and it met my students' needs for translation, as needed. This product had great accessibility features such as speech-to-text for my younger students who don't know all the letters yet. It also was very simple to use with iPads for touch drawing, or just creating new pages, adding images, videos, links, etc. Our most recent project was creating books about our cultures. The students' families were involved in that as well. It was a success!