Great to help young writers see themselves as authors, and much more!
Community Review for Book Creator
My Take
Book Creator has helped my second graders see themselves as true authors with ideas to share with the world. It is EdTech that facilitates learning, rather than being an app used for the sake of integrating some technology. There is a large catalog of ideas and project inspirations that have motivated me to see how to use this tool in the coming year in ALL subject areas, not just literacy. With just a few mini-lessons on getting started and the features of the app, my students were up and rolling. They would share with each other the new techniques and features they found to take their books to the next level. They initiated writing activities with Book Creator outside of assigned work. They love the ability to collaborate on a book with a classmate.
There is always a student or two each year who go down the "rabbit hole" of spending more time on the graphic design than the content of the book, but that is a classroom management issue to plan for, not a fault of the app. The only thing I wish this app could do is to export a multi-media form of student books to be saved in a place like a Google Drive. A book that is just images and texts can be saved as a PDF and archived, but if students add audio or video that can't easily be preserved.
This will be my fourth year of using Book Creator in my classroom. Our school district's 1-1 technology initiative will reach K-2 this year, so each of my students will have a school issued device. This will make it even easier for me to integrate Book Creator into my teaching.
How I Use It
When I started using Book Creator I saw it as a tool to help a few students with low confidence and fine motor issues to create books. I quickly found that all of my students were motivated to keep writing more when they saw their stories becoming books as they were creating them. The next year I used it with students so they could create a Poetry Anthology. They could insert images of poems they had read and wanted to "collect" for themselves, as well as add their own poems. My second graders quickly learned how to add backgrounds and images to make their books look great, and they were hooked!
During the pandemic, Book Creator was a great way for students to share what they were writing, and allow me to offer feedback. They could type right into the books, or write on paper traditionally and insert an image onto the page. That year we used Book Creator for Personal Narratives, Non-Fiction All About Books, and the now annual Poetry Anthology.
This coming year, students will begin maintaining portfolios for Presentations of Learning. They will curate work samples and anecdotes of classroom experiences to show their growth. They will capture personal reflections on this growth as well. I think Book Creator will be an excellent tool. Students can type reflections on the page, insert photos or scans of work samples, record audio or video, and maintain a multimedia portfolio for the year with they evidence they have collected of their growth.