Book Creator makes fixed layout epub files that are easily readable by iBooks. Fixed layout means you get to control exactly what the page looks like -- rotate pictures, place text boxes or images exactly, add audio, and format text boxes on your pages. It is a lot like producing a simple PowerPoint presentation, though Book Creator's tools, especially for text editing, are not as rich. For instance, it isn't currently possible to bold one word in a text box or to flow text from one text box to another or from one page to another.
That said, it is great for picture heavy content that only requires simple text. It is REALLY easy to use and publish your own iBooks. I could see using it to create your own content iBooks to distribute to students. You can save the epub file to a Google shared drive (or several other cloud services including Dropbox) and your students can "Open In" iBooks.
Since all students have the app, you could also assign them a project of any size using Book Creator to present the iBook to you/the class/etc. For example, Josh Reppun, in his US History classes, had the students convert their term research papers into simple, elegant iBooks using Book Creator. It was a fun and interesting way to make a research project come alive for themselves and their classmates. To Josh (and me, too), the beauty of Book Creator was that all the creation can be done on the iPad in your classroom without needing computers or computer labs.
We're all learning together, so I'd love to hear about how you all are able to use Book Creator in your classes. If you add comments to this blog, everyone can follow this adventure in publishing.
Book Creator comes with a tutorial book within the app.
Thanks, Lara, for this awesome blog post! Last year my students found this app easy to use and a cool tool of creation. I look forward to comments from other 'Iolani faculty about use of this app. ~ Josh
ReplyDelete