For this week, I explored the resource Book Creator as an online tool for the classroom. I used Book Creator to document my learning project, teaching my 1-year-old Golden Retriever puppy Jazz how to walk. The final creation turned out to be a children’s picture book, and I think for it being my first exposure to Book Creator, the book turned out well!

I have made a screen recording using Screencastify of my initial exploration and impression of Book Creator you can view it here or below.

What I enjoyed about Book Creator was how user-friendly and easy to navigate it was. I always appreciate the “welcome” digital tours that go over how to approach and use the given resource. Book Creator also offers tons of tutorials and even a course that, if taken,  comes with a certification.

Additionally, Book Creator has a good ‘discovery’ page for external resources or inspiration. The discovery page is littered with different users’ creations, and it is all organized by subject, which is really useful! There are also many templates and book sizes available to create books. Personally, I think the photo journal template would be great for a photography class and excellent for teachers to know all students are starting at the same ‘launch’ point. Another super fun feature is that teachers can create and share ‘libraries.’ This means that each separate library can be organized by class and is accessible for the learners to view and collaborate with each other’s stories. My last highlight is a newer feature Book Creator added called ‘apps’ where you can import/embed Canva, Giphy, Google Docs, and Bitmoji to the books you are creating. I use Canva very frequently, so to transfer some of those drawings over is great! Also, as a future English teacher, having google docs as an extension will help students move their creative writing pieces into Book Creator and result in real book-like projects rather than a couple of pieces of stapled loose leaf on a desk!

A few things that Book Creator could change would be the accessibility of the free version. I understand the objective is to make money, but I found the free version limiting, especially with the shapes available. Also, although I love the audiobook feature where the books can be read for you, the actual voice is very robotic, emphasizes words strange and is overall scary sounding. Further, with importing photos from my laptop, I figured I could directly crop them on the website, like in Canva, but I couldn’t figure out how to crop a photo once it was uploaded. I understand that might not be a feature, but it would save time, especially if I do not want to crop the version I have on my laptop hard drive. 

In terms of the SAMR model, Book Creator is an excellent tool for  Augmentation and Modification. I say augmentation because Book Creator is in some ways a direct substitute for students creating and drawing their books by hand and stapling them together. However, Book Creator gives modification elements with some specific features you could cater to projects towards. For example, the virtual sharing and virtual library of it all make reading and sharing personal projects so much easier as you do not all have to be in the same room as the classmate/author to hear, view and get the book read to you. I also think this is beneficial for teachers’, assessment-wise, having everyone’s books in the shared library. I also believe Book Creator supports modification because the provided templates could be explicitly used as the base of a project.

If you missed the link above, you can explore my learning project update this week made with Book Creator here!

Side note (if you don’t have time to check out my book):

Jazz did super well this week. I was extremely impressed by her recall skills. Whenever she felt slight tension she stopped and waited for me. I just continued practicing the steps from last week’s resource on the American Human Society’s website and I stayed consistent with the commands! Since Jazz was struggling with staying on my left side last week I took my friend Paige’s advice and made only turns that would keep her there. Jazz responded to that well and actually only needed a hand signal to move back!