Creating iBooks or eBook Apps

The iPad is a great tool for students to create and publish their own books. Following up from the previous post on Creating your own iBook, there are now a number of Apps that can be used on the iPad to create your own iBook or eBook App.

• Book Creator
• Creative Book Builder
• Demi Book Composer (free)
• Ebook creator
• Ebook magic

A great summary of the above Apps can be found at Technology Bits Bytes & Nibbles.

A comparison of which one to use can be found at : The Amazing iPad.

One schools collaborative iBook using Pages App as well as Drawing Pad and Whiteboard Lite - iPads at Burley.

A useful presentation at Author Stream on How to Create an Ebook. For some detailed instructions on using Creative Book Builder start from slide 26.

For a quick ebook of any website or blog use dotEPUB. You can install a bookmarklet on your iPad which will automatically convert the webpage you are viewing to an ebook. I quickly and easily converted pages from this blog into an ebook via dotEPUB's bookmarklet (see pic above).

Learning with the Olympics

The Olympics are always a rich opportunity for students to use the 4C's across the curriculum:
Some ideas:

• Geography:  look local then expand global - where do our athletes come from in Australia, where do they train, what is their story?  Compare this to other athletes across the world. Where is the host Olympic country and what do you know about it.? See the Games Overview.
• Numeracy:  How many athletes are competing from Australia and across the world, what is the percentage of Australian athletes to all athletes? How many countries are competing?
• History:  Who has competed in more than one Olympics?  When did a particular sport start in the Olympics?
• Literacy:  Research, read and write about the Olympics and the athletes and countries involved.

Below is a Google slide with some starting information about our female football team 'The Matilda's" that could be used for students explore a range of learning connections:

• RESEARCH and locate more information about the team, the players and female football.  Why are they called the Matilda's? What countries are they playing? What is a midfielder?  Search for the details about an athlete by name here.
• CREATE  a biography for themselves as if they are an Olympian like this one adjacent at Lisa De Vanna's profile or alternatively use Google forms to interview another student to gather their Olympian profile,  http://rio2016.olympics.com.au/athlete/lisa-de-vanna (scroll down to Q&A)
• CRITICALLY analyse information and create infographics using Google Slides or Canva about the athletes or the team or other Olympic information. (Remember to change the Google Slide dimensions to an infographic format or copy my infographic template from here).  Use iconfinder.com to find great  creative commons licenced icons for the infographic.
• COLLABORATE on a class Google My Map of the athletes using data gathered by the students about the athlete's town, their age, position in the team, favourite food, photos etc.
• COMMUNICATE a fan message to one of the team that tells the athlete an  interesting fact the student discovered out about them and wish them well.  http://rio2016.olympics.com.au/team/fan-messages

21st Century Learning and the integration of Religious Education and Literacy.

Students at Sacred Heart have been unpacking The Holy See - Misericordiae Vultus which was written by Pope Francis reflecting on the Year of Mercy. Students used Lego Movie Maker to summarise their understanding of the text so far. Students are highly enthusiastic and have created some fantastic movies.