Week 4: Inspiring Creativity with Book Creator

 This week, I discovered one of my new favorite resources, Book Creator! This site is free to use and has many amazing features that will make school a more exciting experience for kids of all ages. 

Features

Kids can become authors and content creators when using this site. There are options to insert your own texts, images, and voice to make an interactive book. The site was user friendly and reminded me a lot of Canva in that everything was clearly labeled. Students can insert their own videos, use a pen to draw, insert GIFs, music, emojis and links into their books. The site also has many layout and theme options and gives students full creative control over their projects

Another thing I loved about Book Creator is that the tutorial about the site is a book. The tutorial was efficient, interlaced with text and video with pop up images, so this shows how complex books on Book Creator can be. This tutorial was a great example of how to get the most out of this site and how to use it to make masterpieces.

There are also collaborative features that let more than one student work on a book and allow educators to view their students' work. 

Users can publish their completed books online, share it as an ebook, or print it out!

Accessibility

Book Creator is designed to be accessible. It has text to speech features, can translate your book into different languages, and has features that help students who communicate through sign language. There's a voice search feature, and students can add captions to any video, and all video resources on the site have captions.

There is even an AI-powered feature on Book Creator called AutoDraw that helps students draw. It is an assistive tool for those who are not the best artists. For example, if a student starts to draw a long skinny rectangle with a big circle on top of it, the AI will anticipate potential things they might be drawing, such as a tree, a tennis racket, a joystick, etc. and give them improved versions. 

How it can be used in a school library

BookCreator and school libraries go together like peanut butter and jelly. I can see BookCreator being used for in-person lessons and assignments in the library. Since kids are surrounded by books every time they enter the library, I can see librarians coming up with assignments where kids create their own books on BookCreator. At the end, the students can print out their books or get a link to their ebook so their book can be on display in the physical school library and on the library's website. 

BookCreator can also be incorporated into any subject lessons. I know that school librarians sometimes follow the same cirriculum as the rest of the school, so they can bolster student work in the humanities or sciences by having kids create study guides or visual presentations on BookCreator. Librarians can also host tutorials for BookCreator so the students can hone their skills and have fun exploring the site and all its features before they use it for an assignment. School librarians are becoming more and more savvy with technology, so I can see them taking the reigns on educating students on how to use technology that plays a part in the classroom and their everyday life. 

Evaluation

After learning about efficient websites this week, I was very impressed by the BookCreator site. Even when I made a free account to test it out, there was a helpful tutorial on how to make books and resources every step of the way. I found the whole experience not only user friendly, but user centric, which would be great for a school library. I give this resource ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Interested in trying it out yourself? Here's a video guide on how to get started:

How to make a book on BookCreator