App Smashing and More with Book Creator!

I love sharing ideas and resources when I learn about new features and how we can bring them into our classrooms and offer more to our students. There have been a lot of great updates to some of the digital tools available for use in education. When it comes to promoting creativity and collaboration, Book Creator has added awesome new features and joined forces with some other tools to further empower students and teachers in the classroom.

Recently, Canva integrated with Book Creator which means now students can leverage the power of both these tools to create anything they want! App smashing in the classroom is a great way to boost student engagement, spark creativity and amplify student voice.

Here are some ideas that can be used in any classroom!

Books! Have students create a book cover based on a book that they read and then use the different features and fun apps in Book Creator to really bring the book to life. Canva offers ready to use templates and when app smashed with Book Creator, it’s easy to create and publish visually engaging in no time at all. Teachers and students can quickly add animations, search from the thousands of images, different fonts, videos even to add into your book

Lessons! Book Creator is also a great tool for creating a lesson, adding in links and other visuals to boost student engagement in learning. Book Creator also offers different accessibility features such as the voice search as well as the interactive reader of Book Creator. Through the reader, means students can have the books read to them in any language. There’s also the option to have where it’s highlighted while the book is being read.

Writing prompts! Use Giphy to create a book full of GIFS and have students write about what they see, create a story, describe something in greater detail. There are many possibilities with using GIPHY to promote writing skills and creativity!

More choices for creating!

Now with the App store, you can create with Bitmoji (teachers only because of Snapchat), Giphy, Canva, a sticker pack, 3D models, Google maps, Google Drive and Sketchfab. All you need to do is go to the Teacher Dashboard to find the Apps tab and choose the app that you want to enable in your account.

My favorite: Sketchfab

Now that Book Creator is integrated with Sketchfab, students can access a library full of 3D models that they can place directly into Book Creator! For educators looking to teach students about augmented or virtual reality, using the Sketchfab app with Book Creator is definitely the way to go!

For anyone who doesn’t know, Sketchfab enables you to display 3D models on the web which can be viewed on any browser, or by using a virtual reality headset. Using WebXR technologies, creating in 3D and being able to interact with these objects helps to further engage students in learning, and spark curiosity and creativity in their designs. There are so many ways to use 3D models for any grade level or content area. Some ideas are to have students build a replica of a place they are learning about, or create a 3D model of an animal or object and place it right into their book. For classes where students benefit by being able to interact with the object such as in math with shapes, or with biology or learning about the heart for example, adding in these objects takes their learning to a whole new level.

When the book is ready, everyone can look at it by rotating it 360 degrees or, many of the models can be viewed in augmented reality on mobile devices or computers or even in virtual reality by using a headset!

There are so many ways to have students create using Book Creator and with these new apps, it better meets student interests and needs. When it comes to starting with new digital tools, it’s always a plus if you have templates available to choose from or resources that you can bring in to use as teachable materials in your classroom. Each of the new apps available through Book Creator provide even more ways for students to create and engage in authentic and meaningful learning fueled by choice. When we create learning experiences that will more meaningfully engage students with the content, while also aiming to move them from consumers to creators, it increases student engagement and amplifies student achievement.

To learn more, join in the webinars that the Book Creator team offers throughout the month. To learn more about using Book Creator with Canva, join on Saturday February 12th bit.ly/BCCanva where you’ll get to see what this new integration looks like and how to combine these apps to make some amazing creations! Walk away with some ideas and some activities to try in your classroom!