Embedded Files
'Book Creator'
'Book Creator'
'Book Creator' is a resource that directly links to my learning area through the Australian Curriculum English (Year 7) rationale, aims, achievement standard and content descriptors.
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'Book Creator' is an app and web-based program that allows both students and teachers to create and publish books, libraries, magazines, storyboards, comics and a range of creative resources. The features of the software allow for the embedding of different digital media, expressing ideas through different layouts, templates and themes and a collaboration feature that allows for real-time feedback and students being able to work on the same project at once.
In considering and planing my mini-unit and learning sequence, the use of 'Book Creator' in my classroom aligns with the key ideas of Year 7 English in the Australian Curriculum (ACARA, 2016a). 'Book Creator' fosters students to;
be confident communicators (visually and written).
be imaginative thinkers and informed students who analyse, understand, communicate and build relationships with others (locally & globally).
develop usage and demonstrate appreciation and enjoyment of language, form, structure and expression.
create meaning, evoke feelings, convey information, form ideas, facilitate interaction with others, entertain, persuade and argue.
'Book Creator' is the resource I chose to best support my and my students thinking and activities in my learning design (mini-unit). The value of this program is the way it supports transformative learning design and how it will be used in my English classroom. With reference to my pedagogy map...
Literacy
Students use of 'Book Creator' allows them to listen to, read, view, speak, write and create oral, print, visual and digital texts, and use and modifying language for different purposes in the topic context.
Students use of 'Book Creator' expands their knowledge of texts, grammar, words and visuals through blending the elements and techniques of text analysis into a multimodal and digital expression.
Numeracy
Students use of 'Book Creator' alongside other platforms such as Word, research databases and content creation, allows the application of general mathematical skills in a range of familiar and unfamiliar situations including recognising and using patterns and relationships, using spatial reasoning.
ICT Capability
Students use 'Book Creator' to create, communicate, manage and collaboratively generate ideas and use the software's tools safely to lead groups in sharing and exchanging idea's by taking part in online projects or active collaborations beyond the classroom.
Students apply social and ethical protocols and practices when using the multimodal creative outputs or data transformations in 'Book Creator' for their target audience and purposes following the English conventions for the unit topic.
Critical & Creative Thinking
Students use 'Book Creator' to support critical and creative thinking through organising ideas, planning, modelling, and visualising the invisible.
Students use 'Book Creator' to build solutions and projects through highly creative, expressive, and reflective processes including digital reflective journals documenting and sharing development in critical and creative thinking from the teacher and peers, using the feedback function.
Personal & Social Capability
Students develop deep knowledge through inquiry, connecting to sources of information, both primary and secondary across the world such as blogs and databases and collate their learning in 'Book Creator'.
Students are connected locally and globally through collaborative learning and using the share function in 'Book Creator' with authentic context and audience in relation to the unit topic.
Students articulate and visually express their own opinions and beliefs by interacting and collaborating with others through sharing their 'Book Creator' project with peers and teachers and giving and receiving feedback.
Students practice self-awareness during reflection processes, self-management when planning and creating their 'Book Creator' project and social awareness and management when sharing and collaborating.
Intercultural Understanding
Students use of 'Book Creator' to develop new understandings and to participate in local, national, and international collaboration and online interactions to recognise culture, develop respect and empathise with others to then reflect on these experiences and take responsibility.
Students use intercultural understanding to choose literature from a wide range of cultures and create a project on 'Book Creator' that demonstrates diverse cultural perspectives and empathy with a variety of people and characters in various cultural settings.
Ethical Understanding
Students use 'Book Creator'to document their thinking and learning journey and keep returning to it to evaluate its appropriateness, edit it, develop it and use it to change direction in the unit topic context.
Students use 'Book Creator' to access and evaluate the thinking of others alongside their own through visiting and reading peer projects and interacting through the audio or written feedback functions.
'Book Creator' is beyond a creation tool as it allows for transformative learning through multiple functions and practice of these general capabilities within an English context. For instance, the software supports reading and literacy as the 'read' function projects an interactive reader that can be set to different languages and highlight words as they are read; the teacher can set up multiple libraries for each of their classes all for different tasks, topics and uses. Using an invite code, students can access their class library and contribute content and ideas; and students can share their creations via URL, submit them through different classroom tools, present them as a presentation or print them to be showcased in the classroom or school library or beyond!
In considering the teaching and learning sequence when planning and building my mini-unit, a key component of using 'Book Creator' is in recognising my students as contemporary learners. Their values, beliefs and characteristics provide a foundation to build formative and summative assessment tasks that go beyond a 'good grade' and emphasise purpose and relevance. From this, I aim to redefine a traditional Shakespeare unit from traditional written modes of teaching and learning into a digital reinvention of a collaborative class magazine called "Speare & Shake". The learning sequence will involve student-centred activities that blend explicit teaching of the analytical skills of Shakespearean prose (with use of ICT at the substitutive end of SAMR) to then students taking this knowledge and digitally morphing it into ways that are creatively expressed through a multimodal journal article featured in the class magazine.
A key component of this project is providing students with the opportunity to continually reflect on their work based upon teacher and peer feedback to guide future learning. As students create and edit their work, it is continuously saved in the class library that is set up and facilitated by the teacher and can be reviewed and edited at any time. This allows both the students and teacher access to the work to track progress and receive ongoing feedback - still keeping the responsibility with the learner but the teacher using technological, pedagogical and content knowledge to facilitate and guide students through this digital task.
As students share the draft of their project with the teacher, the teacher then reviews it on the iPad using the 'Book Creator'app, adds a page for audio feedback and shares the spoken feedback back to students via AirDrop or the classroom app (such as Showbie). This allows them to progressively work on their projects. While feedback could easily be relayed verbally to students in class, the ability to use the classroom app and record audio modified the original task of giving and receiving feedback and "creates an ability to provide just-in-time feedback to students as they meet natural finish points, not just on a once-size-fits-all, pre-determined collection date" (Yearling, 2014). Additionally, feedback was recorded provides a measure of growth for both students and teachers to access - "the simplest of tools, used in meaningful, thoughtful, and creative ways, can really transform the way that students perceive and experience the journey of learning" (Yearling, 2014).
References
Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority. (2016a). English – Year 7: The Australian Curriculum. https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/english/
Yearling, B. (2014). Book Creator and the SAMR Model. Tools for Schools [Blog]. Retrieved from https://bookcreator.com/2014/12/book-creator-samr-model/
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