Book making: Excerpt from Larry Ferlazzo's Education Blog:
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/10/19/the-best-places-where-students-can-write-online/)
Tikatok is a new site that is a real find for English Language Learners (and lots of other students). Users can create online books that they write and illustrate (they can also use lots of images available on the site).
It has a number of features that really make it stand-out. You can make a book from scratch, or you can use one of their many story frames that contain “prompts” to help the story-writer along. In addition, you can invite others to collaborate online with you to develop the book.
Tar Heel Reader. It has two great features: 1) It has 1,000 simple books with audio support for the text immediately accessible to Beginning English Language Learners and 2) It makes it as simple as you can get for students to createtheir own “talking” books using images from Flickr.
Anybody can read the books on the site. However, in order to have your students create talking books using their “easy as pie” (and free) process, you need to register and have to have a code.
Storybird is a neat new site where users can choose artwork from a specific artist and then add text to create a storybook. Susan Stephenson from the excellent Book Chook blog has written a post about it, and I’d encourage you to go over and read her description.
Story Jumper is a new site that lets kids create their own story books. Online versions are free, and you can pay for hard copies. Registration is quick and easy. You can create your books from “scratch” or use one of several templates they have (one or two of them didn’t seem particularly intuitive to me, but most were fine, and the “scratch” version was certainly easy). The offer lots of easy “props” to integrate into the stories, and you can upload your own photos and type your own text. Once you’re finished, you can email the link to yourself and post it on a student/teacher blog or website.
At Bookemon, you can create an online book for free that can be shared and also have the option to purchase a printed version. What really makes it attractive to me, though, is that you can use any of its templates for a book and just upload a Word or PDF document that will automatically be inserted into the book. In other words, a student who is familiar with Word can write a “book” — including images he/she took or ones they grabbed off the Web (that are copyright-friendly, of course); upload it to Bookemon; and within minutes have an online presentation that looks very much like a virtual book. I really like applications that let students use something they are very familiar with and then convert it into something a lot neater. Students just with the knowledge of typing and copy and pasting can quickly create a piece of writing that looks a lot more attractive and can be shared.
Pandamian is a super-simple — and free — tool to create an ebook. Sign-up takes a few seconds, and you’re given your own url address for all your future books. Click on “create a new book” and you’re off! You can easily copy and paste images, and readers can leave moderated comments. They can also subscribe to an RSS feed if they want to be updated on newer chapters. You can make it embeddable by using the “customize” tab.
Simple Booklet, a very easy tool to create online “books” without registering, is now back online. It hadn’t been working the last few times I checked it and its creator — Middlespot — has closed its excellent excellent search engine.
Foboko is a new site where you can easily write and publish books online. It similar in most ways to a number of other sites that are on this list. The big place where it does differ, though, is that it actually takes you through a step-by-step planning process for your story/book. That could be particularly useful for some students.
My Storybook lets students easily create simple virtual books with text and images/characters you can insert with a click. You can also draw your own.
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/10/19/the-best-places-where-students-can-write-online/)
Tikatok is a new site that is a real find for English Language Learners (and lots of other students). Users can create online books that they write and illustrate (they can also use lots of images available on the site).
It has a number of features that really make it stand-out. You can make a book from scratch, or you can use one of their many story frames that contain “prompts” to help the story-writer along. In addition, you can invite others to collaborate online with you to develop the book.
Tar Heel Reader. It has two great features: 1) It has 1,000 simple books with audio support for the text immediately accessible to Beginning English Language Learners and 2) It makes it as simple as you can get for students to createtheir own “talking” books using images from Flickr.
Anybody can read the books on the site. However, in order to have your students create talking books using their “easy as pie” (and free) process, you need to register and have to have a code.
Storybird is a neat new site where users can choose artwork from a specific artist and then add text to create a storybook. Susan Stephenson from the excellent Book Chook blog has written a post about it, and I’d encourage you to go over and read her description.
Story Jumper is a new site that lets kids create their own story books. Online versions are free, and you can pay for hard copies. Registration is quick and easy. You can create your books from “scratch” or use one of several templates they have (one or two of them didn’t seem particularly intuitive to me, but most were fine, and the “scratch” version was certainly easy). The offer lots of easy “props” to integrate into the stories, and you can upload your own photos and type your own text. Once you’re finished, you can email the link to yourself and post it on a student/teacher blog or website.
At Bookemon, you can create an online book for free that can be shared and also have the option to purchase a printed version. What really makes it attractive to me, though, is that you can use any of its templates for a book and just upload a Word or PDF document that will automatically be inserted into the book. In other words, a student who is familiar with Word can write a “book” — including images he/she took or ones they grabbed off the Web (that are copyright-friendly, of course); upload it to Bookemon; and within minutes have an online presentation that looks very much like a virtual book. I really like applications that let students use something they are very familiar with and then convert it into something a lot neater. Students just with the knowledge of typing and copy and pasting can quickly create a piece of writing that looks a lot more attractive and can be shared.
Pandamian is a super-simple — and free — tool to create an ebook. Sign-up takes a few seconds, and you’re given your own url address for all your future books. Click on “create a new book” and you’re off! You can easily copy and paste images, and readers can leave moderated comments. They can also subscribe to an RSS feed if they want to be updated on newer chapters. You can make it embeddable by using the “customize” tab.
Simple Booklet, a very easy tool to create online “books” without registering, is now back online. It hadn’t been working the last few times I checked it and its creator — Middlespot — has closed its excellent excellent search engine.
Foboko is a new site where you can easily write and publish books online. It similar in most ways to a number of other sites that are on this list. The big place where it does differ, though, is that it actually takes you through a step-by-step planning process for your story/book. That could be particularly useful for some students.
My Storybook lets students easily create simple virtual books with text and images/characters you can insert with a click. You can also draw your own.