March 17th We Knew Everything Would Be All Right: a coronavirus collaboration book project

Every year on 9/11 Mrs. Beth Laible, 2nd grade teacher at West Holt Elementary in Atkinson, Nebraska, reads to her students a was inspired by a story called “September 12th We Knew Everything Would Be All Right.” It was authored and illustrated by a first grade class from an elementary school in Missouri.

Inspired, she wrote "March 17th We Knew Everything Would Be All Right" for her second grade class during the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic and subsequent school closures. She read her version aloud to her students in one of her Facebook posts during their first week of remote learning. Then she asked her students to collaborate with her to help illustrate the pages. Her students created the illustrations for the story during their remote learning experiences at home and sent back with their weekly work to Mrs. Laible. 

Beth reached out to Katie Morrow from ESU 8 for help in printing copies of the book to give to her students as a keepsake from their 2nd grade year, cut short by the pandemic. 

In addition to printing on blurb.com, Katie created a digital version of their book. Using Keynote and iBooks Author, she enhanced the pages with digital animations to bring the story to life. Mrs. Laible recorded the audio narration in Voice Memos on her iPhone and sent to Katie to add to the pages. The digital version of the book is now published on Apple Books. 

Now, anyone with an iPhone, iPad or Mac and an Apple ID can download for free and read this beautiful story for themselves!

http://books.apple.com/us/book/id1507696114

*Note: The book is best viewed in Apple Books on iPad in portrait orientation. Tap the first page thumbnail and then swipe to each subsequent page for the media to auto-play. Enjoy this story and important message!

If not able to view on an Apple device, you can watch a screen recording of the book on my iPhone here:

Pioneer ABCs: Book creation by 1st graders

To bring to life first grade Social Studies learning, this class created an alphabet book based on the "Little House on the Prairie" series and Westward expansion topics. 

First, Mrs. Willis and her students brainstormed topic options for each of the letters of the alphabet, then assigned to her class. 

Next students researched and wrote their "stories," drawing an accompanying picture on paper.

I shared an ABC book template page via Apple Classroom and worked with the students to publish their work in Pages. Many examples of combining pencil and paper artwork with digital artwork were experimented with. 

Students rotated through some "finishing stations" where they recorded audio with Mrs. Willis or were photographed in a pioneer costume.

 

Finally the pages were submitted to me via Apple Classroom so that I could assemble them in a class alphabet book. 

Now published on the Apple Books Store, you can enjoy it here:

‎Pioneer ABCs on Apple Books 

For members of our audience without access to Apple Books, we shared the following additional versions:

Pioneer ABCs 

Third Grade Authors publish book about their community's history

The ABCs of Our Community, O'Neill on Apple Books Store

O'Neill Elementary's 3rd Grade Reading class, under the direction of Mrs. Julie Pistulka along with help from Katie Morrow, ESU 8, recently published their latest version of an annual community history research project. This year, the creative student authors compiled and shared their information in the form of an alphabet book.

Using a Pages template, each "letter" consists of 3 pages:
1) a stanza of poetry and photo gallery on the topic
2) written report from student research
3) student-created artwork

template created in Pages and distributed to student iPads via Apple Classroom

Students added audio narration for all the text with the newest feature of Pages books - Audio Recordings.

Learn more about the community of O'Neill, Nebraska as well as student creation of digital books with Pages on iPad by downloading the book from the Apple Books Store.

"The Important Thing" about Augmented Reality

The important thing about augmented reality is that it is a great way to merge digital and analog student-created content. It is true that with the free app Blippar, it is simple enough for third graders to use. It offers great options for a student publishing project, and will likely response many positive reactions from your entire learning community. But the important thing about augmented reality is that it is a great way to merge digital and analog student-created content.

Many may recognize this text pattern from Margaret Wise Brown's The Important Book. Recently this text was used as the basis for a third grade project in Mrs. Pistulka's reading class while learning about their local community history.

Katie Morrow from ESU 8 worked with the class to assemble the pages students wrote and the illustrations they created into a book modeled after “The Important Book” by Margaret Wise Brown. Then we made the pages “come alive” through augmented reality. Basically, if you download the free Blippar app on your smart phone, and enter our localized "code", then you can scan the pages of the book and videos will “pop up” where the students teach you even more!

Here are the steps completed in the process:

1. Mrs. Pistulka encourages her reading class to learn about community history in creative ways. First students learned about O'Neill's past by interviewing a local historian and viewing past projects.
2. Second, students selected a key person who has had an impact on our community of O’Neill. Each 3rd grader researched their "Important Person” and took notes. 
3. They then wrote their narratives for the pages of the book, modeled after Margaret Wise Brown’s The Important Book.
4. Next, students decided on an additional fact or interesting tidbit to share out loud in their video.
5. Mrs. Morrow helped us film in front of a greenscreen that we borrowed from the Eagle Eye News crew.
6. Each student created an illustration to go with our page and hand-wrote our “Important Book" text onto a template page. 
7. Mrs. Morrow took photos of all our pages and uploaded them to BlippBuilder hub to make them come alive with Augmented Reality (AR).
8. Finally, Mrs. Pistulka sent our book off to be printed so we could share our creation with others!

And here is the end result:

on iBooks (free for anyone with a Mac or iPad to download and try out)

The Important Book of O’Neill, Nebraska

and physical books printed through Blurb.com (approximately $6 for each economy color, soft-bound  trade book).

St. Patrick's Day Writing from First Grade iPad Authors

Are you as excited for St. Patrick’s Day as the creative First Grade Authors in Mrs. Willis’s class are?

Students personalized the leprechaun character in their stories with Toontastic 3D

Follow one leprechaun’s adventures in O’Neill as he searches for the pot of gold on St. Patrick’s Day.  

Skills addressed:

• Creative writing
• Oral reading fluency
• Story elements  (setting, characters, beginning, middle, and end)
• Local community history and traditions (O’Neill St. Patrick’s Day Celebration)
• iPad skills 

iPad apps utilized:

• Toontastic 3D (free)
• Book Creator (Lite version is free)

Our process included brainstorming ideas and writing the stories on paper with Mrs. Willis. When Mrs. Morrow worked with us on the iPads we created the setting and characters for our stories and recorded the animations with the Toontastic 3D app. Then each student created their own Book Creator project and designed their pages by adding the typed text of their story, their Toontastic animation, additional illustrations, and of course, their signature. Each student’s individual Book Creator pages were Airdropped to Mrs. Morrow’s iPad to be combined into one class book. Students brainstormed the facts for the ‘Did You Know?’ pages in between each of the leprechaun’s adventures. Finally, we filmed the conclusion for the book all together and added it to the last page of our Book Creator project. 

So, how can you experience this creative story? 

Luckily, you have three options. 

1. If you have an iPad or a Mac, download the free iBooks app. 

Use your Apple ID to download a free copy of the book and then read in iBooks. 

*This is the most fully functional version of the product. You can swipe to turn the pages and click on the videos to play within the story. 

View in iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1216353000 

2.  If you do not have an iPad, but have another type of digital device, you can “read” the whole story as a video on YouTube. 

The video of the whole book is over 18 minutes long, but you can easily skip around to find your favorite parts.  

*TIP: Be sure to watch the ending of the story, no matter what! It starts around 17:44

3.  A final option would be to stop in the 1st Grade classroom and read the book there. We will have a printed version on paper (minus the student voices and videos) as well as being able to view on the school iPads. 

Happy St. Patrick’s Day from some amazingly creative iPad authors!

West Holt English class publishes book in iBooks Store

Students from Mrs. Dohrman's sophomore English classes are published authors!

The West Holt High School English 10 classes recently achieved status as published authors in the iBooks Store.  Following a study of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the students partnered up to create chapters in a companion guide to the novel.  Tackling tough issues from the time period and themes from the story gave them the perfect backdrop for their Multi-Touch book. 

Each pair of students authored their chapters in iBooks Author on their Macs.  Using built-in widgets from iBooks Author, sound recordings from GarageBand, copyright-friendly images for photo galleries, and additional widgets from bookry.com, they made their writing come to life on the digital pages. Mrs. Dohrman along with Mrs. Morrow from ESU 8 compiled the student chapters into two book projects - one for each period of sophomores. 

Creating a Link with To Kill a Mockingbird

The first of the two books just recently passed the approval process and was released live in Apple's iTunes digital bookstore. Anyone with the free iBooks app can download this student project and view the interactive pages on their Mac, iPad, or iPhone. And look for the second edition by West Holt students to be released very soon. 

Digital Citizenship resources from Common Sense Education... Teachers, get them NOW!

Common Sense Education, longtime advocate for digital citizenship practices in schools, has just announced that their very popular iBooks textbooks will begin to cost money.

While this is disappointing news, it is encouraging that teachers have one whole month to still download any of the Digital Citizenship series for free. Better yet, all textbooks have just been updated! So if you have ever downloaded them in the past, be sure to update them sometime before October 1, 2016.

Below are the direct links to the four interactive student workbooks for iBooks along with the accompanying teacher's editions.

Grades K-2 Curriculum (Teachers Edition): Digital Citizenship Curriculum 2016

Grades K-2 Student Workbook: Digital Citizenship 2016

Grades 3-5 Curriculum (Teachers Edition): Digital Citizenship Curriculum Common Sense Education

Grades 3-5 Student Workbook: Digital Citizenship Common Sense Education

Grades 6-8 Curriculum (Teachers Edition): Digital Citizenship Curriculum Common Sense Education

Grades 6-8 Student Workbook: Digital Citizenship Common Sense Education

Grades 9-12 Curriculum (Teachers Edition): Digital Citizenship Curriculum 2016

Grades 9-12 Student Workbook: Digital Citizenship 2016

A final reminder to also consider last minute registration to send a team to the Nebraska Digital Citizenship Symposium, being held at various locations across the state on September 27, 2016. Read more about the details at this site: 

http://nebraskadcs.wikispaces.com/Registration

As always, don't hesitate to reach out to the Technology Integrationists at ESU 8 to answer any of your digital citizenship questions or needs. 

#bethekey

Creating Classroom Content with iBooks Author

The following resources are from a workshop with teachers on creating classroom content for iBooks with iBooks Author.  Explore the resources and don't hesitate to inquire more about these exciting possibilities for your classroom.

Digital handout for Creating Classroom Content with iBooks Author

Also, specific projects are pointed out on this blog post:
http://teach42morrow.blogspot.com/2015/09/ibooks-authoring-in-schools.html