PBS LearningMedia Introduces New Curriculum-based iBooks

PBS LearningMedia has released a new series of iBooks for K-8 teachers. The series promises to provide teachers with iBooks on topics in math, English language arts, social studies, and Spanish language and culture. Each iBook will include lesson plans, videos, games, and other activities aligned to NCSS, ACTFL, and Common Core standards.

Two iBooks are available now and two more will be released by the end of this month. The two that are available now are All About the Holidays and Beginning Spanish.

All About the Holidays offers lesson plans for 61 holidays. Beginning Spanish is a mapped curriculum for teaching Spanish to students in third through fifth grade.

Reaching Across Global Borders to Create with Technology!

This week I am hosting some guest bloggers. This is a guest post from Heidi Samuelson.

One of my goals this year was to integrate more technology into my second grade curriculum and reach beyond the walls of my classroom. I believe students need to learn how to engage and interact with technology, not just “play a game” on the computer. I want my students to become “global learners”.

One way we were able to accomplish this goal was to create eBooks to share with our families and other classes around the world. Using the BookCreator App, we combined art projects with research and writing about Laurel Burch to create an informational ebook. BookCreator is a wonderful app that makes creating professional looking eBooks simple and fun. Students took pictures of their art projects to upload into the BookCreator app. They were able to type and add color to the pages within the app to create engaging pages to share their learning. You can download a copy of our story in the iBook Store. BookCreator provides a free version of the app so you can try it out BEFORE you buy it which is always a bonus in my eyes!

Another project we participated in involved Collaborative Writing with Global Connections. We paired with Mrs. Ladd’s class (located in North Carolina) to collaborate and create a fractured fairy tale story using technology to connect the two classes! After each class spent some time studying the elements of fairy tale stories, students logged into Google Docs on their devices and began typing a story together to create a fractured fairy tale. With so many students typing at the same time, we quickly decided to add another element of collaboration into the mix and introduced the group to Voxer. Students were so excited to be “talking in real time” with their writing partners using Voxer. This app helped the group decide on characters, settings, and plot elements. As they took turns typing out their story, they were able to see what each student was writing and ask questions to help guide them in their story creation.

As Mrs. Ladd’s class dove into their testing schedule, I had the “authors” from my room, choose classmates to help them color backgrounds and make pictures to illustrate the story from the collaborative writing sessions. Using our TurboScan app, we were able to upload images of the art into BookCreator and design another ebook to share with our collaborative friends in North Carolina, families, and classes around the world. You can download one of our stories from the iTunes store today! Cinderella and the Big Bad Wolf, Little Red, and Goldilocks and the Three Pigs Plus the Big Bad Wolf.

Join Mrs. Ladd (@BevLadd) to see what collaborative projects you can help create on #2ndChat Twitter Chat for second grade teachers. Using Twitter as part of my PLN has helped me to achieve my goal of integrating more technology into my curriculum this year. I can’t wait to try some more projects in the future!

My name is Heidi Samuelson and it is a great pleasure to be guest blogging on Free Technology for Teachers today! I’m a second grade teacher in Tennessee who LOVES to integrate technology into my classroom and Richard’s blog has introduced me to TONS of resources!! You can read about some of my activities and techie ventures on my teaching blog: Mrs. Samuelson’s Swamp Frogs. Thanks for reading along with me today! I hope you’ll “hop” over to the Swamp and check out some more ways we use technology in the room! I also share activities on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram!

Five Tools for Creating Multimedia Textbooks - A Comparison Chart

Anyone who has gone through the laborious process of trying to select a textbook knows that the perfect textbook doesn't exist. That said, thanks to some fantastic software and online tools we can now come closer to creating textbooks that are ideal for our students. Including video and or audio in a textbook can go a long way toward helping students recall information. I still wish that the Algebra II textbook I had in high school had video tutorials in it. The five tools featured in the chart embedded below provide good options for creating multimedia textbooks. A Google Docs version of the chart is available here.


This is the seventh comparison chart in the series of PDFs that I have been creating in the hopes that they provide people with a quick way to select the best tools for them. This little project started because I am often asked to recommend "the best tool for X." Unfortunately, it is difficult to definitively state that one tool is the best because there are so many variables to account for in making that judgement. The age of your students, the technology that you have access to, your instructional goals are all factors that can influence what the best tool is for you. What's best in my situation and what's best in yours can be quite different. Hopefully, these charts will help you select the best tools for you and your students. The other charts are linked below.

Seven Alternatives to Google Image Search - Comparison Chart
11 Free Mind Mapping Tools Compared In One Chart
5 Timeline Creation Tools Compared - Chart
Nine Popular Student Response Tools Compared In One Chart
5 Web-based Audio Recording and Editing Tools Compared - Chart
5 Tools for Creating Multimedia Quizzes - A Comparison Chart

Expedition Insects - A New Interactive Book from the Smithsonian

Expedition Insects is a neat interactive book from the Smithsonian Science Education Center. The new book was written to helps students in third through fifth grade learn about insects from all over the world. The book is full of pictures and videos to complement the text. Throughout the book students can click or tap on underlined words to quickly access their definitions.

Expedition Insects was created for the iBooks platform. It is interactive if you read it on a Mac or on an iPad. A non-interactive version of the book is available to read too.

Applications for Education
By reading and watching the content in Expedition Insects elementary school students can learn about how the insects survive in their respective environments. Students can also learn about the role that insects play in ecosystems.

Free iBook - 16 Online Resources & Ideas for Teaching Geography

Online Resources for Teaching IB DP Geography is a free iBook published by Richard Allaway. The free iBook contains sixteen chapters addressing sixteen topics in the geography theme of "patterns and change." Within each chapter you will find a featured online resource and suggestions for using it to teach the topic of the chapter. For example, in chapter three Movement Responses - Migration you will learn about Peoplemov.in and glean some ideas for how you can use it to teach students about the causes of migration.

Applications for Education
Geography teachers who are looking for some new tools, particularly tools around data analysis, would do well to download Online Resources for Teaching IB DP Geography. As with most professional development books the value of Online Resources for Teaching IB DP Geography lies more in the ideas shared than in the tools themselves.

Helpful iBooks Author Tutorials

This afternoon I received an email from someone who had a question about iBooks Author. iBooks Author is an excellent tool for creating multimedia ebooks, but there are some elements of using it that can be confusing and or frustrating the first time you use it or if you don't use it often. Here are a couple of resources that I've consulted when I've gotten stuck on problems in iBooks Author.

Publishing with iBooks Author is a free 110 page publication from O'Reilly Media. I  just discovered the guide a couple of days ago and I wish I had found it earlier because it would have saved me a lot of time in learning how to use iBooks Author. Publishing with iBooks Author covers everything from copyright, DRM, and the End User Agreement to templates, layouts, media insertion, publishing, and distribution. You will have to register for an O'Reilly Media account to download the book (that does take a few minutes and requires email verification) but I think that's a small price to pay for an excellent free ebook. Publishing with iBooks Author is available to download as an ePub file and as a PDF.

Kinetic Media has a nearly one hour video that takes you through every aspect of creating an iBook with iBooks Author. The video covers everything from choosing a template to using custom HTML5 widgets in your iBooks. That video is embedded below.


If sitting through a one hour video like the Kinetic Media iBooks Author video is a bit too much for you, take a look at this playlist of 25 iBooks Author tutorials from DIY Journo. The videos cover the same things as in the Kinetic Media tutorial, but each tutorial is its own short video.

Extreme Environments - A Geography iBook

Extreme Environments is a free iBook that I found earlier this week on the Digital Geography blog. The book has four chapters about challenging environments, the characteristics of extreme environments, the opportunities and challenges of extreme environments, and the potential impact of climate change on extreme environments. Within each chapter students can take notes and create flashcards. Each chapter has clearly outlined objectives. Throughout the book there are interactive graphics and quizzes in which students can test their understanding the topics covered in the book.

Applications for Education
Extreme Environments could be a great resource for students studying glaciers, deserts, and the unique physical geographic characteristics that they contain.

26 iBooks Author How-to Videos

iBooks Author is a great tool for creating interactive ebooks. Unfortunately, creating content with iBooks Author isn't always as easy as you might hope it is. Back in June I shared a free 110 page book about using iBooks Author. However, if video tutorials are more helpful to you I have found twenty six videos that you should look at.

Kinetic Media has a nearly one hour video that takes you through every aspect of creating an iBook with iBooks Author. The video covers everything from choosing a template to using custom HTML5 widgets in your iBooks. That video is embedded below.


If sitting through a one hour video like the Kinetic Media iBooks Author video is a bit too much for you, take a look at this playlist of 25 iBooks Author tutorials from DIY Journo. The videos cover the same things as in the Kinetic Media tutorial, but each tutorial is its own short video.

110 Page Guide to Publishing With iBooks Author

Apple's iBooks Author is an excellent tool for creating multimedia ebooks, but there are some elements of using it that can be confusing and or frustrating. While you can figure it all out on your own as you go, that's how I've been going about it, you can save yourself a bunch of time by reading a good guide ahead of time. I wish I had done that.

Publishing with iBooks Author is a free 110 page publication from O'Reilly Media. I  just discovered the guide a couple of days ago and I wish I had found it earlier because it would have saved me a lot of time in learning how to use iBooks Author. Publishing with iBooks Author covers everything from copyright, DRM, and the End User Agreement to templates, layouts, media insertion, publishing, and distribution. You will have to register for an O'Reilly Media account to download the book (that does take a few minutes and requires email verification) but I think that's a small price to pay for an excellent free ebook. Publishing with iBooks Author is available to download as an ePub file and as a PDF.

From Ideas to iBooks - Great Advice

One of the most popular posts earlier this month was about the free iBook Hot Apps 4 HOTS published by Lisa Johnson and Yolanda Barker. I was just looking at Lisa's blog and discovered that she has outlined the steps taken to get Hot Apps 4 HOTS from an idea to an iBook. The blog post includes Johnson and Barker's Blog Talk Radio episode in which they discuss the process.

Applications for Education
If you're thinking about publishing your own iBooks or having your students publish iBooks, Hot Apps 4 HOTS: From Inception to ISBN could be very instructive for you.

Hot Apps for Higher Order Thinking

Hot Apps 4 HOTS (link opens to iTunes) is a free ebook about iOS apps that can be used to help students practice and develop higher order thinking skills. The book takes readers through a series of apps that are aligned to the various parts of Bloom's Revised Taxonomy. Examples and suggestions for app use are included in the book. As Hot Apps 4 HOTS is an ibook, it can only be viewed on an iOS device.

Applications for Education
If your school is one that is rolling-out iPads for student use, check out Hot Apps 4 HOTS to find some good apps and ideas that you can bring into your classroom.

Visit my other blog, iPad Apps 4 School for more reviews of iPad apps.

Initial Impressions of Apple's New Education Initiatives

You might have heard that today Apple had a big event to launch their new K-12 marketing educational products initiatives. For the sake of full disclosure I will tell you now, that I have not had hands-on experience with Apple's new offerings yet. I hope to have time for that in the next few days. These are my initial impressions based on reading the promotional materials, reading some other blogs, and some short exchanges on Twitter. Remember, these are my initial impressions and I reserve the right to change my mind.

About iBooks Author
iBooks Author is Apple's new free (although it only works on Mac OS X) is the one thing that I'm somewhat excited about using. iBooks Author will allow users to create their own multimedia digital textbooks. The templates that I've seen remind me quite a bit of Apple's Pages program. For the record, I think Pages is fantastic. The limitation of iBooks Author is that you can only publish to and access the finished product through the iBooks app. Audrey Watters has written a nice hands-on with iBooks Author piece that I recommend reading.

If your school is exclusively using Apple hardware and software iBooks Author could be a good authoring tool for you. Of course, you could accomplish the same purpose of having students create multimedia reference materials by using services like Wikispaces and Simple Booklet.

About the new iTunes U
The new iTunes U certainly has the potential to be a good way to distribute course materials to students. I always celebrate when schools, whether K-12 or higher ed, publish their course materials to the public. One of the great things about the modern web is wealth of free information available to almost anyone that can access the Internet.

Summary
Once again Apple has created some highly aesthetically-pleasing products, they always do. The technology tools that get me excited are tools that students can use to remix and or create new things. The iBooks Author tool offers that to Mac users.

Other than iBooks Author, my initial impression of the new education offerings from Apple is pretty blah. The iBooks textbooks look very nice and have some interactive elements. But, I can't help but wonder why Apple choose to make the, "iBooks will make kids' backpacks lighter" as their second marketing point. It seems to me that if iBook textbooks are going to "revolutionize" education that something other than "lighter backpacks" would be Apple's second marketing point for iBooks.