Expedition Insects - An Interactive Book from the Smithsonian

Expedition Insects is a neat interactive book from the Smithsonian Science Education Center. The 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 Apple Books (formerly known as 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 as a PDF.

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.

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.

Aesop's Fables on the Web, iPad, and Android

One of the neat resources that I just plucked from Open Culture's new collection of K-12 resources is the Aesop's Fables interactive book from the Library of Congress. The book is available to read on the Web, on an iPad, and on an Android device. The book contains more than 140 of Aesop's Fables for children. The level of interactivity varies widely depending upon which story you're reading. Some of the stories have truly interactive animations while other simply have a small moving picture accompanying the fable.

Applications for Education
Installing the iPad app or Android app could be great ways to put these classic tales on your students' mobile devices. The iPad app installs quickly just like any other iPad app does. The Android app does not install from the Google Play store. Instead of downloading it from Google Play you have to install it directly from the Library of Congress website.

Moglue - A Platform for Building Interactive eBooks

Moglue is a platform for creating interactive ebooks that can be viewed on iPads and soon will be available for viewing on Android tablets too. Moglue's creation tools can be used on Windows and Apple computers. I initially reviewed Moglue back in October. Since then it has made a few changes. Moglue is free to use and it is free to download your creations to view on your own device. If you want to publish your ebooks for others to access through the Moglue store or the Apple store, you do have to pay for those options. The video below offers a short overview of Moglue.



Applications for Education
The obvious question when looking at Moglue is, "how is this different from Apple's new iBooks Author?" The answer is, you can use Moglue on Windows computers. So if your school has Windows computers and you were feeling left out when Apple announced iBooks Author, Moglue has a tool that you can use to create your own interactive ebooks too.

Moglue - Create Interactive eBooks for iOS and Android Devices

Moglue is a new program, available for Mac and Windows, that enables you to create interactive ebooks and publish them to Android and iOS devices. Your ebooks created with Moglue can include videos, images, and audio files that you import from your computer. Moglue supports a wide variety of file formats for image and video content. When you have completed constructing your ebook you can publish it to the Moglue bookstore where it can be downloaded onto your Android or iOS device.

The following video, despite annoying background music, offers a good overview of what you can do with Moglue.


This video provides an overview of the Moglue bookstore.


Applications for Education
Moglue is still in a beta development phase and right now all aspects of it are free. That could change in the future. Moglue has the potential to be a great way for students to build interactive stories. Educators could use Moglue to develop interactive etextbooks to match the content they teach.

Go Social Studies Go - Multimedia Social Studies Books

Go Social Studies Go is a nice site developed by Kenneth Udhe, a social studies teacher in Michigan, for his students and the world. Go Social Studies Go is essentially a series of multimedia books about common social studies topics. The site is divided into four main sections; World Geography, World Religions, Ancient History, and Colonial America. Within each section is a series of booklets containing text, pictures, videos, and links to additional resources.

Inside the Jamestown multimedia booklet

Applications for Education
Go Social Studies Go could be an excellent resource for middle school social studies teachers. For the topics covered, the multimedia booklets provide as much content area information as you'll see in a typical textbook. For high school students, the multimedia booklets could be a good primer or refresher on many topics.