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Creating Media-Enriched Short Stories Using Book Creator

Grades 4-8, Language/English

Domenic Corrado

Description

Book Creator is an online digital book creation app available on both tablets and laptops. Using

it, students can create their own digital literature, such as novels, comics and picture books,

collections of poetry, and more. Students can publish their works online, download them as

eBooks, and share them with each other. It includes a number of features, useful for both

students and teachers, which promote the elements of 21st century literacy: creativity,

collaboration, critical thinking, and communication.

As an open platform for students to create a number of types of literature, Book Creator supports

creativity naturally. In addition, templates and suggestions can also support students by

providing a framework for their creative efforts, which particularly benefits students who

struggle with writing and motivation (Hughes, 2018). The app also fuels creativity through its

built-in drawing tool and the ability to include a variety of media forms from other apps,

including images, videos, music, and voice recordings, and maps.

Book Creator allows for collaboration as students can share their creations in a teacher-led class

library, providing access to others’ work. The paid version further includes a collaboration

feature, allowing for any number of students to work on a book simultaneously. This allows for

collaborative writing approaches, which have been shown to improve the quality of students’

writing (Graham and Perin, 2007).

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Critical thinking can be promoted by teachers utilizing the available means of sharing work and

the collaboration feature to have students engage in proofreading, editing, and providing

suggestions for each others’ work, including checking that “inclusive and non-discriminatory

language” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2006, p. 29) is used. Additionally, students exercise

critical thinking when designing the layout, formatting, and inclusion of media within their

books.

Communication is promoted by Book Creator as students communicate their ideas, concepts, and

approach to writing clearly, using both the written word and whatever forms of media they

include in their book. They share their books with each other through the class library, where

teachers maintain their role as facilitators and organizers of a community of learners and in turn

“help students develop communicative competence and to excite students about literacy”

(Tompkins, Bright, and Winsor, 2014, p. 59).

Big Ideas/Overall Expectations

Writing

1. Developing and Organizing Content: Generate, gather, and organize ideas and

information to write for an intended purpose and audience.

Media Literacy

3. Creating Media Texts: Create a variety of media texts for different purposes and

audiences, using appropriate forms, conventions, and techniques.

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Activity

Within the classroom, students access Book Creator either on tablets or laptop and create a book

containing a short story. They utilize the app’s features to include non-textual media elements

such as pictures, drawings, videos, etc., in order to assist their communication of ideas and create

media-enriched texts. To promote creativity, there is no strict framework for this activity, just

that the book contains required elements including a story, setting, and characters, as well as

being classroom-appropriate. Using the many formatting options and pre-set layouts available on

the app, students are able to organize their creative ideas, creating stories appropriate for their

intended audience—their classmates. Knowing that their work will be read by a real audience

motivates students further (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2015). This activity is part of a larger

literacy assignment, which would be preceded by a brainstorming activity and followed by

students editing their peers’ work in pairs. These two components, prewriting and collaborative

writing, respectively, are two noted elements of effective writing (Graham and Perin, 2007).

Along with the word processing activity described here, these elements together help both high-

and low-achieving writers as combined within the overall assignment (Graham and Perin, 2007).

Data

The following images are of pages from a sample book I had my younger sister, currently in

Grade 5, create as an example of student work, utilizing the app’s multimedia features. This

activity was inspired by the work I had seen her create for her own class using Book Creator. In

this case, she decided to use only the draw tool to include her own drawings in the book, but

various other types of media could have ben used as well. These images show how students can

create true media texts using Book Creator.

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Caveats

When considering online apps that require an electronic device such as this, a prominent

issue that may arise is students’ access to the platform and related issues concerning equitable

resources, especially if work is also to be done from home. This applies not only to individual

students and their families, but schools as well, which may not be able to afford the app fee.

Additionally, some students may not be as familiar with the technology used as others, which

may also apply to teachers, although there are several tutorials available. Lastly, students rely on

their schools for access to the app and the features only present in the paid version, like the

aforementioned collaboration feature. If internet access in unavailable for a student, there is the

option to use the tablet version of the app, which runs independently from the online version.

Another caveat is that students may be uncomfortable sharing their work with classmates or may

create different works based on whether they are shared with the teacher alone. Possible

remedies include having students share their work with a student they are most comfortable with

and giving them the option of not having their work shared publicly in the class library. One final

issue is that given the ease of including online media in and sharing their books, students may fill

their class libraries with inappropriate works, requiring teachers to be vigilant.

References

Graham, S., & Perin, D. (2007). Writing next: Effective strategies to improve writing of

adolescents in middle and high schools. Carnegie Corporation of New York Advancing

Literacy Program.

Hughes, R. (Ed.). (2018). A practical guide for teaching literacy in the digital era. Retrieved from

ctl7000.weebly.com/uploads/5/5/0/7/55075753/a_practical_guide__ji_142_2018_2.pdf
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Ontario Ministry of Education (2006).The Ontario curriculum, Language, Grades 1-8. Retrieved

from http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/elementary/language18currb.pdf

Ontario Ministry of Education (2015). Literacy for a connected world. Capacity Building Series,

Special Edition #41. Retrieved from

http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/literacynumeracy/inspire/research/CBS_LiteracyConnected.

pdf

Tompkins, G. E., Bright, R. M., & Winsor, P. J. T. (2014). Language arts: Content and teaching

strategies, 6th Canadian edition. Toronto, ON: Pearson.

Appendix

Book Creator. https://bookcreator.com/