Showing posts with label Free e-book app. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Free e-book app. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Simple, Personalized, Digital, Printed....All with Book Creator


Have you heard of "Book Creator?" If not, it is amazing! Creating stories has never been easier! Create personalized social stories for any student in 15 minutes or less! 

"Book Creator" is an iPad app that allows you to create custom digital/printable books with recordings of your voice, if you choose, for your students. 

Here's a sample of a book I created in about 10 minutes!! 


You can also create your books without voice recording too!

Let your students create their own personalized books and record their own voices too!! 

And you can print your books!!! Even if you don't have a wireless printer, you can save your books as a PDF and print them when you have access to a printer! Amazing right!? Here is the same digital book you watched in the video above in printed format. 









Here's just how easy it is!!
Open the book creator app. Choose a book shape! I always choose landscape to make the double sided book like above.

A tutorial automatically comes up to assist you if you still need assistance after you see how easy it is! 

Your chosen cover will display.

Click on the + sign and choose your task. Typically you'll be adding a photo or text. Choose camera to take a current photo for your book, and later you will choose "add sound" to add your voice recording if you choose. I generally choose photo to start. 
 Prior to creating my book, I go to google images and locate all of the images I need and save them to my iPad. That way I can insert them quickly as I add the text to each page. 


Give your book a title and author.

Now click the + again and add "text." Click on the "i" icon beside the + sign to change your font size, color, alignment, and more. Drag the text box to position and enlarge you text. 

Navigate to each page using the arrows and the + and i icons to the top right to add text and pictures to each page.




Once you are done with your book, now you can add your voice to each page, if you would like it to be read to your students. Just click on the + sign again, but this time choose, "add sound," tap the red button, record your voice, and tap the red button again to stop your recording. 
Your book will automatically be saved in Book Creator for your students to retrieve at any time from the app. Your students will tap the speaker on each page to have the text read to them, or choose to read it themselves. Because your students can edit the book within the Book Creator app, I highly recommend saving it elsewhere. I save mine in iBooks. 
To save in iBooks and do many other things with the book, choose the third icon up top. Here you can send your book to iBooks, pinterest, dropbox, email your book, print your book with a wireless printer, and much more!


If you don't have a wireless printer or need to save and print on a different printer location, you can do that too!!

Go to your book collection using the "my books" tab on the top left. Click on the third icon as you see above, but underneath your cover this time, and choose "export as PDF." Save it to where you can access it to print it. You can also click on "export as video" which is how I was able to insert the video of my birthday book in this post.

Here are a few more samples of some of my student favorites I've created on Book Creator. 





It seriously takes me around 10 minutes to do one book. After you make a couple, you'll whip right through it.  


The Book Creator App is $4.99, but well worth it as you can see! They do offer a free version, but I don't think it has very many features! You will get more than your money's worth with the paid app!! 

Have fun creating awesome books for your special learners! Personalize them any way you'd like to meet your students' needs! 


Sunday, March 30, 2014

Six Giveaways!!! Oh My!


Have you entered the fabulous giveaway over at "The Learning Chambers?" Stephanie is celebrating her new blog makeover and is giving away prizes from 20 great bloggers.....including me!!!!


I'm so excited to be a part of Stephanie's giveaway! And you can enter right here on my blog to win this bundle that features my "All About Ants" unit. 



This bundle also includes other awesome products from Owl be in Kindergarten, One Sassy Teacher, and Mrs. Richardson's Class. 


K-2 LA and Science Bundle 


But this is just one of the five amazing bundles you could win! So be sure to head over to Stephanie's blog to check out her new blog design and enter the other giveaways!


I'm also hosting a giveaway!
Enter here to win a free 3-month subscription to the book app, Farfaria!!

Click {here} to read my review of Farfaria!

Happy Sunday! Two more weeks 'til spring break!! 


 photo 262537ca-e39d-4585-9d7c-a9633c31f18e_zps73236c33.jpg

Thursday, March 27, 2014

FARFARIA Book App Review & Giveaway!


Are you looking for ways to engage your students in storytime? Do you use children's book apps for storytime?? Do you pay $$money$$ for every book you download? If you answered yes to any of these, then you definitely need to check out "Farfaria." 

Farfaria recently contacted me and asked me if I would be interested in doing a review of their app in exchange for a free subscription. Duh, a free subscription! Well, yeah!!!! We all know how much teachers love FREE stuff! Not to mention, it was perfect because I recently began doing daily storytime in my classroom using digital books on the ipad and was getting frustrated that everyone kept teasing us with a few free book downloads and then wanted money!!! Heck, we're teachers......we can't afford to pay for that! Just let our kids read!!! Right?!

I've been using Farfaria now in my classroom for daily storytime and I cannot tell a fib.....I LOVE it! I cannot think of one complaint. Let me just cut to the grind!

There are 11 genres you can choose from!

Here's a peak at "Genius Jungle"......one of the favorites in my classroom!
However, their most favorite and mine too....has been "Sing Along City."
I just love all the sing along books in this genre! I'll never have to search for songs again! They're all right here!

Once you choose your book, there are 3 options to choose from......Auto play which plays the audio book page by page automatically, read to me which lets children turn the pages, or read myself. You can read it now, or tap the blue button at the top of page and save to your favorites. As you can see, the Sharks book above is labeled in the lower right corner as a level 4 reader! I love that all the books are labeled by reading level.
I also love that you can search books by most popular, A-Z order, newest, or by reading level using the light blue tabs you see under the books. Again......super user-friendly!!!

Whats even more awesome is...........

*Farfaria has over 600 books in their library, with 5 new stories being added each week.
*It is very user-friendly
*There are 4 reading levels to choose from
*You can save books to Your Favorites for off-line reading
*You can pay nothing and still download & read one story a day for FREE

I've tried Reading Rainbow, MeeGenius, NOOK kids, and couple other book apps, but Farfaria is my new favorite and most likely the only book app program I will use again.....unless I need a book they don't offer! 

When compared to these other book apps; I like Reading Rainbow, but they want $10 a month to access their books,  MeeGenius charges $5 a month or $2.99 a book, and NOOK is not only complicated as heck to navigate; taking up valuable time....they also charge per book! I love that with Farfaria, I don't have to do a book search beforehand or before writing my lesson plans and load books onto my bookshelf! When it's storytime I simply open my ipad and the Farfaria app on my Smartboard, choose a student to come up and choose a book, and we are enjoying a good book within a couple seconds. 

I use the apple "Dongle" to display my ipad onto my Smartboard. I've also noticed a huge increase in student engagement during storytime since we began utilizing books on the ipad. 

Now you may be wondering.....how much is a subscription to Farfaria! Farfaria only charges $3.99 a month for unlimited access to their entire library and it is so well worth it!!! But lucky for you, they are generously GIVING AWAY a 3-MONTH FREE SUBSCRIPTION with unlimited access to TWO of you! Just enter the rafflecopter below!





You will love this app! Good Luck!!



 photo 262537ca-e39d-4585-9d7c-a9633c31f18e_zps73236c33.jpg

Monday, January 7, 2013

GIVEAWAY! TEACHER FREEBIE & MONDAY MADE IT


Do you have a classroom ipad? 

Did you know that MeeGenius.....the #1 app for children's ebooks offers a FREE SUBSCRIPTION to teachers with unlimited book downloads?? That's right.....free! Most of their books are $2.99, but teachers can get them all for free. Just go {here} and complete and submit the form. 

Today was the first day back from break for me.....and my official day to start my resolutions. One of my blog resolutions was to give back more to my fellow bloggers. Since I am new to blogging and new to designing/creating materials, and I don't have alot share this early in my blogging journey......
I thought up a way that I can give back and share something every week. 

As a newbie, I find myself spending countless hours figuring out how to do things on my blog..........
like how to design a button & generate a code,
how to resize an image,
how to make & insert a signature,
and so on.....you get the picture!

So I thought that once a week, I will share something that I have learned to help make life easier for other new bloggers or those looking for the same info. How-to's. 

I want to make a button for this weekly post that I will do & am looking for some help with the name. I just can't seem to come up with anything "catchy." So far I have come up with..........since my blog is "The Bender Bunch".......

Bender Bunch Blog Bug
Beginner Blog Bug
Blogging Tidbits
Blog Bits from Bender Bunch

Help! I don't like any of these.....and they're sounding more like blogs than a special ongoing post. If you have any ideas, pretty please send them my way! 

In fact, I am going to give away a $10 Starbucks or a $10 Target Gift Card......Winners CHOICE......to the person that provides me with the winning title....that is, the name that I choose to use! It wouldn't even have to be associated with my blog name, this is just where I started my brainstorming. Just looking for something cute & catchy!



Now for the first "Monday Made It" for 2013, I made a couple of things for my home, pinterest inspired, and a classroom Valentine Activity.



"B" for Bender. Had a blast looking through
all of the old photo albums. Now I can look
at family memories everyday!
This will actually go
on a high, cathedral ceiling wall. I just hung
it here to take the picture.

This is a simple curtain rod
and 2 x 4's.


 And last, a Valentine Estimation Activity.
 

Go {here} to download this activity! 

Now....For FUN....SECRET SNOWMAN!! One last thing to share that you can do at your school this week for fun!  I just love this kinda stuff! 


To welcome in the new year 2013 - we are having a secret snowman at our school for the month of January.  Those that CHOOSE to participate (it is of course, optional) had to sign up the last day before break....but you can still do this tomorrow at your school! Today we drew the name of who we will be a secret snowman for during the month of January. Here's how it works! 

Themes for Secret Snowman
1 gift/week with a maximum of $25 for the month!

Week 1 - stress reliever
Week 2 - Diet and Nutrition
Week 3 - Fitness
Week 4 - Friendship

Our Secret Snowmen will reveal themselves on Thursday, January 31st at a morning breakfast by providing their final friendship (week 4) gift to their snowman at the breakfast. Of course, you can choose to do this however it works best for your school and colleagues. I'm having a hard time coming up with a "Week 3 Fitness" gift though.

Any ideas for a fitness gift in this price range???


That's it for me. Hope you found something useful.....
And don't forget to send me your ideas on a name for my weekly  "how-to" post. The contributor of the name I choose wins a $10 gift card to their choice of either Starbucks or Target!

Can't wait to read everyone's ideas & suggestions! 

blogsignature_zps08ca13b0-1_zps25a9e892