Creating Young Authors

How do you get kids interested in writing?  You might consider having your students create an ebook or ibook and sharing best examples with the school, parents, or community to encourage reading.  Today anyone with a computer or device that connects with the Internet can create an ebook, which is great news for students.  Students can build their own reference works and become young authors to publish and share stories with the world. 

1. It is very simple to create an ePub book in Pages on your Mac.   ePub documents can be shared with your iPod, iPad, or iPhone.  http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4168  Teachers doing this many times will share files on their blog or school web page with parents to encourage reading.
2. iBooks Author is a free app that allow students or you to create Multi-Touch books for your iPad.   I know many of you that worked STEAM camp last year have a teacher iPad and students have access to iPads at the intermediate.  I encourage you to play with this app because it is really fun and students can really get creative.  http://www.apple.com/ibooks-author/  
3. Storybird is a great way to have a collaborative, groups of 2, work together to create a story.  Students choose from a collection of art to be inspired to write stories.    After students select art, students are able to build their story by dragging and dropping pictures and creating a story to match the artwork chosen.  Some teachers even partner with another teacher’s classroom from another country. 
4. 4.       Presentation software can be used to create ebooks.  You can create an ebook in Keynote on a Mac or PowerPoint on a PC.
5. Simple Booklet lets student authors combine text, images, videos, and audio files.  There is a commercial and education version.  The education option offers the benefits of commercial features without cost to teachers.  Students can share their eBook by embedding it into a webpage or providing the unique link generated for your booklet.  http://simplebooklet.com/index-sb.php#
6.  Scribble Press:  http://www.scribblepress.com/
7. Scribblitt:  http://www.scribblitt.com/