Students Authoring Books with Pages

How has the book feature in Pages helped your students improve literacy skills? @katiemorrow #PagesBookChallenge #InternationalLiteracyDay #AppleEDUchat pic.twitter.com/HGIStk04qq

— Apple Education (@AppleEDU) September 2, 2018

Every year on September 8, International Literacy Day is celebrated. In conjunction with this year's celebration, AppleEDU has launched a #PagesBookChallenge. The challenge is simple. Create a digital book with your students in Apple's Pages app (free creation app for Mac or iPad). Then, simply tweet a short synopsis of the book along with its cover and tag #PagesBookChallenge.

Turn your students into authors using the new book feature in Pages! Tweet a description of the plot, include a visual of the cover, and tag #PagesBookChallenge. #NationalReadABookDay #InternationalLiteracyDay pic.twitter.com/wkJBTfJ3rz

— Apple Education (@AppleEDU) September 3, 2018

To encourage all educators to participate here a series of short tips and recommendations for creating digital books with Pages.

1. Begin a new Pages project using the Books templates.

Tip: Use Portrait templates for primarily text-based books (so that the reader can resize the text and the pages will adjust accordingly) and Landscape for fixed layout books (where you control the exact design and layout of the pages and the reader cannot adjust).

2. Author and Edit as you normally would in the Pages app. 

The beauty of the iWork suite, in my opinion, is its simplicity and consistency across apps. Unleash your creativity!

3. Add narration with authentic audio

On Mac: Create a Quicktime Audio Recording and drag icon next to filename onto your Pages document.
On iPad: Tap the +, choose the Media tab, and Record Audio, then add to page.

4. Export as ePub for Publishing and Sharing.

Title your book and name the author. Set your options for book cover: (None, from first page, or upload your own).

There you have it! Anyone can create a book with Pages. 

 Student books authored in Pages by Mrs. Troester's English 8 class, Spring 2018. (Science "Explainer" books for younger learners)

As educators the possibilities are endless when authoring books with Pages. To help learners experience authentic authoring, encourage them to work through all stages of the writing process. Here is a 60 second reminder of how to do so within the Apple ecosystem.

Finally, teachers can use Pages templates to help students focus more on the content of their books, and less on the the design of the pages. Whether for professional learning experiences, class books where every student authors a piece, or even shorter individual writing projects, simply create a Pages book as a starting template. Share the Pages document as a starting point and allow the learners to customize the content. Be sure to take advantage of the following features:

Media placeholders

Add image gallery placeholders from the Media button. This is a preset placeholder for the author to add an entire gallery of images.

Add text boxes and utilize Paragraph Styles

Text boxes are automatically ready as placeholders. Simply change the paragraph style and/or formatting.

Build your own photo/video placeholder

Add an image (or screenshot). Select the image and choose:
On Mac: Format > Advanced > Define as Media Placeholder

Add pages as desired and distribute to all your budding authors.  

I cannot WAIT to see what creative ideas you and your students have when creating books in Pages!

Six Shot Stories

Every once in awhile you find that tech integration idea that withstands the test of time. Even as the tech tools evolve and change, the learning still holds its value. "Six Shot Stories" is one of those practices for me. As an English teacher, the value of writing Six Word Memoirs created numerous educational benefits with my students. Theme, concise word choice, summarization are all skills emphasized with this simple activity. Pairing the concept with media was brilliant, and Don Goble's One Best Thing book: "Six-Word Story, Six Unique Shots" remains an invaluable resource for delivering the lesson to students.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/six-word-story-six-unique-shots-enhancing-writing-through/id846218165?mt=11  

Recently I worked with the 4th grade classes at West Holt Elementary to share their school's stories through this technique. And Apple's Clips app on iPad was the perfect medium to create some powerful digital stories in a short timeframe.

I began the lesson by viewing Apple's latest commercial for iPad "Homework" and asking students to count the number of cuts, in order to establish the importance of storytelling through a wide variety of camera angles and shots.

Then students paired up to author a Six-Word Story about their school, their classroom, or their daily activities as 4th graders at West Holt Elementary. It is amazing to see such powerful stories created in just six words by students!

I used Don Goble's book on iBooks to demonstrate different shots that were possible, and reminded students of some simple best practices when capturing with iPad. Instructions were emphasized that each shot should be between 3 and 5 seconds and no technique should be repeated (each shot is unique). Students used a storyboard to plan their six shots and then used the camera app to capture each on their iPad.

Finally, with only literally a few minutes of instruction on the Clips app, students assembled and edited their story. Some added all six words of text at the very end, some used one word per shot, and others split up the text in varying ways. Many were able to experiment with the other creative features of Clips as well, even within the one-class time period we had together. Each team of students exported their product to camera roll, then Airdropped to their teacher's Mac in order to upload on a YouTube channel and organize in a playlist.

What I appreciate most about this project as an ELA teacher, is the tremendous focus on concise, clear communication it entails. As a technology teacher I value the creativity and composition techniques that allow student media production to instantly be raised to the next level.

Enjoy some of West Holt Elementary's Six Shot Stories!

Critical Literacy: Text Dependent Reading & Writing for All

Critical Literacy: Text Dependent Reading and Writing for All from Katie Morrow

Also, the accompanying Canvas course is public as well: http://bit.ly/CritLit