Get ready to take your digital books to the next level! We recently teamed up with our friends at ScreenPal to explore how these two powerful tools can work together to create truly dynamic and interactive learning experiences.
A match made in edtech heaven
While Book Creator offers a built-in webcam tool, the integration with ScreenPal unlocks a world of enhanced video capabilities. Whether you're using the free or paid version of ScreenPal, you can seamlessly embed rich video content, adding a powerful layer to student projects and teacher-created resources. This "app smash" is especially exciting because both platforms prioritize accessibility and student voice, making them a dream team for diverse learners.
Interactive video journals: bring learning to life
Imagine students recording their scientific observations, practicing reading fluency, or reflecting on their learning journey directly within their digital books. With ScreenPal, this is easy! Students can use the ScreenPal Chrome extension for quick, unlimited recordings (up to 15 minutes for free) that embed effortlessly into Book Creator pages. This is perfect for:
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Science Experiment Explanations: Students can record daily updates, detailing their tests, changes, and data collection. They can even capture snippets of their experiments in action!
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Reading Fluency Practice: Students can record themselves reading, allowing teachers to provide targeted feedback.
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Mindful Moments: Encourage students to record reflections on how an event or topic made them feel, fostering deeper emotional understanding.
Pro Tip: Want to add a fun touch? The ScreenPal Chrome extension includes cool effects like confetti, hearts, and fireworks that students can trigger during their recordings with a simple keyboard shortcut.
Green screen magic: transform any space into a learning environment
One of the most exciting features of the ScreenPal desktop app is its green screen capability. This means students can record themselves in front of any virtual background – no actual green screen needed! This is a game-changer for:
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Privacy: Students who may not want to show their home environment can blur their background or choose a virtual one.
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Engagement: Imagine a student giving a presentation on Istanbul with the Blue Mosque as their backdrop, or leading a virtual field trip through different countries using diverse backgrounds.
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Creativity: Students can let their imaginations run wild, creating immersive and visually captivating video content.
Even if students start recording with the Chrome extension, they can easily send their video to the desktop app for advanced editing, including adding those awesome backgrounds!
Coaching and feedback: Personalized support at your fingertips
For teachers and instructional coaches, ScreenPal offers incredible opportunities to provide personalized video feedback and create engaging tutorial content.
- Personalized Student Feedback: Forget endless red ink! Teachers can use the ScreenPal Chrome extension right within Book Creator's feedback feature. Simply record a quick video, highlighting specific areas of a student's work while talking them through your comments. This humanizes feedback and fosters stronger student-teacher relationships. Parents will love seeing this personal touch too!
- Effective Tutorial Videos: ScreenPal's editing tools, especially the zoom-in and zoom-out feature, make creating clear and concise instructional videos a breeze. Easily guide viewers' attention to specific parts of a screen—perfect for demonstrating new tools or concepts. Plus, you can re-record audio narration without re-recording the entire video, saving valuable time.
Flipping the classroom and formative assessments
Ready to flip your classroom? ScreenPal's video quiz feature is a powerful tool for formative assessment.
- Engaging Lessons with Built-in Checks: Embed instructional videos with quiz questions directly into your Book Creator books. You can even prevent students from skipping ahead, ensuring they watch the entire lesson.
- Varied Assessment Types: Choose from multiple-choice, true/false, short answer, polls, and rating questions. For informal checks, polls and rating questions are ungraded, offering valuable insights without the pressure of a score.
- Seamless Integration: Students don't need to log into ScreenPal to take a quiz—they simply click the embedded link within Book Creator.
Book trailers, author talks, and student portfolios
Beyond the daily lessons, ScreenPal can elevate larger projects:
- Book Trailers and Author Studies: Encourage students to create dynamic book trailers using ScreenPal's editing features, sound effects, and vast library of stock images and videos. They can even record "author talks" to share their creative process.
- Dynamic Student Portfolios: Use ScreenPal's screenshot feature to capture artifacts from other platforms (like Google Docs or Google Sites). Students can then embed these screenshots into their Book Creator portfolios alongside video reflections, offering a comprehensive look at their learning journey.
The synergy between Book Creator and ScreenPal empowers educators to create richer, more interactive learning experiences and provides students with diverse modalities to express their knowledge and creativity.
Ready to get started? If you haven’t already, install the ScreenPal Chrome extension and explore its seamless integration within Book Creator. Be sure to check your extension settings to ensure it's enabled for Book Creator!
What creative ways will you use ScreenPal and Book Creator in your classroom? Share your ideas in the comments below!
Get Book Creator for your school!
- Upgraded accounts for all your teachers
- Implementation plan to help with rollout
- PD support
- Analytics & admin dashboard
The month of March is known around the world as National Reading Month, Listening Awareness Month, and even National March into Literacy Month. At Book Creator, we celebrate BE AN AUTHOR MONTH✨!
It’s a time for showcasing how literacy can come alive! Turn your students, and even yourselves, into published authors through reading, writing, speaking, and listening activities across all subjects.
Why 'Be An Author'?
The idea of writing and publishing a book is exciting! Writing a story onto a fresh, blank page can be thrilling for many, but also a challenge to some who have difficulty with literacy skills. In fact, this is exactly why Book Creator was started!
Like all the best superheroes, Book Creator has an amazing origin story. Did you know that the app was created to help a reluctant reader? In 2010, Dan Amos and his wife were trying to support their son, who was struggling to read the books provided by his school.
Dan’s son was diagnosed with dyslexia. This meant the curriculum-based books that his classmates were reading were not suitable for his reading level.
With a distinct lack of reading options available, Dan and his wife came to a decision that would change the course of their lives! They decided that instead of trying to find reading material he would engage with - why not create it themselves?! And so Book Creator was born. Dan built the app himself and before long they were able to create books on subjects that their son could get excited about, and his reading subsequently improved.
Naturally, the next step beyond that for the learners is to start writing their own books, demonstrating their understanding, and improving literacy across the curriculum.
Get Book Creator for your school!
- Upgraded accounts for all your teachers
- Implementation plan to help with rollout
- PD support
- Analytics & admin dashboard
With 20 years of experience in education, Katie is passionate about creating inclusive and accessible classrooms for all students. She loves exploring new places, trying different foods, and connecting with fellow educators.
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