Create Beautiful eBooks

Drop your manuscript into Vellum and it will open as a book divided into chapters. While in Vellum, you can edit your book or start writing a new one. Books may be shared with family and friends and uploaded to online stores. There’s a free download to try the software; if you wish to purchase, the cost is $49.99 for a single book, $99.99 for three books, and $149.00 for five books. The product was developed by Pixar veterans, so one wonders if Vellum may evolve to include interactive capabilities appropriate for exciting eTexts? In the meantime, it looks like a very nice solution for students and educators who want to create good-looking eBooks.

Pearson Answers eText Questions

Pearson, the publisher that seems to be leading the way in development of eTexts, offers answers to questions for those worried about the transition to Pearson eTexts. At the eText FAQ page, you will find information about hardware requirements, whether Flash is required, where to get the Pearson eText app, access codes, compatibility with eText readers, collaborative learning, email between students and teachers, and use with iPad, iPod Touch, and smart phones.

Why Learn iBooks Author?

Why write your own text with iBooks Author? According to Burt Lo and Joe Wood in the T|H|E Journal article, 7 Reasons to Learn Apple iBook Author Now, the January announcement of iBook Author was a “big day” for educators making use of digital devices, especially mobile devices, in classrooms. California CUE (Computer Using Educators) has been hosting tech events to encourage educators to put this new software to work.  During these workshops and the CUE convention in Palm Springs, Lo and Wood along with the educators and administrators in the sessions, came up with the “WHYS” Mac users running OSX Lion  (10.7) should start preparing their own book with the Author. These include the ability to organize and integrate interactive materials, Weblinks, video clips, presentations, 3-D objects, photo galleries, text, spreadsheets, presentations—materials you’ve probably already collected, directly into your text. Students can use Author, as well, for publishing, writing, and creating portfolios and reports, and schools can develop professional materials with them.  The created work can be shared free or for a fee at the iBooks Store or shared within a school or district. Educators looking for resources for their iBooks may turn to a library of “interactive objects”.  iBooks are easy to create, publish, update, and share. I’ve started making an iBook, and find that Lo and Wood are right: the iBook Author is a winner.

Apple's iBook Author & Textbooks

To be sure, you’ve heard about Apple’s education announcement. Do you think it will help end the confusion that schools face over how to or whether or not to, go digital with their texts? Will we be ready for all students to have digital texts in five years as Education Secretary Arne Duncan and President Obama have challenged? Some teachers are already creating their own texts, and with the iBook Author and other authoring systems more teachers will be working on creating the text they believe will work best for their students. Some teachers won’t have the time or interest in doing this, some schools won’t have the funding for digital devices to make use of digitized texts, and some schools won’t have the broadband power to make the transition at this time. A problem that worries school administrators is how to make sure teacher-compiled texts fit the curriculum they want offered in their schools, while parent perception may be that schools can just order etexts and therefore, lighten backpacks. But while novels and some commercial eTexts are available for high school, there are few complete titles for Middle and Elementary Schools. Schools can patch together some of the excellent programs sold by software companies to create coursework, but for the most part, they can’t find in eFormat, the reading, math, science or language arts books they are using now.  The bigger question is, “Do we simply want our current texts in eFormat?” I don’t think so, since it certainly wouldn’t take advantage of the wonderful resources on the Internet, animations, video clips, and interactive media. I, for one, will be experimenting with the iBook Author. I downloaded it a couple of days ago and am anxious to get my book going.