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"Although Apple pitched iBooks Author as a tool for educators, the company fully supports anyone who want to create an ebook using iBooks Author to do so. Apple also lets anyone that creates an ebook with iBooks Author to distribute it through the iBookstore - the catch being that the iBooks Author edition of an ebook can't be published using another company's store (though the text of the title can be repackaged using other apps and sold elsewhere)."

"iBooks Author is a great tool for creating interactive ebooks. Unfortunately, creating content with iBooks Author isn't always as easy as you might hope it is. Back in June I shared a free 110 page book about using iBooks Author. However, if video tutorials are more helpful to you I have found twenty six videos that you should look at."

"As the self-publishing industry grows larger, Apple's iBooks Author (free) exists as a unique tool for publishing e-books than can reach a large audience of iPad, iPhone and Mac users. The iBooks format is also useful for showcasing and distributing content independent of the iBooks Store. Apple first released iBooks Author back in 2012, and it was and still is largely geared to the textbook and education community. iBooks has introduced many ways to present and display content, with an audience of over 800 million iPad users across the world. It's been reported that since mid-September 2014, over one million customers visit the iBooks store every week, which makes for a huge potential market for authors and publishers."

"Originally released in early 2012, Apple's education-themed ebook creation tool took bold steps as the first WYSIWYG program to export an ebook just as its author envisioned it. As I noted in my review of that software, however, the first version of iBooks Author was very much a 1.0 product, with strange omissions and odd workflows for users who didn't want to build textbooks. Ten months later, an updated version-iBooks Author 2.0 (Mac App Store)-brings simplified tools, new templates, portrait-only options, and a better publishing workflow to the table. Naturally, I couldn't resist taking the updated program for a spin."

"If you're a teacher, or teaching assistant there are plenty of great blogs out there to help you with everything from coming up with teaching plans, to implementing technology in the classroom. Where to start though? The internet is crowded with blogs. We decided to go through some of them for you, so that you can find the blog(s) covering the topics you're looking for and be sure it's quality content. Generally, there are four key qualities of a good teaching & learning blog: Activity (25%). Information should be updated regularly Originality (25%). It should add value with content that's different from all the other blogs out there Helpfulness (25%). A good teaching & Learning blog should teach you a new skill, direct you to a useful resource, or at least get you to think in a new way about something Authority (25%). The author/authors have the authority and credentials to blog about the topic of teaching & learning Each category was assigned an equal weight in our evaluation. They were averaged together to determine the final score in order to come up with our list of the top 68."

"How many 7th Graders can say they best selling authors? Well this group of kids from Woodlawn Beach Middle School in Northern Florida can thanks to their teacher Andrea Santilli and iBooks Author."

Wesley Fryer is the author of "Playing with Media: simple ideas for powerful sharing" (July 2011) and a contributing author of "What School Leaders Need to Know About Digital Technologies and Social Media" (September 2011). Wesley co-authored Chapter 3 of the book, "Podcasts and Webinars," with Steve Dembo. "Playing with Media: simple ideas for powerful sharing" is available in 3 eBook formats and as a paperback! Additional resources are on playingwithmedia.com. See and contribute student media examples on share.playingwithmedia.com. Learn about workshop and videoconference opportunities on learn.playingwithmedia.com.

"Finally and I think perhaps more importantly, they introduced the new iBooks Author app. An app which gives educators the power to create their own interactive learning experience for their students, the like of which we have haven't really been able to put together before. The following hits are reasons why iBooks Author tied with iBooks2 is a complete win for schools, particularly in 1:1 type scenarios."

"3 Reasons Why Faculty Meetings Are a Waste of Time By Peter DeWitt on April 10, 2015 6:50 AM Faculty Meeting.png Many school leaders walk into a faculty meeting with a single idea of how they want to move forward and walk out with the same idea. That's telling... John Hattie talks a great deal about the Politics of Distraction, which means we focus on adult issues, and not enough time...if ever...on learning. That is happening around the U.S. for sure. Recently the Assembly of NY State only furthered those distractions, which you can read about here, which means that school leaders and teachers have to work harder to maintain a focus on learning. Quite frankly, well before mandates and accountability, school leaders focused on the politics of distraction and not on learning. Compliance is not new in schools. Faculty meetings were seen as a venue to get through and something that teachers were contractually obligated to attend. During these days of endless measures of compliance, principals can do a great deal to make sure they don't model the same harmful messages to staff that politicians are sending to teachers. Jim Knight calls that "Freedom within form." In Talk Like Ted, Carmine Gallo quotes Marissa Mayer (CEO of Yahoo) when he writes, "Creativity is often misunderstood. People often think of it in terms of artistic work - unbridled, unguided effort that leads to beautiful effect. If you look deeper, however, you'll find that some of the most inspiring art forms - haikus, sonatas, religious paintings- are fraught with constraints. (p. 190)" Clearly, constraints have a wide definition. There is a clear difference between the constraints of compliance and the stupidity of the legislation just passed by the assembly in NY. As we move forward, principals still are charged...or at least should be...with the job of making sure they offer part...inspiration, part...teacher voice...and a great deal of focus on learning. There is never a more important tim

"Truth Decay - the diminishing role that facts, data, and analysis play in political and civil discourse - appears to result, in part, from an increasingly complex information ecosystem. Technology, in particular, offers continual access to information of varying quality and credibility, information that can blur the line between fact-based evidence and opinion. Not everyone is equipped with the skills necessary to navigate such uncertain terrain. The purpose of this report is to describe the field of media literacy (ML) education and the ways in which ML education can counter Truth Decay by changing how participants consume, create, and share information. One limitation of this research base arises from the variety of ways that literature defines and measures ML outcomes; while a multiplicity of viewpoints can be beneficial, it also presents challenges in terms of aggregating findings across studies. Despite this, the authors describe existing evidence that ML could be a useful tool for combating Truth Decay. They also provide an inventory of ML offerings available to the public. Finally, the authors make suggestions for moving forward, with the specific recommendation that professionals in ML and related fields strengthen their communication and collaboration, considering where there are opportunities for a common approach to researching ML. The authors recommend that policymakers and practitioners increase participation from diverse constituencies in scaling ML efforts"

"Please, No More Professional Development! By Peter DeWitt on April 17, 2015 8:10 AM Today's guest blog is written by Kristine Fox (Ed.D), Senior Field Specialist/Research Associate at Quaglia Institute for Student Aspirations (QISA). She is a former teacher and administrator who has passion for teacher learning and student voice. Kris works directly with teachers and leaders across the country to help all learners reach their fullest potential. Peter DeWitt recently outlined why "faculty meetings are a waste of time." Furthering on his idea, most professional development opportunities don't offer optimal learning experiences and the rare teacher is sitting in her classroom thinking "I can't wait until my district's next PD day." When I inform a fellow educator that I am a PD provider, I can read her thoughts - boring, painful, waste of time, useless, irrelevant - one would think my job is equal to going to the dentist (sorry to my dentist friends). According to the Quaglia Institute and Teacher Voice and Aspirations International Center's National Teacher Voice Report only 54% percent of teachers agree "Meaningful staff development exists in my school." I can't imagine any other profession being satisfied with that number when it comes to employee learning and growth. What sense does it make for the science teacher to spend a day learning about upcoming English assessments? Or, for the veteran teacher to learn for the hundredth time how to use conceptual conflict as a hook. Why does education insist everyone attend the same type of training regardless of specialization, experience, or need? As a nod to the upcoming political campaigns and the inevitable introduction of plans with lots of points, here is my 5 Point Plan for revamping professional development. 5 Point Plan Point I - Change the Term: Semantics Matter We cannot reclaim the term Professional Development for teachers. It has a long, baggage-laden history of conformity that does not

"Sometimes we focus on what an app can't do and forget to look at what it can. That's been the case with iBooks Author, Apple's e-book creation platform released nearly a year ago. Part of the problem was Apple's own hyperbolic statements about its "disruptive" nature to the textbook publishing industry. It failed to live up to the hype for a variety of well-documented reasons. But this post is about what it is, not what it isn't."

"Why the Emotional Criticism of iBooks Author Is Wrong"

Creating live padlet pages in iBook author ADEHow to guides April 3, 2014 - 2 comments 0 (0 votes) apple_official_ibooks_author I have been playing around with iBook author for a while and love its potential for engaging students in the classroom. I am currently creating a book to support our upcoming PE conference and wanted to use the book to support everything from signimg up to sessions to giving feedback. Padlet sprung to mind as a great way to share the feedback live and to use as a promise wall for delegates to show what they were going to do as a result of the conference. To keep things neat and tidy i wanted this process to be linked up into the book. Here is the process i used.

A list of those who do this for free. These authors are willing to participate in 20-minute Skype visits free of charge. (Many also offer more in-depth virtual visits for a fee.)

"For our last day of class with a "normal" schedule (today), I met with my students in our school's 21st-century learning space. There's a sampling of flexible furniture, a corner with stadium seating, iMacs, a big-screen TV, an Apple TV, tables that also serve as white boards… chairs on wheels, couches with charging stations… it's a great space! Screen Shot 2014-05-27 at 6.32.43 PM Students' first task today was to finalize their multi-touch math books and submit them to me. Since some student groups were able to virtually turn in their books last Friday, I was able to embed their .ePub files on my teacher website, and use each unique URL to share all of the books in a ThingLink. Student groups downloaded and read no less than five books authored by their peers."

"For the past few years, I've helped out with LitWorld's World Read Aloud Day by pulling together a list of author volunteers who would like to spend part of the day Skyping with classrooms around the world to share the joy of reading aloud."

"Looking for a way to keep your kids engaged while schools are closed? Below is a list of books by Indigenous authors for children of various ages, all of which are available digitally!"

"Chad Criswell, author of the MusicEdMagic blog, as well as the contributing author/tech editor for several music education magazines, including Teaching Music, has written an excellent column on apps for Music Education which appears in the October 2012 edition of the magazine. It is going to be a great starting point-with 23 listed apps-for music educators getting into the iPad for the first time."

"Flickr hosts millions of images that are licensed under a Creative Commons license or are in the public domain (Flickr Commons). Depending on the license, you may use the images on your private or commercial webpage, or can make changes to it. If you want to use these images, you need to to the following: Make sure you understood the license correctly Get the correct HTML code for the IMG tag Link the image back to the Flickr photo page Give the author of the image proper credits (Attribution) Link to the Flickr profile of the author Link to the license the image is licensed under With ImageCodr.org, there is no need to do all this manually, you simply enter in the URL of the picture page (as seen in your browser) you are interested in and ImageCodr.org will generate the ready to use HTML code. It will also display a brief and easy license summary, so you don't get in legal trouble because you missed something."