There are some disadvantages to using iBooks author for crafting your own learning materials. The biggest issue is that iBooks Author books can only be read on an iPad in the iBooks app. You can't even read the eBook on an iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, or PC. iBooks Author will export your work as a PDF, however, the PDF will lack the interactive table of contents, photo galleries, videos, and other hands-on elements.
iBook Author
Getting Started
All enhanced books created with iBook Author need to start with a template. Apple has six suggested templates. We have created our own stripped down template based on the golden ratio. You can download it here.
"Its well known that giving easy digital content creation tools into the hands of more teachers and students is a great way to encourage focus on higher order thinking skills in the curriculum. For schools with Macs and iPads, the release of Apple's iBooks Author software in January made this even more possible.
Attached to this post is 1.0 draft of a 'know-why' guide to using iBooks Author to make digital content thats localised and personalised just for your students. Download and enjoy, plus leave comments if you have questions or feedback. To load, just download directly onto an iPad with iBooks 2 installed, and tap 'open in iBooks', or download to your PC and sync via iTunes."
Thanks to technologies like GPS and QR codes, these games combine real-world experiences with virtual information. The games can capture geo-tagged audio recordings, for example, or photos and videos that student players can view when they reach a particular place or meet a particular character. Characters can talk with students, provide information, exchange items or respond to tasks. Authors can also create virtual items that players can retrieve and exchange.
The key is the ARIS platform, which enables teachers, designers, artists, and students to create place-based narratives. Game designers say the open-source platform is easy to use; educators don't need a programming background to get started because the work is done with an online authoring tool.
Gabe Zichermann is an entrepreneur, author, highly rated public speaker and gamification thought leader. He is the chair of the Gamification Summit and Workshops, and is co-author of the book "Game-Based Marketing, where he makes a compelling case for the use of games and game mechanics in everyday life, the web and business. Gabe is also a board member of StartOut.org and facilitator for the NYC chapter of the Founder Institute.
For more information visit: http://www.tedxkids.be
"Gamification" describes turning real-world situations into games. Gamification is a neologism -- a newly invented term that's becoming commonly used. The word gamification was likely born in the realm of casual conversation to convey the idea of turning something into a game. People like entrepreneur and author Gabe Zichermann, though, have given gamification its own unique definition. Zichermann, a respected authority on gamification and its applications, defines the term as "the process of using game thinking and mechanics to engage audiences and solve problems." In short, he describes gamification as "non-fiction gaming."
Need to add a calculator into your book, or a insert a Vimeo or YouTube video? Add interactive elements to your books with Bookry's ever expanding catalogue of book widgets, that are already being used by educators and students around the world. Simply login to Bookry to create your widgets online, then download the widget files to your Mac and drag & drop it into your iBooks Author file - easy!
"There are numerous sites that are now offering Tutorials and how-to guides for creating ebooks in iBook Author. As teachers are now comfortable with the idea of creating their own e-textbooks more and more people are looking for resources to learn how to build touch enabled books that take full advantage of the iPad capabilities. Inserting video and high resolution photographs is one thing but how about inserting 3D manipulatives and models that are touch sensitive.". This post offers is a list of some of the resources online.
"It's more than the numbers.
Create CHARTS of public spending time series.
Look at TABLES of spending year-by-year for central government and local authorities. "
"Awesome widgets for your iBook
Timelines, mathematical formulae, interactive graphs & plots, crossword puzzles, quizzes, infographics, youtube videos...
The possibilities are endless.
No skills required
Add stunning interactive content to your iBook, with zero skills. All you do is point, click and add text.
Plugs right into iBooks Author
Apple created a kick-ass tool, super easy to use. We'll make it even better!
Royalty free
Are you a school or teacher? We have a very affordable educational license! Selling your work on the iBooksstore? We charge a small fee per generated widget."
Create and test a mobile app. Author app. Host and promote your app. Link to FB, Flickr, Twitter, Picasa, and other media sites. Create a mobile version of a regular web site.
"Follow these simple steps to learn how to create your own iBook and send it to the iBookstore!
You can find searchable transcripts of these tutorials at http://ecjourno.com/diyjourno/"
Finding free, high-quality photos is a tedious task - mainly due to copyright issues, attribution requirements, or simply lack of quality. This inspired us to create Pixabay - a repository for public domain images of extraordinarily high-quality.
You can freely use any image from this website in digital and printed format, for personal and commercial use, without attribution requirement to the original author.