My students have been writing feature articles. Groups of students who have similar topics may put their writing together in a magazine format.
I’ve been searching for the best ePublishing option. ePublishing is important for many reasons, but is especially important to international students. They want to show their work to parents who frequently travel and to grandparents who live across oceans.
So far, I’ve experimented with FlipSnack, ePub Bud, and Issuu. I’m not sure my upper elementary students could use any of them.
FlipSnack
FlipSnack impressed me at first but disappointed me in the end. Of the three publishing tools, this was the easiest to use. My students would easily figure out the browse/upload or drag/drop/upload directions. Uploading went slowly, though. I’d want to give students other activities to engage them while pages are processing.
FlipSnack Upload Page
Here’s the problem. The free version has serious sharing limitations. Watch below:
To overcome these limitation, you need to spend USD$1.90 per page. This 13-page story would cost $19.90 (10 points at $1.90 each) to display. My school has good funding, but I can’t rationalize asking my school to pay that much for one piece of published work.
Even if parents click the external link, they don’t get the full story. http://files.flipsnack.com/iframe/embed.html?hash=8a2290b8d12fa79080028e04fq702538&wmode=window&bgcolor=EEEEEE&t=1326378212
ePub Bud
While not as intuitive as FlipSnack, ePub Bud put together a nice-looking book. All the pages could be read. The final book can be made into an electronic book, but it cannot be embedded into websites.
Issuu
I really like this layout.
…but it took me at least two hours to figure out. If you load one .pdf page at a time, the program will save the pages as different “books” and not allow you to put the pages together. I ended up with a shelf of single pages but no book.
The solution was to use Adobe Acrobat Pro. I used Pro to put all the .pdf preview pages onto a single document. Then, I uploaded the one multi-page file. Version 9 will cost you over $200 to install. My school-issued computer happened to have it.
I don’t know whether or not my students’ computers are loaded with Adobe Pro. Even if they are, the amalgamation of individual pages adds an extra step in the publication process.
When I retrieved the code to embed a book into this WordPress site, this was the outcome:
[issuu width=420 height=237 backgroundColor=%23222222 documentId=120113065857-655d9927bf0549f6bf9eb5fa6f0d22fa name=under_the_big_blue_sea username=travelinteacher tag=fiction unit=px id=542aeb76-4f5b-af87-6599-f6f1005bf1e2 v=2]
I guess you’ll have to click the link to see the full story.
In my ideal world, my students’ busy parents would only have to visit one place to view their child’s work. As far as I can tell, it costs $26.60 for the privilege of one-click viewing of a child’s work.
Do you know any other publication tools I could try?
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Sounds like a business opportunity.
Sounds like we’re being fleeced!
I know that this is not the most ideal solution… Could you send permission slips home with the students asking the parents for funding? I would imagine that the cost could seem high to many parents, seeing as the cost of getting a physical copy of the book is actually less.
I am not aware of any tools to use for this, but you do have Acrobat, which can output to a pdf that anyone with Acrobat Reader (free) can view. Maybe start a blog right here on wordpress, and publish all the books to that blog for up to one year. This would allow your students to show off their work, and allow you to remove old content. It would also give plenty of time for parents, friends, and other family to download the books to save on their own hard-drives if they want them longer.
Interesting question, and Barry hit the nail on the head. Definitely a business opportunity. Perhaps someone could provide this service in an “ad-powered” service.
**as** and “ad-powered” **tool**.
Good ideas. I could send permission slips home. I guess I’m questioning the price. I can pay $15 for a professional book through amazon. Why would I pay (or ask parents to pay) more than that to publish only one piece of student work?
My students “publish” 10+ pieces every year – it could get expensive. Then again, maybe parents would pay it. I’m not sure whether or not you’re a parent. If you were, would you pay that to publish one book?
I was able to get the book up on my class edublog site (5a3dragonslair.edublogs.org). I’ll keep working this way until publishing becomes smoother.
I think you’re a great teacher! While many parents would happily pay, others (especially in this economy) couldn’t. I would like to see all schools have this type opportunity! In the mean time, I have just begun to investigate this – have you tried Uniflip? That’s next on my list. Good luck to you and thank you for being a teacher. If I find something that might be suitable, I’ll report back.
Good Luck.
Thanks, Kelly! I haven’t tried Uniflip, but would love a report. I’m currently playing around with comic sites for my students who want to try their hands at graphic novels.