One Best Thing iBooks are freely available in the iBooks store. There are 104 FREE books for educators to download that have information for all the different curricular areas and incorporating some sort of technology. These books are short and practical for anyone to read and gain creative ways of how to integrate technology into the classroom.
The book that I decided to download and read is called, Don’t Create a Book, Create a Field Trip: Building Interactive Multi-Touch Books. This book is only 9 pages long and really only about 4 pages of that is actual instruction that includes an example of creating a virtual field trip for students. This book was interesting to me because I want to go on field trips with my students and take them out into the world to experience the curriculum because one, it’s more interesting for them and two, it helps them to make connections.
I read this iBook though because I know that it will not be possible to always take my students on lots of field trips. The book got me interested in how I could bring that field trip into the classroom to the students as opposed to bringing the students out to the field trip. After reading the book I thought it was good, but I would have liked a couple more pages of how to actually create one for my students, besides just the one page plus videos it had. It did provide a nice example to explore which I did find helpful for getting acquainted with the idea of creating field trips for students using iBooks Author.
I liked the idea that using iBook Author, you don’t have to create a book, but you can just use its features to create an interactive page or pages for students to work through and complete. I also liked how you can use Keynote to create panoramic pages for use within the virtual field trip, although this particular app does cost money. The iBook provides more information on this in one of the videos if you are interested.
Overall, from this iBook I learned that I can use iBook Author to create “field trips” for my students within the walls of the classroom. I don’t see myself using this a lot, but I do think that I could use it for some units that we work on, such as learning about their own state’s history. I can really see this being used within social studies for both history and geography. They could explore an image or a map in a way that is interactive and more fun than just looking at it up on the projector.
This iBook that I read is just one of the many (104!) One Best Thing iBooks that educators can explore. Simply type in “One Best Thing” in the search bar on iBooks to find this great collection. This is a great resource and is one that I will definitely turn to for help with integrating technology in my future classroom.