iLike iBooks

This week's class discussion was on content creation and interactive eBooks/iBooks. We opened up by going through some of the features of these tools, which I'm somewhat familiar with because I own a Kindle. For example, Dr. Schugar demonstrated the ability to highlight text, make notes, define words, and even make your own note cards to study from, which I thought was pretty incredible. Here's an example of the notecard feature, pulled from Gizmodo.

Notecard feature makes studying a breeze

After the talk about features came a deeper discussion: will these eBooks be beneficial to us (and our students) in our future classrooms? I know I've heard people voice concerns about how meaningful resources like this are. I think in the end you just have to be careful which eBooks you select. It's the same for regular books - as long as you pay attention to the quality of the book in question, I wholeheartedly believe eBooks would be extremely meaningful to use in the classroom. The technology aspect really appeals to students in this day and age. However, I also believe that there's a limit to how much I would use these tools. I would use it to enhance a lesson here and there, but at the end of the day I think students should be reading good old fashioned books. Technology is great, but it could never replace books, at least not in my world.

We also talked about content creation for a few minutes. Dr. Schugar showed us iBooks Author. This app is free on the App Store and, in short, it allows you to create and publish your own books. There are templates to select from, options to completely customize the book and make it your own (you pick the font, format, etc), and even the ability to add widgets. Check out this article on iBooks Author over on Mashable. I think this is a really amazing idea. It would be such a nice tool for the classroom - not only could you make books, but your students could use it as well! I would love to let students play around with this app and let them experience what it's like to be an "author". 

Overall, I really enjoyed this class discussion because it brought a lot of great resources to my attention. I sound like an Apple spokesperson - but I assure you that these opinions are my own! I'd love to hear your opinions! Feel free to comment, fellow bloggers.