This year the English teaching team at the Berlage Lyceum has gone completely paperless with the help of iBooks Author. We haven’t used books for many years, but create our own content and curriculum. Previously this meant that we would print out materials every lesson, send endless attachments via e-mail or cluttered the student’s Dropbox. Now we’ve got everything streamlined in one place. Last term we made an iBook about Figurative Language, this term we’re discussing myths, legends and journalism and we’ve used it for some projects here and there.
Teachers are used to sharing their content online for their colleagues to use. For SMARTboard lessons there is SMART Exchange, for English teachers there is TES.co.uk, the ShowMe iPad app has created a great online sharing community and there are many more examples.
Why not create a similar niche for iBooks? Sure there is the Apple iBook Store, but the problem with the iBook Store is twofold.
- It is quite a hassle to get your books in the iBooks Store.
- Very little of the resources that are found online can directly be used in your classroom. Usually there is something that the teachers wants to edit to make it relevant for their class and fit in the curriculum. Therefore the content needs to be malleable, which the iBooks aren’t.
But then there came Bookry. Bookry started as a collection of interactive widgets for your website, but has since grown into something much more awesome. You can still use Bookry to add widgets to your iBook but what I’m more interested in is the ability to easily share your iBooks as a pdf, iBook and most importantly iba format. Sharing the iba files will enable other teachers to open it in iBooks Author and alter it.
Yes, this will mean that you as a teacher will be giving away your intellectual property. But so what? You’ve just helped countless of teachers who do not have the time nor skills to create an iBook for every lesson in every class.
Your iPad initiative will fall or stand with the teacher’s ability to find worthy interactive content and apps. I personally haven’t seen many iBooks freely available yet, which is a pity as there is so much that we can learn from each other. An iBook is little more than a fancy worksheet. Start treating it as such and share your resources just like you normally would and show me what beautiful content you are creating. Feel free to use mine in your classroom.
You can view my public Bookry Bookshelf here.
To learn more about how to use Bookry watch the instruction videos on their youtube channel.
