Education is changing. The jobs of the future do not exist today, so how will students develop the skills they need? This is our take on the situation and how Book Creator fits into the story.

The BIG Picture - A short guide to using Book Creator in education

Check out this series of Book Creator ebooks. These experienced educators share their tips, ideas and resources to help you supercharge your lessons!

Using Book Creator in the classroom

These skills are slowly replacing rote learning

What’s more, we’ve designed the app to be so simple to use, it can be used from age 4 upwards

So where does BOOK CREATOR fit into this story?

And with BOOK CREATOR you can supercharge your books

It's easy to add multimedia - record your own voice, embed a video, and even to appsmash your creations from other apps - the possibilities are infinite

The jobs of the future do not even exist today

and so it’s a concept that teachers and students can easily set to work on

Students can show their l e a r n i n g and get

A short guide to using Book Creator in education

Plus, Book Creator has so many built-in accessibility components that it can effectively be used as an all-purpose special education app. With over 50 million books made in Book Creator, we’ve seen examples across the spectrum

Teachers have narrowed down the apps they use to a select few that they know work for them

The best apps allow students (and teachers) the freedom to build, write, code, draw, and combine many multimedia elements to differentiate the experience for the student and allow curiosity and creativity to be fostered. The worst apps are no better than filling out a worksheet, only via a touchscreen instead.

The temptation in the early days was to load the device with every free app they could find. Thankfully, there is more education and advice for teachers now to guide them to the best apps for their situation. What we still need is a commitment from districts to supply the budget to support teachers not only with devices, but with the apps to make those devices useful in the classroom. In many cases, you get what you pay for with free apps. That said, we are now seeing giants like Apple, Google, Microsoft and Adobe develop a long-term strategy to make high quality educational software free, to build a user base for the future. Whether this is good for education or not is a separate discussion.

But there’s still a long way to go before the education landscape can fully adapt to these 6Cs. Teachers would love to change the way they teach to give students freedom to practice these skills, but on the whole, the reality is that the curriculum is still geared to measuring success through testing. And there is so much pressure on teachers to get “good results”, that there is little time or energy left to promote creativity.

Further reading: <a href="https://www.gettingsmart.com/2019/12/the-state-of-creativity-in-americas-schools/">The State of Creativity in America's Schools</a> by Dr. Beth Holland (Dec 2019)

It is tempting to turn to technology to help facilitate this shift in education

has led to a shift towards trying to teach and develop softer skills, as prescribed in Professor Michael Fullan’s 6Cs of education

when a student is producing work that is solely for the teacher they'll put in only the minimum effort

But, if they know that they can publish their book to a global audience, this offers so much motivation to do their best

This is perfectly summed up in Sir Ken Robinson’s seminal TED talk ‘Do schools kill creativity?

Do schools kill creativity? | Sir Ken Robinson

when Apple introduced the iPad to schools, and more recently with the proliferation of G Suite for Education edtech has provided teachers with all manner of apps and tools to modernise learning.

However, even in the edtech sphere it’s taken a while to learn some important lessons about turning to technology in the classroom

We have developed an app that has creativity at its core. An open-ended, simple to use tool that can infuse creativity throughout the curriculum

relying solely on apps does not equate to good learning

There is, and will always be, a need for high quality teaching, otherwise the technology is redundant

offers users a blank canvas to adapt to any subject. You can create poetry, comics, choose your own adventure stories, research projects, portfolios. It doesn’t matter if you’re teaching English, mathematics, music or PE

That the education system is not the perfect fit to teach children the skills that they’ll need when they exit the school system

There needs to be an emphasis on creativity over consumption

We’re committed to supporting the movement to revolutionise education – and BOOK CREATOR is the tool you need to bring creativity to your classroom

Our website contains an ever-growing database of resources, including lesson plans, video tutorials, ebooks and templates to support teachers no matter what you teach

"When kids have a global audience, they want their work to be good. When the audience is just the teacher, they want it to be good enough"

PROF. MICHAEL FULLAN

For the past twenty years, there has been a shift happening in education 

(the most viewed TED talk in history with over 50 million views, to date)

that the education system is pretty much the same system

that has been in place since the Industrial Revolution, and is no longer fit for purpose