Newton County teachers and staff share stories about why they love Book Creator, how they use it across the district and the amazing impact it is making on student learning.

Newton County: Partner Spotlight

"What we've done with Book Creator is excite students to want to write; to get reluctant readers to want to read. They love to read stories from their peers, and to share their own stories with their families, being a publishing author."

- Jennifer Williams Instructional Technology Coordinator

"I have many students who will say nothing, ever... They will go home and voiceover their book. They open up because they aren't doing it in front of somebody. They find they like it and then they want to do it."

- Suzanne Stokes High School Anatomy &amp; Forensic Science Teacher

Sixth grade science teacher Jessica Tamburro told us about how using Book Creator has transformed her water cycle baby book project. Ms. Tamburro loves how Book Creator motivates every child to engage with this project, including those who otherwise tend not to complete work, or put in their best effort. She also remarked on how each student's story is so different in Book Creator, showing that each child is learning and putting their own spin on the assignment. Listen to Ms. Tamburro by clicking below.

The Wonder of Water Erosion with General Bucket

Goofy and the Club's Gravitational Chronicles

The Life of a Water Drop

Jupiter Realtors

Another proof point that teachers across ages and subjects turn to Book Creator to re-define learning, check out these books created by a high school math teacher at Newton County.

Unit 1: Transformations in a Coordinate Plane

Unit 5: Geometric & Algebraic Connections

Unit 4:  Circles and Volume

NCSS hosts an annual conference to inspire female students to consider careers in the fields of STEM and computer science. The girls use Book Creator as part of the conference activities.

NCSS Hosts Code Like a Girl Winter Conference

NCSS 2020 Secondary Vision Book

Check out this book where some of their secondary girls who participated in InspiHER shared visions of their futures.

"It's a bridge to take their huge ideas, put them on 'paper' and share that with people, while they are still developing their skills to write or type."

Book Creator is going to change the level of engagement and motivation of the students.

Jennifer Williams Instructional Technology Coordinator

"If you are truly trying to re-define learning in your spaces, Book Creator is the tool that can do that."

- Ijeoma Johnson Instructional Technology Specialist

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are important in Newton County. A district with a diverse population, they are acutely aware that many published books do not have characters that look like their students. Book Creator empowers students to create books with characters that look like them, and represent their culture. Listen to Jennifer Williams talk to this point below!

Sicky

See how 1st grader Journey included characters in her book that she felt represent her and her community.

Jennifer, Tech Specialist

In addition to using Book Creator across curriculum, from pre-K up to 12th, Newton County Schools staff have found countless creative and impactful ways to use Book Creator within their community.

Media Specialist Portfolio

Department newsletters Teacher welcome letter to families Teaching portfolio Curriculum Night overview

Not only does this mean that they are getting additional value out of Book Creator, it's a great way to get staff on board.

Meet The Instructional Technology Team

T4T Newsletter December 2021

The Newton County tech team also pointed to student choice as a reason why learning outcomes improve with Book Creator. With Book Creator, Jennifer Williams told us, students have to be able to take information and present it in a new way - a new way of their choice, because they have different ways to express themselves. This ensures they really learn the material. Additionally, Ijeoma Johnson told us that Newton County students get to choose the digital tools they use. One teacher she supports introduces Book Creator, Canva, Google Slides and other tools to students in the first half of the year. In the second half of the year, the students get to choose which tool they prefer for a particular purpose. Unfailingly, the students choose Book Creator.

We all know that teachers and administrators are short on time.

Misty Smith told us how using Interactive Notebooks for her students in Book Creator saved her an entire day of cutting and pasting, enabling her to focus on what really matters. ELA teacher Mr Stillerman's favorite new feature allows him to copy pages from his teacher book into every student's book in seconds. This not only saves time and photocopying but ensures every student has access to important information. The technology team told us, "Wholeheartedly, Book Creator will work every single time." This means they don't have to spend tons of time training new teachers, and troubleshooting problems. Instead they can focus on working with teachers on how technology can enable them to re-define and improve learning.

We asked Misty Smith, "Has Book Creator replaced any tools you used previously?" Listen to her response.

"The access to training and development that is consistent, and that is user-friendly. Jon comes to support us...He's part of our Newton County family, and that's making a big difference."

"I can move everyone on at the same pace, with the same content, but challenge each student exactly where they are in the content. I can't do that with Google. It's not as fun, inviting and easily manipulated."

- Misty Smith Application Integration Specialist

"For Special Ed students, I can make a template of the project ... that helps chunk up the project and provide structure for the students who need it...Those who don't need it are free to go and do whatever they need... But they still have creativity."

96% of our students have used Book Creator this year

Improving Learning Outcomes with Book Creator

Newton County staff and teachers took time to tell us what they love about Book Creator, how it's being used daily by teachers and students across the district, and why it's so impactful. Click on a speech bubble to dive in to a particular topic, or move on to the next page to enjoy all their inspiring stories! Click on the Home icon in the bottom right to return to this page.

<a href="bookcreator://page/qRrEN0iwShW6lvo_FQFq1Q">Re-defining Learning</a>

<a href="bookcreator://page/TBgq_N47QwKWP28hYUyidQ">Time Saving</a>

<a href="bookcreator://page/VdY7ldEBROuHn4k3KEBb3g">Differentiation</a>

<a href="bookcreator://page/19o6oXOoQ-yXS96yPVOhfw">Engagement &amp; Motivation</a>

<a href="bookcreator://page/csfSRg55TbGpMP8Bwz4LbQ">Multi-Purpose</a>

<a href="bookcreator://page/UYgvr3UnQ6uItEonIlR4Ug">Training &amp; Customer Service</a>

<a href="bookcreator://page/IYU0FTTcQwO_KJn7CBLHew">Diversity &amp; Inclusion</a>

<a href="bookcreator://page/SWHRKFxpQvqrxKJ-0JRACQ">Student Choice</a>

For a district with a lot of digital tools on offer, and high staff turnover, Newton County's Technology Integration team pointed to Book Creator's ease of use as one of the key reasons that 56% of teachers use it daily. Listen to Technology Integration Specialist Kasey Hutchinson, who told us: "Teachers are looking for tools that students can self-engage and they can self-propel through the learning. Because this tool is so easy to use from a teacher standpoint, that's one of the biggest buy-ins by far."

https://api.bookcreator.com/users/v2/pvhMgTpVVqNFMLviRtxGMl77Zzp1/books/WMnbnz7aSEuapFfxjZGH1g/assets/oE4P2LPWTMCYXij1z_KHOA.png?width=499&height=469

https://api.bookcreator.com/users/v2/pvhMgTpVVqNFMLviRtxGMl77Zzp1/books/WMnbnz7aSEuapFfxjZGH1g/assets/kN4oa0W-TLOTB_XbBP1tiA.png?width=1080&height=1080

Thank you Newton County for sharing your special story with us!

"It's the one tool besides our LMS that everyone can see how it can be used."

Newton County use Book Creator across all ages and subjects, and even outside the classroom. Check out the wide range of books created by students, teachers and staff on the following pages...

- Ijeoma Johnson Instructional Technology Specialist

Newton County Schools is an ambitious school district based just outside Atlanta, Georgia, comprising 24 schools, with 21,000 students and 1,500 teachers. Newton County School System is a Title I district. The mission of Newton County Schools is to provide educational excellence for all students. To achieve this the staff is committed to ensuring that students can not only access their learning but engage, show up, and do the work. Newton County invests heavily in technology to deliver on these goals, and in 2019 they adopted Book Creator as one of their district-supported tools. Today, Book Creator is the most popular edtech tool in the district, second only to their LMS.

https://api.bookcreator.com/users/v2/pvhMgTpVVqNFMLviRtxGMl77Zzp1/books/WMnbnz7aSEuapFfxjZGH1g/assets/kPUWyG36QXmF38Zb1R13qg.jpg?width=553&height=572

This book is dedicated to the innovative teachers and incredibly supportive Technology Integration team (pictured above!) that have increased student engagement, improved learning outcomes and saved themselves time and resources by using Book Creator.

"I'll ask them a question about the content and they know it, because they wrote it, they illustrated it and they read it, so they are seeing the content in different ways, multiple times."

Suzanne Stokes, High School Anatomy and Forensic Science Teacher

"Book Creator merges a lot of pieces from several programs that I really like, so I don't have to send my students to other places."

Name

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