One of my favorite iPad apps for use in the classroom is Book Creator.  I love the way it allows teachers and students to easily pull from the camera roll and incorporate a wide variety of file types, including images, video, and audio.  Recently, however, I’ve been using Book Creator for a different purpose: I have discovered that it can be a page or image creator on my iPad.  

I can utilize Book Creator’s drawing tools and its ability to insert a variety of elements onto a page, such as images, shapes, stickers, text, speech bubbles, and freehand drawing.  

Once my page is designed, I can export that single page out of the book.  To do so, I simply tap the “i” icon in the top right corner, and I make sure to select “Page” at the top of the panel menu.    At the very bottom of the menu, there is a “Share Screenshot” option which allows me to choose not only the camera roll, but also a number of other export destinations including the Notability, iMovie, Google Drive, and Padlet apps.

The option to “Save Image,” pushes an image of the page to the Camera Roll of my iPad.  Save Image is different than taking a normal screenshot because the surrounding navigational buttons and options are not included in the image.  Just the page itself gets saved and exported to the Camera Roll.  From there, it is an image that can be used in another application –  shared to a Seesaw Class, imported into an Explain Everything video, added to a Google Slideshow, or even published to social media!  

One type of image that students and teachers often create is a photo collage.  In the past, I used photo collage apps like PicCollage, but now I have found that I can use Book Creator just as easily.  By using the Panels feature, I can take pictures directly within the Book Creator app, or I can pull from the existing photos in the camera roll.  As demonstrated in the accompanying photo, I can embellish the photos I import with text, stickers, free-hand drawing, or shapes.  

There are seemingly endless ideas for pages or images that could be created with Book Creator.  Students could demonstrate their understanding of a math concept, insert an image and type descriptive language to describe it, draw something freehand, create a mind map, or annotate on top of a map to demonstrate understanding.   As students draw freehand or annotate on top of the page, the drawing canvas becomes like a piece of tracing paper.  Once the annotation or drawing is complete, it can be moved around like an image on the page.  

Book Creator has many wonderful multimedia features, but the magic of Book Creator’s Share Screenshot function is that a single page can be shared quickly for use in other apps and to demonstrate understanding. It’s such a quick and simple process, but can lead to so many exciting learning activities!