iBooks, Nearpod Yes! Create your Own Interactive Books!

Imagine being able to create your own books or documents that students could view via the iPad, instead of wasting precious time at the copy machine making numerous copies of paper that students will just lose anyway. Well you can, with iBook Author and the iBooks App on the iPad.

What is iBook Author? A free Application that allows you to create beautiful multi-touch textbooks for the iPad. You can create books with galleries, video, interactive diagrams, 3D objects, mathematical expressions, and more. These books bring content to life in ways that the printed page never could.
 Check out more about iBook Author here
You can create complete content for your students really simply, and quickly!  It is really quite amazing!

After you create your book in iBook Author, you can publish them, and view them in iBooks on your iPad.

I had the opportunity to visit Ms. Marlow's 4th grade classroom to see first hand how she was using iBooks. Ms. Marlow created short iBooks for her Westward Expansion unit. They accessed the content via the iBooks on the iPads, and used them to determine how they would spend their money for their virtual travel.

Students were given a demo on the SmartBoard to show them how to create their supply list.

The information they need is located directly on their iPad. 

The teacher even included quiz questions.

The students are very engaged

The iBook even included an interactive Brainpop component

 most importantly they are using the technology!

Check out another iBook created by Mr. Andrews, a 3rd grade teacher.
iBooks in 3rd Grade

NEARPOD

Another great resource for creating interactive content for students is using Nearpod
Use Nearpod to create iPad content, that allows synchronized, and interactive material.

While iBooks is an app designed for self-paced learning, Nearpod is designed for situations in which you may desire for all of your students to view the same material, at the same time. The teacher has total control of the viewing, and students can not progress through the content, until the teacher has switched their screen. This very easy to use application, allows you to transfer content created in presentation software such as PowerPoint, Keynote, etc, and convert it to a format viewable on the iPad.