Strategy
Adapting iBooks for Children with Multiple Disabilities: Book Creator App
Create personalized iBooks for your students!
Recently I wanted to begin creating my own iBooks for some of my students with multiple disabilities who also had good use of their functional vision.
I decided to use the Book Creator app since it could easily be exported to a variety of e-book readers such as iBooks so the teachers who teach these students could easily access the iBooks on their classroom iPads or iOS devices.
Recently I created a simple book for one of my students who was ambulatory, new to the school and needed to learn how orient herself around the school. I took photographs of each room she reguarly traveled to and put them in the classroom iPad iBook.
The Book Creator apps has some really simple ways I could customize the page as well to make the page a big more stimulating for the child with a visual processing issue. This child in particular responded best to the colors red and yellow when it came to presenting new visual information.
Another aspect to the Book Creator app that I like is the ability for me add sounds to the pages. I could read the book outloud in my natural voice after the automated voice output. This options also allows for other types of sounds to be incorporated into the book creation.
Finally, my favorite aspect to using Book Creator is that it can easily be exported to iBooks! Check it out!
Finally, take a sneak peek of this app in action in this very short and brief DEMO of how this sort of book can be used in iBooks. I should also note that these books are completely functional within the app as well. Plus in the Book Creator App, the app has an auto-read option that might benefit some students.
The first video below is a quick demo of the Ackerman School iBook with the author’s recorded voice. On each page, the author taps the play button to hear that page’s recorded message. The second video is a demo of the complete Ackerman School iBook.
Editor’s Note: To view Julie’s other posts about Book Creator, go to:
Using VoiceOver with Book Creator: A Blind Student’s Experience
By Julie Johnson
