times they will take the work home and put it on the refrigerator and they have an audience of three or four but that’s it. But think about it - many of the students we work with these days have a global following from an early age, online, through social media. So an audience of one is not OK with them, be- cause they have grown up in a world of sharing, commenting and global relationships. 2. COLLABORATION I also realized that students seldom collaborate with each other in school. It’s the year 2020 and we are still telling students to work independently, to not talk, to not share and to keep their eyes on their own papers. They hate this. If you don’t believe me look at the number of videos on YouTube. Kids work together all the time. 3. LEGACY I also realized that my students weren’t contributing to the benefit of anyone else. All of their work was being thrown in a trash can. Nobody was seeing it. Nobody cared. Where was the work that would be left behind to benefit others? Other than the gum under the desk, nothing was being left behind for others. It was a big revelation to me to view the problem through these new lenses. The only problem was, I still didn’t really have a solution. I was looking for a tool that could help me wrap all of this up (a big ask, I know). Luckily for me technology in edu- cation has come on in leaps and bounds in the past decade or so, and I came across an app I hadn’t used before - Book Creator. Book Creator was launched on iPads in 2011, ostensibly not as an educational app but as a tool for self-publishing authors (although the UK-based developers soon realised they had an education app when teachers started using it from day one of launch). I remember searching the Apple App Store for “writing tools” and coming across Book Creator. I bought the full version with my own money for $3.99 (as my school wouldn’t buy it for me). I fell in love with the app instantly - I found it incredibly so easy to use, and it opened my eyes to the idea that anyone could be an author. So I was full of enthusiasm as I went back to my class with my new idea. And… I was greeted with the same moans and groans as usual. “You want us to do what? Doesn’t that involve writing? No way.” I looked at my students and told them, “Today is going to be different. Yes, it’s going to be different because we are going to write and publish a book.” The kids looked at me with confusion in their eyes. “Why would we want to write a book and publish it?”, they wondered. “I don’t want to read your writing anymore”, I said. “Your writ- ing is terrible!” (Gasps)
“I want everyone in the world to see how bad your writing is!” You could say my students were a little shocked. But then, a strange and magical thing happened. One student piped up: “But if we’re going to publish a book for the world to read, shouldn’t we make it good?” More ideas and questions followed, and the excitement in the room was palpable. I explained that they were going to write a book for a global audience and that people would leave feedback and comments and that people would love it. “What are we going to write about?” I didn’t care. I just wanted them to write. “How long will this take?”
I didn’t care. I just wanted them to write. “How much money are we going to make.”
None. The entire book would be given away for free. It’s not about the money. It’s about the legacy. It’s about the students writing and contributing to someone other than themselves. We began the writing process like any other assignment. We discussed character, setting, plot and more. We developed an idea for the story. We talked about adding audio, video, photos, text and more to our story. Engagement increased. Time on task increased and the energy in the classroom changed to some- thing you can normally only dream of. After about two weeks my students had a story. We published it and waited for the downloads to happen. After the first day, we had 16 downloads of our book. 16! That was amazing and the students were thrilled. Each day we added more and more downloads. The kids desperately wanted to write more books. Within three months we had written and published three eb- ooks on Apple’s Books store. We were graphing the downloads in the hall on chart paper, estimating how many downloads we would have by the end of the year and planning our next books. Comments from all over the globe came pouring in and it meant a great deal to the students. For the first time in their lives, they had a real, authentic audience for their work rather than a teach- er who was paid to give feedback. By the time I left that role, my class (and some other classes I had introduced the concept to) had published 160 books, which have been downloaded more than 60,000 times! My students were published authors, for sure. A NEW CHAPTER In 2018, I was approached by Book Creator to join their team as the Teacher Success Manager. I now get to teach others about Book Creator all day long, which I love! From that perspective, let me tell you about how effective Book Creator can be as an assistive learning tool. You’ll no doubt know already about Universal Design for Learning. As educators, we understand that students enter our classrooms each day with a wide range of skills, interests, needs and learning styles. For me, it’s about removing barriers and dif-
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December, 2020 / January, 2021 | www.closingthegap.com/membership
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