Welcome to Our Site!

BTW was created by Patrick & Julie Johnson, two Canadian educators with an interest in eduction & technology. This site showcases our interactive IBOOKS for students, but we also explore educational issues in our INQUIRY segments and share lessons/teaching ideas in our TEACHING TOOLS sections. Use the Labels section in the sidebar to navigate by topic or simply browse.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

IBOOKS: Our First iBook Published in iBooks!


The Latest & Greatest News!

OUR FIRST BOOK PUBLISHED IN IBOOKS!

We are so pleased to announce that our "You Know The Answer" Adventures is now an iBook in the iBook store! This was a monumental step for us, to be an acknowledged Apple provider. We are very proud. Click on the image to check it out!




This is a great resource for late primary-early junior grades. Perfect for parents (to promote reading & writing skills over the summer) or teachers (as a literacy centre) or even just for the kids to have fun with language.


Here is our exciting trailer on youtube!




Here, multiple choice questions (commonly found on standardized testing) are presented in a whole new way…as clickable adventure stories…

Feel the excitement of...
  • Noun Plurals!
  • Contractions!
  • Nouns Verbs & Adjectives!
  • Putting Sentences in Order!
  • Writing Concise Sentences!

...as you star in a short adventure story, clicking the answers you choose, learning and demonstrating that YOU KNOW THE ANSWER!



MORE IBOOKS ARE ON THE WAY!

We have also been hard at work (at play? making these books is truly a lot of fun) creating two new interactive iBooks aimed at older students.

First, there is Sarah The Super Spy! This is a  fun comic series about Sarah, an 'ordinary girl' who lives an 'ordinary life'. She goes to school, hangs with her friends, walks her dog, and eats pizza. Then, suddenly, she experiences an extra-ordinary transformation...into a Super Spy! And her life becomes a lot more complicated...

Sarah The Super Spy features clickable multiple choice questions to test reader comprehension on such things as recall, words in context, and inferencing. It also includes clickable sound effects to accompany the story line. This is for the Junior age range.

Next, there is the Zombie short story collection: Zombies Come In All Shapes And Sizes. I wrote these in response to my Grade 7/8 class--a class composed of many reluctant readers, and predominantly full of boys. When we did our short story unit in the Spring of 2012, I struggled to find material that would engage them. They disliked many of my choices, moaned and complained. To be honest, I couldn't blame them. There are a lot of great novels for the young adult field but the  short story arena for intermediates is slim pickings.  I relied on a lot on Poe...and the quirky stories of Australian writer Paul Jennings...

To make a long story short, I finally said to them: TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT TO READ IN A SHORT STORY AND I'LL WRITE IT.

This is some of their top criteria: zombies, explosions & car chases, humor, horror, romance, and mystery.

As soon as summer hit, and some free time opened up, I got started. I incorporated all of their criteria! We've also added zombie animation and goofy pictures to make it even more appealing.

This book, like the others, will include clickable segments (such as fun sound clips/animations) and will have comprehension questions embedded within--all in an effort to make reading study enjoyable! As it should be!

Both Sarah The Super Spy and Zombies Come in All Shapes and Sizes also have a writing prompts page with a list of suggested writing activities. We're hoping our stories inspire those who read them to create related writing pieces of their own!

Keep an eye out as these are COMING SOON!

No comments:

Post a Comment