Mythology eBook project...

A few weeks ago I shared an ePub project that I was working on where students wrote their on children's books.  Today, I wanted to share the latest project I worked on with a few 7th grade ILA teachers.

For this project the students were learning about writing styles and had write their own Greek Mythology-like myth.

1. Students wrote, revised, and edited their myths in Google docs
2. Students drew pictures that depicted their myth
3. For homework students were required to scan their drawings to convert to .jpg format
1. The next steps used Pages on the Macbooks
4. Students created a title on their document & assigned the paragraph style as "Title"
5. Students inserted a picture to use as their book's cover
6. Students put their names below the pictures (leaving the paragraph style as "Title"
7. Students inserted a page break below the author name
8. Students inserted a Table of Contents
1. In the inspector the Table of Content Included only Title and Heading 1
9. Students inserted a page break below the TOC
10. Students created chapter 1 & assigned the paragraph style as "Heading 1"
11. Students pasted the body of the text from the their Google doc into the pages document below Chapter 1 & assigned the paragraph style as "Body"
12. Students inserted a page break below the body of chapter 1
1. Students repeated steps 10, 11, & 12 for each chapter
2. The students ran with this and started creating chapters for 'About the Author', dedication,  prologue & epilogue.  It was great to see them get so excited!
13. Students saved the pages document.
14. Then they exported the document as an ePub, and saved it to their desktops.
15. Then they emailed the epub file to themselves or whatever device they were using.
1. Many found errors by reading it on their own devices.  Then went back to the macbook and edited the document further to later export the epub again.
16. The ePub files were loaded onto one iPad and then shared over the projector.  Students who wanted were able to read their stories to their peers.
17. Students were encouraged to email the epub file to parents and grandparents as well.

Results:

Students: The students came alive when they got to see their book on the iPad.  They began asking questions about how they could write their own eBooks at home, if they could share their books, and if they could sell their books.  (although I will add that some students did not like having to draw their own pictures. They could've used sketchup or other software to create images for their books)

Parents:  The teachers involved with this project sent home emails to the parents explaining what the project was about.  After the books were completed many parents replied to the teachers explaining how much they and their students loved this activity.  They went on to tell about how they found typos or gramatical errors together while reading their eBooks at home.

Teachers: The teachers expressed how much they loved the engagement from the students.  They were blown away by the amount of parental involvement in the revising and editing process.  (I think this was facilitated by the ease of having the students email the file right to their parents in class.

We will definitely be doing more projects like this!