About iBooks Author

As a visual communications and design instructor, I have access to all of the great Adobe CC applications and years of experience designing with them. I can spot user friendliness from a mile away. In a nut shell, that is the luxury iBooks Authors affords. This free application allows the workaday book writing enthusiast the ease of use to create their own polished publishing without even having to pay for the software. The program has some basic pre-populated book shells for any novice to use, and the ability to customize pictures, fonts, and layouts with the click of a trackpad. Most functionalities are drag and drop, point and click, easy-peasy. Users even have the option of creating opacities and proportionately scaling artwork without even having to use key commands or special tools. The tool bar is basic and easy to navigate. The bonus is that after one is finished writing to their heart content, they even provide the option of publishing your work online from the comforts of your own abode.

For my test drive of iBook Author, I created the beginning of a book on K-12 art education. I thought this would be a great way for me to create my own book of class lessons which could be shared with other teachers. I used my own photography shot from my iPod to populate the pages with a lesson inspired by a picture book I found at the library Monsters Love Colors by Mike Austin.

After searching for information on tying K-12 art to literacy and the book title, I located a website which used this same book to create a crayon resist watercolor project. I decided to take this project to the next level by providing students the ability to personalize their wax resist monsters using line rendering techniques the following day.

iBook Author has much potential in the world of education. It provides a tool for designing and narrating stories or compiling information. Anyone could publish a book with the use of a computer and this free application. Teachers could use the program for creating their own books, resources, or learning modules which can be easily exported as a .pdf and shared. Students can use the software to create their own picture books, comic books, reports, growth portfolios, or even publish their own writing which can be shared electronically or printed. The only limitation is that one must have an Apple device to use this tool.