Picture books on the IWB (Part 2 of 2)

In my previous post, I reviewed some websites for reading picture books online. Today I’ll suggest some ways to turn a physical book into an electronic book.

Firstly, some notes about copyright. As I understand it, it would currently contravene copyright laws to scan a picture book and show it on the board. But photocopying your workbooks to A3 to show them to students is also a problem, and most teachers do this.

I believe that authors and publishers need to address this issue by releasing a low res (for printing) online version of their book. As IWBs grow in popularity, teachers will want to show these books to their class. It is such a delight to be able to easily view a large copy of a book, and know that every child can see the book and view the pictures.

So undertake this tutorial at your own peril 🙂

In the meantime, I think that teachers can also play fairly (in my experience, most teachers are pretty good at respecting the work of other people). Scan your own or your school library’s copy of the book and don’t share this with teachers from other schools. I made it a rule to use the scanned copy only when I had the physical book in my classroom.

Firstly, you will need to scan the book. If possible, it’s a good idea to enlist a parent or older student to help with this on a regular basis. You can get decent scanners for under $100AUS today. If you really can’t get a scanner, then it is possible to use a digital camera but your results won’t be quite as good.

When you are scanning the book, it is a good idea to rename the files as you scan them e.g. tree1.jpg, tree2.jpg etc. Then put all the files from one book in a folder, and label the folder appropriately.

Once you’ve scanned all your pictures, double-click the first file. This will automatically launch Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. You can simply read the book in this format if you like. Click on the arrows at the bottom of the window to turn the pages.

 

There are several advantages to transferring the images into a flipchart however. In a flipchart you can:

• Add page turn effects to make it look like a real book
• Use white pen to blank out some text and predict the missing words/ put in punctuation/ change synonyms.
• Add speech bubbles to characters
• Use the sound recorder to record the whole text or some characters’ voices

To put the book in a flipchart, open up Windows Fax and Picture Viewer and  a blank flipchart. Use the Area camera tool to take a full screen picture of each page. Send the picture to the next page of the flipchart.

Then you can photograph the whole book from Windows Fax and Picture Viewer without going back to your flipchart.

This is a lovely way to share a text with the whole class and make your literacy lessons more interactive.

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