Apps to Use as Student ePortfolios

I have yet to find the perfect Digital Portfolio app that I think I would use exclusively in a Visual Arts class. Some apps can be used as graphic portfolios or as beautiful sketchbooks, others are great at sharing. Not all of the apps available are great at all of these things. I have spent a heap of time trying to find one and would be more than happy for someone to send me the name of one they are using successfully. Having said that the following are apps that I would consider using;

Evernote: FREE 
Evernote is an easy-to-use, free app that helps you remember everything across all of the devices you use. Stay organized, save your ideas and improve productivity. Evernote lets you take notes, capture photos, create to-do lists, record voice reminders--and makes these notes completely searchable, whether you are at home, at work, or on the go.

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/evernote/id281796108?mt=8

Paper: FREE
Paper is an easy and beautiful way to create on iPad. Capture your ideas as sketches, diagrams, illustrations, notes or drawings and share them across the web. Paper was designed from the ground up for touch and creating on the go. No fussy buttons, settings or other distractions. Paper works the way you think, like a familiar notebook or journal. Have all of your ideas with you in one place.

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/paper-by-fiftythree/id506003812?mt=8

Three Ring: FREE
Three Ring is a fast, flexible, and simple way to organize and present your students' real world work, from handwritten assignments to classroom presentations. Unleash the power and the flexibility of digital tools, without sacrificing the important work your students do in non-digital formats. Rescue student work from the bottom of backpacks, trashcans, and filing cabinets and have it at your fingertips.

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/three-ring/id504311049?mt=8

Coolibah: FREE
Coolibah is a digital scrapbooking app that could just as easily be used to present student's work as a digital portfolio. The features include: creating your own layouts using unlimited photos, elements, frames and text. You can move, size, and rotate photos, elements and frames anywhere on your layout. More importantly it has layout export for sharing online, texting and emailing

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/coolibah-digital-scrapbooking/id325079858?mt=8

Voicethread: FREE
VoiceThread is already in use by architects, executives, kindergartners, professors, and engineers around the world. More than 25% of the top Universities in the U.S. use VoiceThread to connect and communicate around digital media. Create and share conversations about documents, snapshots, diagrams and videos - basically anything there is to talk about. You can talk, type, and draw right on the screen.

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/voicethread/id465159110?mt=8

Minimal Folio: $2.99 AU
Minimal Folio is the easiest way to present your portfolio of images, video and pdf on your iPad. The app is unbranded so your folio does the talking. Minimal Folio allows you to copy and paste between folios or apps. It also allows Cloud sync to multiple devices with Dropbox as well as the ability to transfer files with iTunes. Settings in the app enable video scrubbing, sync options and more.

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/minimal-folio-design-photo/id385429744?mt=8

Chart of the Day: The REAL Pell Grant Issue

Thanks to Nate Johnson for a fantastic new chart that clearly illustrates who's to blame for the incredible growth in Pell Grant expenditures: private for-profit higher education. Switch the settings from "all institutions" to "for profits" and watch the red line (for-profits) pull dramatically away from the grey (national average).  Now Nate, please do this for federal student loans!

Housing Policy & Educational Opportunity: Some Notes

Today I had the pleasure of being a panelist in Richmond at HOME's (Housing Opportunities Made Equal) Blogger Luncheon on Housing & Opportunity. Besides being treated to a tasty lunch (& free parking!) I got to listen to and partake in interesting conversations about Richmond Metro Area housing, public and mass transportation, families, parenting, entrepreneurship, politics, democratic process and institutions, social media, real estate, communities, and, of course, education. Here I'm going to summarize what I shared there, including links.

Three ways I could think of that housing influences educational opportunities and outcomes are:

1) Housing conditions, meaning the conditions and environment that students and their families live in. Such conditions can affect a child's readiness to learn.

• Is the dwelling and surrounding neighborhood safe?
• Is the housing well-maintained?
• Is there running, potable water? 
• Is there adequate heating/cooling? Is the heating and cooling affordable? 
• Is there a lot of noise? Is there a quiet place to study or read?  
• Is the housing in an area of concentrated poverty? Is the child in an environment causing toxic stress for them and/or for a disproportionate number of their neighbors?
• What is the air quality in the neighborhood?
• Is there access to supermarkets and healthy food?
• Are there adequate public transportation options?
• Is there access to adequate health care?

2) The strength and existence, even, of a neighborhood school. Studies show that most parents prefer to send their children to schools in their neighborhood. It's more convenient but also serves as a positive community and support systems builder. Of course, this practice can conflict with making schools diverse and providing equality of access, which bring me to point 3.

3) Housing and zoning policies. Economic integration of housing and neighborhoods is an over-looked yet proven tool for school reform (N.B.: I am by no means saying it's the only one).

• According to the (must-read!) book The Color of Their Skin about the Richmond Public Schools desegregation process (the book also covers other districts in Virginia), school desegregation only occurred in any substance for a few years before the schools in Richmond proper and the surrounding areas re-segregated. Busing was a temporary and heavily protested solution. Housing policies needed to change but did not. In fact, zoning policies became more discriminatory, serving as de facto segregation laws.

• According to a study reported in 2010 by The Century Foundation, low-income students in Montgomery County, Maryland, who go to high-performing public schools in more affluent districts do better academically than their peers who live in lower-income districts attending schools with majority low-income populations, even if those schools are given more resources.

• Schools in Wake County, North Carolina, have a smaller achievement gap because of integration--magnet programs were located in low-income neighborhoods.

• Furthermore, a study by the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program released last week showed that metropolitan areas' housing policies keep low-income students from attending high-performing schools. Restrictive or exclusionary policies that prohibit the development of apartment buildings and smaller houses on smaller parcels cause economic segregation. 

• In high-performing, mixed-SES schools, all kids benefit from: lower rates of teacher and principal turnover; parents with more time and resources to give to the school; parents who feel more empowered to advocate for rich, meaningful, and vital educational opportunities; fewer families who are under significant stress; and being part of a diverse, pluralistic learning community.

• Additional links:

1. Study of Montgomery County schools shows benefits of economic integration
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/14/AR2010101407577.html

2. Interactive: Housing Costs, Zoning and School Access:

   http://www.brookings.edu/info/schools/school_access_interactive.aspx

3. The New Brookings Report on Economic Segregation

http://botc.tcf.org/2012/04/the-new-brookings-report-on-economic-segregation.html 

4. Could new zoning laws help educate poor kids?

   http://www.marketplace.org/topics/wealth-poverty/could-new-zoning-laws-help-educate-poor-kids#.T5HZd4q-2-0.twitter

5. Study Links Zoning to Education Disparities

   http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/04/19/29zoning.h31.html?cmp=SOC-SHR-TW

6. Education For Poor Students Threatened By Exclusionary Housing Policies, Report Says

   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/19/education-for-poor_n_1435876.html?ref=tw

Money Exchange Game

We have been playing the Money Exchange Game at home lately.  Bean is extremely interested in money lately, so I made this little activity.  We play this at school, and she has a computer game by Everyday Math just like this.  If you have used the Golden Bead Exchange Game before, it's very similar.  The object of the game is to get to $1.  Each player rolls the dice and gets that amount in cents.  The exchange comes into play when there is more than 5 pennies, it gets exchanged for a nickle.  2 nickels, 1 dime.  2 dimes and a nickle, 1 quarter.  4 quarters = $1.  We play until all players have gotten to $1 to tone down any competitiveness.  We also talk about how this is a game of chance, not skill.  Getting to the dollar first is just that, not winning.  If you can carry a pair of dice in your bag, you can play this game anywhere.  Imagine that!

She rolls a 7, takes a nickle and two pennies.

She rolls a 10, gets a dime.

She rolls a 5, and needs to exchange her pennies for a nickle.

Two nickles, will become a dime.

Fast forward a bit.....she exchanges all the way up to 4 quarters.  To one dollar.  FUN!

 

We Mixed....Montessori with Imagination

 And it is so sweet.  Recently, I added some imagination/pretend play items to our playroom.  I have to say, what a brilliant mixture it has created.  In a home, it works so wonderfully.

They played trains while another practiced writing, while another built the pink tower, matched with the brown stair. 

The two can coexist, with care.  It's true :)

I mixed the Pink Tower and The Brown Stair together in a pretty basket from Africa.  I found that my girls didn't use them as much out on the shelves, as the mystery of the differing sizes were already displayed.  So, I put them together in this basket (that little box holds the tiny Pink Tower Cube) and let them re-discover the grading on their own.  

Pumpkin is playing with her trains in a tree.  Why?  It flies, and that's okay.  Pretending is creativity, and that's valid in any environment.  

Here we mix a Waldorf toy with the trains while tracing cursive letters.  

Elites to 99%: Resistance is Futile

Today my Twitter feed brought a swan song for public higher education, sung by a chorus of elites.  It was accompanied in harmony by some   public higher education leaders who are surrendering and turning in their badges.

A few highlights:

• The co-founder and former chief executive officer of CarMax told a crowd attending the Association of Governing Boards of Colleges and Universities 2012 National Conference on Trusteeship that public universities should strive for major tuition increases. Reports the Chronicle of Higher Education, "Poor kids borrow money so that the rich kids can get a tuition discount," said Mr. Auston Ligon, now a member of the Board of Visitors at St. John's College in Annapolis, Md. "Quit subsidizing people like my kids."   
• Gordon Gee of The Ohio State (and buddy of Biddy Martin) is promoting a forthcoming book from Stanford University Press called "Public No More."  This little ditty plays a familiar tune, sung by two business school types. Again we are told, the current business model of higher education is broken (duh) and public higher ed's "longstanding dependence on state subsidies...is unsustainable...recent cuts are permanent...public universities either recognize this...or face decline....attempts to block competitive forces by resistance and delaying actions are self-defeating."  Apparently these dudes never heard of the need to present and evaluate without pre-judgement alternative models in policy prescriptions.
• According to Inside Higher Ed, some educators are full-on gung-ho about privatization and not even experiencing "angst" about it (sidenote to IHE--nice framing, making having reservations sound like neuroses). The chancellor of Maricopa Community College, a man in charge of guiding the futures of thousands of black and brown students, apparently has an oracle.  Rufus Glasper tells us "We have no choice. The state funds are gone forever."  There's no point in anything but his kind of "realism," and his so-called solution is a private for-profit model. 

Just a few questions. Why is the CarMax guy being invited to talk with AGBCU?  What's his expertise-- oh right, car sales. Discounting.  Clearly buying college is like buying a car--all about the transaction. And we all know that poor people with their complete information totally understand how discounting works, that's why high tuition-high aid is so successful...  Say it with me now: puhleese.

Second, when did smart people all start singing in unison about simplistic, singular solutions to complex problems?  Did they all attend a special dinner party together where primers were distributed, and the private monetary incentives for making the education "public no more" were explained?  Sure seems like it.  Because they are talking to highly educated people in a way that is utterly pedantic-- there is one solution and one solution only -- pass the buck onto the "consumer"? Can you imagine if instead they said, "Hey 5th graders, pay your own way through elementary school?" 

Third, how much longer are you people (yes you, our readers) going to take this?  For-profit leaders clearly worked this out quite well ages ago, using their massive profits paid for with your federal tax dollars to lobby legislators and university leaders into believing the future lies in private, for-profit education.  They're doing it from up high in the skyscrapers around the world, while many higher ed leaders are out there wittingly and unwittingly carrying their water and doing their bidding.  We mere "academics" and "students" who won't admit that really we are "obstacles" and "consumers" are simply in the way.

 PUBLIC NO MORE. WE HAVE NO CHOICE. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE. 

Where have we heard that before? 

Learning to Write on the iPad

Lots of people have been asking about using the iPad as a way of teaching young students to write. I personally would not advocate this as the primary way of teaching youngsters the intricacies of handwriting and letter recognition but as fun supplementary activity it might provide some motivation. Here are a couple of fun apps that reinforce some of the basic writing skills taught by parents and teachers.

School Writing: $4.99 AU

School Writing allows the teacher to prepare lessons using written instructions, unique images and audio instructions, to which the student can respond using written and audio recordings. Students learn shapes, letters, numbers, words and more. 

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/school-writing/id498417053?mt=8

iWriteWords: $2.99 AU

iWriteWords teaches your child handwriting while playing a fun and entertaining game. Help Mr. Crab collect the numbered balls by dragging him with your finger - and drawing the letter at the same time. Once all the letters in the word are drawn properly, a cute drawing appears. Slide the letters into the spinning hole and advance to the next level.

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/iwritewords/id307025309?mt=8

Alphabet Board: $1.99 AU

A fun way to learn to write!Using tried and true methods, Alphabet Board gives your children a fun, interactive way to learn to write. Alphabet Board associates different letter types with sound, promotes reading by addressing letter recognition confusion, includes large letter shapes for easy tracing and phonetic sounds for every letter.

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/alphabet-board/id414326026?mt=8

rED Writing - Learn to Write: $1.99 AU

Co-designed by an Australian teacher for children aged 3-7 years old, rED Writing contains 8 education approved handwriting fonts used throughout Australian schools. Featuring 6 fun learning modes (including upper and lower case letters, numbers and handwriting shapes) all supported with audio using a clear Australian male voice.

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/red-writing/id474392775?mt=8

abc PocketPhonics: $2.99 AU

Letter sounds. Handwriting. First words. PocketPhonics teaches all three. Kids, parents and teachers love it. Aimed at kids aged between 3 and 6, and using the best ‘phonics’ teaching techniques, PocketPhonics introduces kids to each of the key letter sounds. As they learn the sounds, the app guides them how to write each letter .

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/abc-pocketphonics/id299342927?mt=8

Pre-K Letters and Numbers: FREE

Pre-K teaches children Letters, Words, Numbers and Phonics in a fun and engaging way following government curriculum's adopted in UK, US and Canada from pre-K to grade 5. The application brings together experiences in the classroom to your children's hands with the bonus of allowing parents and teachers to monitor their performance.

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/pre-k-letters/id440235386?mt=8

Alphabytes: $1.99 AU

A bit of education in every byte with 4 entertaining ways to learn about the alphabet, writing, spelling, and memorization. Kids will love learning the alphabet with fully animated interactions for every letter. They can also learn to write uppercase and lowercase letters through the repetition of tracing. Spelling words has never been so much fun.

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/alphabytes/id423710441?mt=8

Intro to Letters by Montessorium: $5.49 AU

Intro to Letters includes the activities that help students to learn the sounds of the letters, in a series of guided, interactive exercises. With an emphasis on phonetics, instead of letter names, your child will trace and select the letters. Through a number of engaging activities, your child will learn the sounds of the phonograms, and unite these with their symbols.

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/intro-to-letters/id387232375?mt=8

SUPER WHY! for iPad: $4.49 AU

The SUPER WHY app from PBS KIDS was developed by Bean Creative in partnership with PBS and Out of the Blue Enterprises, the producers of the breakthrough preschool series SUPER WHY. The series is designed to help kids ages 3 to 6 with the critical skills that they need to learn (and love) to read.

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/super-why!-for-ipad/id362179828?mt=8

Share My ABCs: $4.99 AU

Trace letters and send messages to your loved ones! Have fun learning to write by tracing letters, words and animals in Alphabet World! Once the trace has been completed you can share your handwritten messages. Mums and Dads can change the settings as you watch your kids writing improve and track your progress from practice to guided tracing. 

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/share-my-abcs/id483552134?mt=8

On social media

Colleagues at the American Educational Research Association's annual meeting asked me to speak informally at a Sunday morning workshop on the topic of social media. I covered a range of topics, including what it's like to write for the Education Optimists.  In case you're wondering what it's felt like "behind the scenes" here are the videos.

Science Probes for the iPad

Science is one of those subjects that really excite students because they get to see cause and effect, they get to create, record and then document results and they get to manipulate the variables that produce the data. Students then get to make connections between what they do and the real world.

Add an iPad, a series of carefully chosen apps and a couple of probes and you can make all of these observations happen in a mobile environment - outside, at home or even on an excursion. I would love to be a student in a classroom with these tools!

iSeismometer: FREE

iSeismometer stores 10 seconds of data and you can drag the screen to re-track the previous data. Submit data on the website with your location info. You can also customize the target URL. Send the URL to your email address so that you can easily download the data as csv file.


http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/iseismometer/id304190739?mt=8

Accelerometer Data Pro: $2.99 and $5.49

The Pro version saves the collected data on the Flash file system of the device allowing a very large amount of data to be collected, and allows the data to be accessed after the application is restarted. The Accelerometer Data application gives you direct access to the iDevice accelerometer data. The data can be streamed to your computer using UDP over wifi.


http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/accelerometer-data/id305088642?mt=8

iCelsius with Probe attachment ( 4 models between $50 - $100)

iCelsius: FREE + Probe

iCelsius is a temperature probe that turns the iPad into a digital thermometer. The app will read the temperature, create graphs and set up alerts. The iCelsius measures temps between -22°F to 158°F (-30°C to 70°C) and is suited for many applications.


http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/icelsius/id434212879?mt=8

Sparkvue Wireless Probes

Sparkvue: FREE + Probe

SPARKvue brings real-time measurement, data visualization, and analysis to science education everywhere. Students can use the new PASPORT interface to connect to over 70 sensors, measuring pH, temperature, force, carbon dioxide level, and many more.


http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/sparkvue/id361907181?mt=8

Oscium Osilloscope Probe attachment $298

IMSO-104 Osilloscope: FREE + Probe

The Oscium scope can also do all of those things you would expect from any scope: triggering, running measurements, the ability to freeze the display, screen shot, data capture, e-mail, and configuration saving. The unit supports a single analog probe and four digital probes, all included in the kit.


http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/imso/id411757356?mt=8

Stop Subsidizing the Upper Middle-Class

Today Stephen Burd from Education Sector released a provocative new report that fully supports my contention (and that many others including Sandy Baum, Mike McPherson, Rick Kahlenberg) that we should stop subsidizing the upper middle-class with tax credits for college, and start focusing federal financial aid on those who need it most: Pell recipients.

Every time I've publicly discussed this idea I've been attacked as not caring about the middle-class.  This is a red herring-- suggesting that scarce dollars should be targeted to those who most need and will most benefit from them is simply good policy making. It's not about "who cares about whom."  As I pointed out following Obama's latest speech in Michigan, tax credits are demonstrably ineffective at their goals.  Burd calls a spade a spade when he adds, "Notably, while policymakers continue to tout the tuition tax breaks as a middle-class benefit, the introduction of the AOTC led to significant reductions in the share of the overall benefits going to families making between $25,000 and $75,000."

As a result, of the $55 billion distributed in college tax credits between 2010-2014, most will go to families earning over $100,000.  Tax credits don't make or break their children's decisions about attending or college, and are unlikely to even affect where they attend or how long they take to finish.  Instead they operate as a sort of "reward" to the family for having a college-bound child, and a little "apology" for the high costs. Of course these are nice things for the government to do for families, but since they don't change student outcomes, they simply aren't necessary.  Well, mostly.  The one caveat is that they may incur some political support for aid programs generally, a benefit that accrues to all recipients.  But that's very hard to demonstrate, and probably isn't worth their high cost.

Let's hope that Congress is listening, and stops attacking the Pell program as inflated and unbearable. What's clearly not needed are these tax credits.  Enough already.

Monster List of iBook Tutorials

There are numerous sites that are now offering Tutorials and how-to guides for creating ebooks in iBook Author. As teachers are now comfortable with the idea of creating their own e-textbooks more and more people are looking for resources to learn how to build touch enabled books that take full advantage of the iPad capabilities. Inserting video and high resolution photographs is one thing but how about inserting 3D manipulatives and models that are touch sensitive. Here is a list of some of the resources online. If you know of other good ones please add them in the comments section and we will update the list.

Web Tutorials:

Publishing with iBooks Author:
This book is intended to get you up and writing in iBooks Author. You’ll learn what to expect from this new tool and what its strengths and limitations are. You’ll see how you can create beautifully designed pages and how you can bring those designs to life with interactive content in ways that, before now, were only possible in a web browser on the Internet.

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920025597.do

iBook Author: The Complete Guide

Want to create your own interactive eBook for the iPad? It’s actually really simple using the iBooks Author program that Apple provides for free! Many classrooms are reading their text books on an iPad. To make this easy Shawn Ozbun has put together the complete guide to help walk you through the entire creation and publishing process.

http://shawnozbun.com/ipad/ibook-author-the-complete-guide/

Emerson College - Department of Journalism:
This is a great little site with close to 40 small tutorials for learning to use iBooks Author. These tutorial start at the basic like Starting iBooks, Using Templates and An Overview of the Toolbar right through to Inserting and Modifying html and Inserting and Modifying 3D Widgets. This is a good site to start your iBook Author journey

http://ecjourno.com/diyjourno/?page_id=38

iBook Author and Apples ecosystem of interactive content:
Jermy Dorm posted a great article over at iPads in Education Ning. In it Jeremy discusses the different insertable widgets that can be added to iBooks. He has written a simply and easy to read article for the teacher with little technical know-how. It makes for a good read to open up your eyes to the very real possibilities that are on offer even to the most techno phobic amongst us.

http://ipadeducators.ning.com/profiles/blogs/ibooks-author-and-interactive-content

Class Widgets:

iBooks Author comes with 6 inbuilt widgets to add great interactive elements to your iBooks. Sliding Puzzles, Live Twitter Feeds, Interactive Timelines, Embedded YouTubes or Vimeo, Embedded Google Maps or Live Polling. With Class Widgets, you can easily add more. No need to program or install Dashcode, just click on the Wizard and download your auto-generated widget.

http://classwidgets.com/

iBook Creatives:

This is the home of iBookCreatives.com - a community for and of iBook authors. Here you’ll find tips, tools, news, reviews, and tutorials related to publishing e-books with Apple’s free publishing tool – iBook Author. There are a number of tutorials on adding PowerPoint, Keynotes or just useful keyboard shortcuts.

http://ibookcreatives.com/2012/02/02/keyboard-shortcuts-for-ibooks-author/

TES Tutorials

TES is home to more than 300,000 teaching resources developed by teachers for teachers. With over 1.9 million members spread across 197 countries, TES are the largest network of teachers in the world. Here they have four tutorials on different aspects of iBook Author including; Images Galleries, Video Widgets, Adding Interactive Images and Creating Study Cards.

http://www.tes.co.uk/mypublicprofile.aspx?uc=2261160

Adding a Cartoon To iBook in iBooks Author – Tutorial

This is a clear and concise tutorial for adding images into your iBook. It is written by cartoonist and illustrator Mark Anderson. He recognises the potential that iBook Author has for education but wants people to see beyond that and see the potential of the tool as a self publishing platform.

http://www.andertoons.com/cartoon-blog/2012/01/adding-a-cartoon-to-ibooks-author.html

Photshop and Coding:
This is a single tutorial for creating fullscreen ibook pages. The possibility to make an image to pop up fullscreen, so that any small illustration may be appreciated as big as the iPad display allows – and even more, zooming in. There are at least three ways to do this in iBooks Author, each one with its own drawbacks: because fullscreen and borderless aren’t synonyms.

http://www.davidebarranca.com/2012/04/ibooks-author-fullscreen-images/

Videos:

1. Apple iBooks Author Tour

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr076C_ty_M


2. Adding HTML to iBooks Author with Tumult Hype

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_3-OWNb6Dg&feature=related


3. iBook Author Tutorial - Sharing Your iBook Author File With a Friend

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYVogclRy1U

Paid Resources:

Templates for iBooks: $4.49
Templates for iBooks Author provide you with 20 Templates. The variety of styles includes astrology, science, urban and wild life, leisure and many more. To use Templates for iBooks Author you just need a Mac with iBooks Author 1.0 or later. All the Templates are flexible -pictures can be replaced with a drag-and-drop ease, as most of the elements are easy to move, resize or delete.

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/templates-for-ibooks-author/id507420043?mt=12

Meet iBooks Author: $4.99

This hands-on guide steers you through how to lay out your Multi-Touch ebook. Starting with picking a template, you learn how to add and use text, import from Pages and Word, and create a table of contents. This practical, approachable guide will quickly help you start creating Multi-Touch ebooks!

http://www.peachpit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0133069877

Book Palette: $9.99 AU

Jumsoft Book Palette offers you 20 beautiful templates for iBooks Author. Each template included in the app features an assortment of stylish and modern page layouts. You can use them as a starting point and go from there by typing or pasting your own text, adding or removing text boxes, and dropping images or other media.

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/book-palette/id497704085?mt=12

iBooks Author Templates: $19.99 AU

Have a great idea but can't get it onto the page. Choose from dozens of professionally designed templates by name-brand designers. Say good bye to boring designs and hello to an eBook that stands out from the crowd. All of the template designs are 100% customizable. Import your own photos, change a color, or drag and drop any element to your heart's content. These templates start from $19.99

http://www.ibooksauthortemplates.com/