Big Universe: A World of Online Books

[Cyndi Danner-Kuhn]

http://www.biguniverse.com/

Teachers from the Trenches: Have you used Big Universe, if so could you tell us about your experience and if you have used a similar tool could you share that experience and link. thanks

Students: Please reflect on your Big Universe project and share the link to the book you created.

[Traci Wood]

http://www.biguniverse.com/createkidsbooks/541/ten-in-the-pit

I think this is a neat website, even though my creativity is lacking. I think kids would love this and may try to use it with one of my writing groups I work with. It was easy to use and got published quickly. I was expecting to wait several days and it was only 1. I can see using this in the classroom.

[Rusty Willis]

This week has had me in awe! I love Big Universe, and I am amazed at Read the Words. I can only imagine the applications, with blind students, or even with my third grade tutee who is having trouble with simple letter/sound relationships. I could create books on Big Universe, and record the text for an instant Book on Tape, that could be about that student and all his interests. Can you imagine how interested he would be in reading a book about himself?

I haven't got a handle on how I'll use Voki yet, but it was fun to create my avatar, which can be changed as needed. Right now, it has a Halloween background. I was able to make my Voki avatar look as much like me as possible. The only thing I didn't like about Read the Words was that they don't let you manipulate the avatar very much at all. I couldn't get it to look much like me. I got much closer with the Voki avatar. I guess I could use Voki to read the words of the Big Universe books as well. I was amazed that right after I was published, eight people had already read my book and have given me 4 smileys out of five. That made me feel great because I knew it wasn't classmates since I hadn't posted the links yet. It was all those other people out there on the website and they liked it.

I had so much fun this week! I can't wait to create books with not only students, but my own children right now. The book I created was in honor of my father-in-law who had a heart attack Monday. My kids were struggling to make sense of our talks about his heart and our needed change in lifestyle. This book really helped them understand. I can't wait to help them create their own books. Jenna, my 2nd grader, wrote a Halloween story in class today, and I'm thinking about helping her publish it on Big Universe. I often feel that I spend too much time on my homework and not enough time with them, so when I find homework I can use with my own kids, I get real excited.

Here are the links to the items on my website:
Big Universe: http://rustywillis.homestead.com/Projects.html
Voki: http://rustywillis.homestead.com/Funnies.html
Read the Words: http://rustywillis.homestead.com/Lessons.html

[Kelly Giebler]

http://www.biguniverse.com/create/571

Here is the link to my big universe book. The book I created is for my husband, Trevor's, 2 year old neice. I showed it to her after I finished it and she loved it!! This website is great. Not only are there tons of books to read, but you can create your own. It took me a while to get started, but once I did, I had a blast making all the scenes. I think that you could create a story that tells about an historical event for example and show it to a class. The possibilities are endless!

[Shalon Ragnoni]

I really enjoyed creating the book for this project. At first I was stressing because I had no idea what sort of story to write and then where to even begin. A few months ago my daughter, 9, wrote a short, short story about a duck. I thought to myself that it was really cute and would be a good place to start. I took her two pages and expanded on the story and amazingly I created a story. I even had one of the students I work with as a para help me come up with a title to the story.

Since I can not draw, I love the fact that we can illustrate it ourselves by using tons of different pictures on the site. The one thing I did not like was that we couldn't "lock" things into place. I caught myself multiple times trying to relocate one thing and accidently grabbing the background and moving it. Once I got the hang of it, it was a piece of cake.

I think this would be a wonderful thing for students to use after working on writing a short poem or story. Why not let them illustrate it and publish it. Since it said you had to be 13, the class may have to work on a story together and then illustrate together and publish together. In all my spare time, i would like to create another book. haha on the spare time!!

http://www.biguniverse.com/create/569

[Amy Schroller]

This book project was very fun. I believe that they could make it a little easier to use and manipulate some of the objects and text boxes. I do not feel that my book was very creative because this was website was a little complicated for me to use. With that said, here is my online children's book http://www.biguniverse.com/createkidsbooks/read/563

[Ashley Salmans]

Wow, I thought this was a neat website. I really enjoyed creating my own children’s book. I thought it was fairly easy to use and I think students would really enjoy creating a book on this site. I thought they had tons of pictures and backgrounds to choose from, but it took a long time to look through all of them. I wish you could type in a key word and it would search for pictures that match that word.

Below is the link to my book. On the second to last page, I meant to change South Pole to Hawaii before publishing it, but know I can’t change it, so it has to stay like that. Enjoy!

http://www.biguniverse.com/createkidsbooks/564/where-in-the-world-i...

[Lorena Cisneros]

http://www.letterpop.com/newsletters/Cisneros/99270/
I had fun with this project, although it was lengthy. I enjoyed putting books together for my little 3 yr. old to look at. I made this book thinking of her and how it can help them learn their abc's and recognize the sounds that each letter makes. I like this site. I think this is one I will definately use in the future as a short lesson for Language Arts and Spelling, just to make it fun for the kids and my own kids as a scrapbook. I compiling all my daughters picsso I can actually have an album that I don't have to find a spot in the bookcase for.

[Lorena Cisneros]

OOPS wrong link

this is the right one. http://www.biguniverse.com/createkidsbooks/read/582

[Carlotta Patterson]

http://www.biguniverse.com/create/580

It can also be found at my website.

Here is the link to my book "Wild about ABC's". I took the theme of my local elementary school, "Wild About Learning", and made an ABC book. I found this to be quite time-consuming. I had some trouble uploading images from internet sites, some were fuzzy. I also found the available images somewhat limiting. I had to throw out a couple of ideas when I couldn't find illustrations that fit. I know that the lesson suggested additional places to find clipart but time constraints didn't allow me to go there.

I did share this website with a 2nd grade teacher that rewrites a lot of stories with her class, using patterns from other books and poems as a starting point. She can't wait to use the website to publish their books.

[Leslie Kinsey]

I really liked this assignment, I'm interested in making more books for future reference. It took me a little bit to get comfortable with the features which is where my patience was tested, but I ended up getting used to everything and enjoyed what I was doing. I created one on couting, and I did this because I am always looking for books on counting or number recognition, that has colors tied into it. For this book, I even added fruits, this way recognition of fruit is used along with counting and colors.

Here is the link: http://www.biguniverse.com/create/588

You can also view my book on my site: http://sites.google.com/site/lmkinsey2007/

Leslie Kinsey

[Christine Cannon]

I think that this is a great site. It took a bit to get the hang of it, but I think that students could be making books in no time. I have to admit I am not a very creative person, so I struggled with the content. Even though I may not be creating any more books, I feel that it is a great tool for students to create books or look at other books that have been written.

http://www.biguniverse.com/createkidsbooks/read/583

[Katie Bueker]

Big Universe:

I had a really hard time uploading photos that I wanted to use in my original story. When I finally did get them up they got deleted when I published it. It was frustrating, so I gave up a created a different story. The story I created is about opposites (a lesson I will be teaching in my internship this semester). It is nice to know this is available, so if I am ever unable to find a read aloud, I can just create one! Also, it would be fun to have students create their own story. My Link is: http://www.biguniverse.com/createkidsbooks/read/577