Transliteracy Tool Review #1

ePub Bud
http://www.epubbud.com/

This is a website used to create and read ebooks.

When you first go to the website it looks cluttered and unpolished. If I hadn't gotten this site from the list I would have thought I had wandered into something spam like and would have closed my browser.

You have to register to use the site - name and email address. When you log in it takes you the home page where you can browse, create, convert and sell ebooks. I would be hesitant to send a young child to this page with out an adult providing guidance. There are several links on this page that navigate you away from the home page.

I decided to look at some of the free kids books offered first. These appear to be books authored by children for children. I tried out two books. The first wouldn't format correctly - you were supposed be able to click on the arrows to go through the book. Instead it came out as one long scroll down page that was jumbled and hard to read. The next book formatted correctly but not all of the pictures would load and it had a very long lag time between pages. There are also advertisements on the pages to click on. The ones I saw were from Scholastic.

I decided to make a book. I clicked on the link and it took me to a page with boxes to put in information. I could put in the title. It filled in the author and illustrator information from what I provided when I signed up. It fills in a publish date and you can choose the language and age range. You can pick your book type - picture or chapter, put in a story summary, and choose a cover image. You then have to put in a code from a box (like you would for a security measure).

After this it takes you to a page that looks like a typical word document. You can type in the box and add video, image, or audio files from your computer. I clicked on the image icon to see what happens and it popped up a box with a paragraph in it that was not in English so I have no idea what it said. I tried to close the box and nothing happened so I had to hit my back button which took me back to the create your ebook page. I had to reenter all of my information to try again. I got back to where I could enter text typed in a website. I clicked on the button to make it hypertext and a box popped up. Cue the last problem I had with the same results.

I was pretty frustrated with the whole thing by this point. I went back in to make some pages for my book. I wanted to upload some pictures but I could only choose files from my computer. I don't have pictures or videos or audio files on my computer and I didn't want to go through the trouble of finding something on the web to save to my computer to upload to this book I was trying to make.


STUCK!!

So I went in and typed some gibberish into the slides. You save changes when you are done and you are given the option of publishing publicly or not. If you don't the book is only viewable if you know the URL. I clicked through the book and then went back to the home page. I thought the book would be saved to may account. That was an erroneous assumption. I didn't write down the URL and because I didn't publish publicly I couldn't look it up. Perhaps it saved somewhere but I wasn't able to find it again.

I really would NOT recommend this book publishing site to anyone. It was frustrating and hard to use. I can't see children being able to navigate this site effectively.

Writing and illustrating my own story is one of my fondest memories of grade school. I still have all of the books I authored. I think doing so using an online tool would be an excellent way to incorporate technology into the classroom (although I loved sewing my book together and having the hard copy all these years later). We used the website Little Bird Tales last semester and it was everything this website was not. I would recommend trying out that website if you are interested in epublishing with your students. https://www.littlebirdtales.com/