EDLD+5364+CAST+Book+Builder

Book Builder by CAST is definitely a cool tool for differentiation in the classroom. I liked the idea of having the three coaches available to prompt students with questions. I can see using the coaches to ask the students to predict or infer as they progress through the book. I did choose to add my own voice using Audacity .mp3 files. Students will be more engaged with a human voice that is more fluent and fluctuates to accentuate the story. Book Builder unquestionably supports the recognition networks by providing audio, visual, and text. I did use the glossary and utilized both text and graphics to define a term; a picture is worth a thousand words!

I was not as impressed with the functionality of the program. It was repetitive to enter and upload your information. I would like to see the program updated so you could upload all your graphics and then apply them to each page of your book. Also, it would have been much easier to use if you could add graphics, text, and audio from the same edit box. It was slow to accomplish simple tasks. Overall, I think the idea of the program is great, but it is not user friendly in today’s age of programming.

My book title is Texas Culture and may be viewed at []