CAST UDL Book Builder

Recently had the opportunity to play with this new free resource, Book Builder. CAST has created an online tool that allows you to create your own digital books for your students on any topic.

Welcome to the CAST Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Book Builder! Use this site to create engaging digital books that build reading skills for children, ages 3–10. Your universally designed books will engage and support diverse learners according to their individual needs, interests, and skills.

They've taken digital book creation to the next level by providing "coaches" of embedded prompts as part of the reading process. For example, Pedro prompts kids to think (such as, "make a prediction, what do you think this book is about?") Hali gives them hints (such as, "we can make predictions based upon the pictures and the title"), and Monty shares model responses (such as, "Based upon this picture, I predict...").

Way cool!

There are three models to read and I created one about Spring. You can create your own books and retrieve them from any computer. Customize them to the interests of your students. Have them create their own books about preferred topics, current curriculum units or themselves.

But wait, there's more!

Download Click,Speak through your Firefox Browser and now your students can listen to the book read to them. Click,Speak highlights each sentence as it is read. (I recommend installing better quality voices on your computer other than just Microsoft Mark, Mike or Sam as they are too robotic. You can check out and buy voices at NEXTUP.)

I got my photos from the Creative Commons section of Flickr.

AND, all of this is FREE!

(Two suggestions to CAST - 1. If possible, make this switch-accessible and 2. allow the ability to customize the size of the picture on each page.)