We know that teacher feedback is crucial to student success and Book Creator contains a powerful commenting side panel designed specifically for this purpose.

When editing a book click on the Comments button at the bottom right of the screen and choose Add comment.

Book Creator goes beyond text comments with support for two minute audio and video comments. Why use audio and video? Let's hear from Dr. Monica Burns:

"Audio and video responses address several goals related to student feedback. First, audio and video feedback help communicate the tone of the comment. Students can hear and see their classmate’s or teacher’s energy and encouragement in the response. These elements may be lost in a text-only message. This type of feedback can help students feel heard and supported and provide a way to communicate a suggestion, a piece of advice, or an action item alongside the enthusiasm of the person giving feedback."

To make commenting and feedback fun and engaging you can choose to enable gifs, animated emojis and stickers through the Book Creator App Store. As with all our apps teachers are in control and choose whether to enable these features just for themselves or also for their students on a per library basis.

To help with digital citizenship, and any misuse of comments for hurtful behavior, teachers can see all comments added to a book including any deleted by students. Furthermore students can't edit their comments.

If Book Creator is being used collaboratively with many students working in the same book, commenting could lead to students getting off task. Click on the cog in the top right of the comment area to access Comment Settings. Here, teachers can choose to disable student commenting for a book. When turned off students can still see any comments from their teachers but won't be able to post new comments.

You can see all the comments across a library in the handy Notification Center. From here you can mark a comment as read, or click on the comment to jump straight to the relevant page of the book.

Students also have a Notification Center containing comments from their teachers.

If I move a book to another library do the comments stay in the book?

Yes they do.

If I copy a book do the comments also appear in the copy?

No, when a book is copied we do not copy the comments.

Can I add hyperlinks into a comment?

Yes, just paste or type in the hyperlink and it will become clickable in the posted comment.

Can students restore deleted comments?

No, they cannot.

Can a student leave comments on another student's book?

Currently a student needs to be able to edit a book to leave a comment. If you’d like to let students leave comments for one another then you’ll need to turn on collaboration for the book. Note: this also means students will be able to change the book’s content.

Can my co-teacher manage comments and feedback?

Yes, if your library has a co-teacher they can do everything you can with comments including reading them all, turning them on/off and deleting and restoring comments.

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