Book Maker is a versatile program for making books of different sizes. Designed to assist children in adding the finishing touches to their writing, this program provides an effortless and creative way of printing books for publication. This program is also a talking word processor. Anything that children write can be read back to them in a variety of ways: letters, words, sentences, the entire screen or the entire story. Students also can adjust pitch and rate of this natural-sounding speech so that they hear how their books sound before production. Children's writing may be entered in the easy-to-use editor or imported from another word processor. Students can listen to any text that is in their story. Students may choose to publish in six (6) book sizes with a variety of fonts, colors and point sizes depending upon what is installed in your system folder. GOALS to help students develop an interest in reading and writing to assist students' writing development to provide interesting-looking material for students to read to enhance students' ability in word processing to give parents, children and teachers tangible evidence of progress to help students understand how to plan for creating a book TARGET USERS This program was designed to be used by teachers, parents and those working with Pre- K to elementary children as well as by elementary children themselves, or by younger children depending upon their skills Main Menu From the main menu you may select one of the following options: New Book - First, select the layout of the book (i.e., large,medium, or small). Then, click on the Make button to begin a new book. 1
This will bring you to the Text Editing Screen where you can begin typing in your story. Selecting the book style (i.e., large, medium, or small) determines the size of your book page which determines how many book pages will print on a single piece of paper: Small Book (4.25" x 5.5") Prints four (4) book pages on each piece of paper. Medium Book (4.25" x 11") Prints two (2) book pages on each piece of paper. Large Book (8.5" x 11") Prints one (1) book page on each piece of paper. New Books default to Portrait printing, Large size with Small margins. All of these settings may changed at any time once you begin creating your book by selecting the Setup button or the Format Book Settings menu item. Open Book - Click on this button to retrieve an existing book. An Open A Book will appear. Select the name of the book that you would like to open, then click on OK. This will open the existing story in the Text Editing Screen. Selecting Cancel will open the Text Editing Screen with a blank document. Log Out - Click on the Stop button to exit the Main Menu and return to the Student Log In Screen. 2
Formatting Your Book Now it's time to start writing. As you begin to type a story, the text will appear in the middle of the screen as how it will print on a page. From this screen, click on the icons above the ruler or select items from the pull-down menus to use the format features (size, color, and style). As the story develops, encourage students to be creative with format. This program offers lots of formatting features to allow students to create professional looking pieces. Only by trial will students learn how to use fonts, colors, and placement of text and pictures. This section describes how to use the features found within the Text Editing Screen. Other Options Speech & Speech Settings 3
Setup To select a book format, click on the Setup icon from the Text Editing Screen or Select Book Setup from the Activities pull-down menu. The Book Settings screen will appear. Notice the three tabs at the bottom of the screen: Style, Layout and Margins. Click on the Style tab to choose the book's style (i.e., Large, Medium or Small). Click on the Layout tab to select the book's layout (i.e., portrait or landscape). To adjust a book's margins, click on the Margins tab. To adjust the amount of space between text and the edge of a printed page, use the Margin Size pull-down menu to select one of the following margins: Small 0.50" margins Medium 0.75" margins Small 1.00" margins Page Numbers can be printed on each page. At the bottom left corner of the Book Settings screen, click on the "Print Page Numbers" box. A check mark indicates that page numbers will be printed (the default setting). CREATING A TITLE PAGE When creating a book, a title page is typically needed. A title page is the cover for your book. From the Text Editing Screen, type the title of your book as the first page of your book. Then, select Page Break from the Insert pull-down menu. Now, you should see a dashed line indicating that there is a page break. Anything above that line will be printed on that page only. ALIGNING TEXT To align text, click on one of the buttons at the top of the Text Editing Screen that has lines denoting the type of alignment on the face of the button. You can select to have the currently highlighted text or the text at the current insertion point aligned in the following four (4) ways: Left, Right, Center and Force Justify. CHOOSING A TEXT FONT To choose a font for your text, click on the Text button on the toolbar. Or, you can select Font from the Format pull-down menu. A standard Windows Font screen will appear. From here you can select the font typeface, point size and coloring. SELECTING A TEXT STYLE Use the text style buttons, located on the toolbar, to stylize parts of your book's text. The "N" button resets the current text to Normal or no stylization. The "B" button will make the current text bold. The "I" button italicizes your text. And, the "U" button underlines the current text. To apply one of these styles to your text, highlight the word or words that you wish to stylize and click on one of these buttons or select a style from the Style pulldown menu. CHANGING THE TEXT SIZE To select a text size, select one of the numbers from the Size pull-down menu. A check mark indicates which size is being used. Another way to select a specific text size is to 4
select Font from the Format pull-down menu. The Font screen will appear, see Choosing a Text Font above. SELECTING LINE SPACING To change the spacing between the lines of text in your book, select the Size pull-down menu. Click on Single Space or Double Space. A check mark indicates the current setting. USING DIFFERENT TEXT COLORS Another way to add some creativity to your book is to add color. Crayon icons and a color wheel are located at the top of the Text Editing Screen. The default setting is black. To change to another color, click on one of the crayon icons or select one of the colors from the Color pull-down menu. The color wheel allows you to select/create a specific color. Click on the color wheel to select your custom color. Once you have chosen a color, click on OK. This will change the color of your current text to this new color. NOTE: Custom colors selected via the color wheel are limited to only one color for the entire book. So, anytime you change the custom color this changes it for every word that was applied with a custom color. ADDING LINES OR BOXES Move the cursor to the area where you wish to place a line or box. Lines or boxes can be added by clicking on Border from the Format pull-down menu. A Lines screen will appear. From this screen, select where you want a line to be drawn (left, right, top, bottom) by clicking on the box next to the option. Colors can also be chosen for each of these lines. Particular line styles (point size, double, or dotted) can also be selected from this screen. Click on Draw Box to have an entire box drawn; the box will surround any text within the current paragraph. To have double lines, click on the Double box. Selecting the Dotted box will make the selected lines dotted. To indicate the thickness of the line, enter a width (in points). The spacing (in points) between lines or the box can be entered in the Space box. Once you made changes, click on the Update button to have the document automatically updated; however, the Lines Screen will remain open so additional changes can be made. If you've made changes to the Lines Screen and wish to reutrn to the document, click on OK. To exit the Lines Screen without making any changes, click on Cancel. IMPORTING A PICTURE OR IMAGE Adding pictures to your story helps to create a more interesting book. To add a picture, click on the Picture icon or select Image from the Insert pull-down menu. An Insert Image Screen appears. This program contains lots of clipart images that you can choose from. These files are located in the Images folder under the program's directory. Use the scroll bar to select an image and click on OK. To import a picture from another location, type in the file path of the image and click on OK. Click on Cancel to return to the Text Editing Screen. The program only recognizes.bmp image files. 5
IMPORT OR INSERT TEXT FROM FILE To import text from another word processing program, select Text from the Insert pulldown menu. An Insert Text Screen appears. Locate the directory/folder where the text or RTF (Rich Text Format) file is that you would like to import. Printing Your Book Once you have completed your book, it s time to print your masterpiece! This section describes how to preview and print your book. It is recommended that you preview your book on the computer before you print. This way your book will be perfect when it prints, without any wasted paper. PRINT PREVIEW Select Print Preview from the File pull-down menu. The Print Preview screen prints dashes around your book's text to denote where the page margins will exist when the book is printed. The Print Preview screen simply gives you an idea of how your book will look when you are ready to print it. Several buttons at the top of the Print Preview screen control how your Print Preview appears. The two most important buttons are the magnifying glass buttons with a "+" and "-" symbol on them. The "+" button will enlarge or zoom-in on your document making it appear larger on screen. This is useful if you need more detail on a certain area of your book to ensure it will print the way you intend it to. The "-" button will decrease or zoom-out on your document so that you can see the entire printed page on the screen. The two buttons with left and right-pointing arrows are provided for navigating from page to page within your book. The right-pointing arrow will advance through your book and clicking the left-pointing arrow will return you to the first page. PRINTING When you have previewed your book and are ready to print, simply select Print from the File pull-down menu or click on the Print button on the toolbar. From the Print screen you can choose to setup your printer by clicking on the Setup button or proceed with printing by simply click on the OK button to begin the printing process. Your book may print as many as four booklet pages to each piece of printed paper based on the style (large, medium or small) book you have selected. Please see the printed documentation for illustrated examples of how to correctly fold your book. 6