As an educator, your mission is to teach and develop your students’ ability to write and communicate effectively. It is a vital skill for their academic ease and success as well as their future employment. But what if you could combine the creative process of writing a book with the pride that comes with raising funds for the class or their school? If this sounds interesting, there are online sites that can help you plan and orchestrate the perfect book making/Fundraising.
Writing is an essential part of life and communication as well as being a skill that employers within a myriad of professions will look for. The best way for kids to develop these skills is through writing their own stories to share.
Children also learn to better organize their thoughts, and even communicate better by crafting their own stories, according to an article on readwritethink.org. Writing also helps improve reading skills, and helps kids to understand and connect with other people’s writing with greater ease.
Students can easily take their writing skills to the next level and make their own real book.
So, if you have considered a class project where students create their own book, you might want to add to the fun and make it a class or school (get other teachers and their classrooms involved) fundraiser.
What’s the Story?
There are online sites like Bookemon.com, one of the first to cater to teachers with a special edCenter that allows your class to create and publish their own book with impressive, professional results, then to orchestrate a fundraiser where parents can order their child’s book and a portion of their purchase goes toward your fundraising event.
Writing, creativity with photographs or illustrations, and the entire process of organizing and making a book can be a huge source of pride for students. Knowing that their work is helping raise funds for their class or school is even more inspiring.
Welcome to edCenter, Where Their Books Become a Reality
Bookemon created edCenter for educators like you to set up a secure, private and friendly environment for their students and fellow staff members to create, purchase or sell their books. Essentially, an edCenter can be created for your individual class, as a special group project, fundraiser or for a specific grade level of students at your school. It may also be used by those in a school-related non-profit organization.
First, students write their book, save it in a Word Document, PDF file, or jpg image, and then it can be uploaded into Bookemon’s easy to use book making templates in your edCenter. Students choose where photos or illustrations go and can even add special fonts and clip art. It is creative fun!
Meanwhile, edCenter gives you, the educator, access and the ability to guide your students’ book projects, but the digital software is so complete (with all those templates, clipart, and easy to use design tools) that this project can really be managed well by students with very successful results.
How to Get Started with Your Student Book fundraiser
First, join the Educator Program, by going to our Educator’s Program Page at www.bookemon.com/educator-home, click “Join Educator Program”. There your will identify your position at your school in the following categories: teacher, administrator, staff member, or support group, Select your K-12 school, non-profit organization or college from our Educator’s Program database and then you are allowed to create your edCenter, while completing your membership registration, or you may wait until after you have joined the Educator Program at Bookemon.
How an edCenter Fundraiser Works
Once your students have created their books with Bookemon’s digital software accessed through your edCenter, it is time to get the books in your edCenter bookstore. This is a central place where all of the edCenter published books including public or edCenter member only books are listed.
Creating your bookstore is easy. When you initially create your edCenter, you are provided with the steps to set up your edCenter Bookstore, name, passcode and mission statement to introduce your edCenter bookstore for your fundraising or rewards.
You can also set up the edCenter bookstore anytime, by signing in and entering your class edCenter, you can always find “edCenterStore” on navigation bar. Click it and you will be able to “set store passcode” or “reset store passcode” for your edCenter member only books.
To share your edCenter bookstore, you can always find “edCenterStore” on navigation bar after you enter the edCenter. Click “invite parents to store” where you can fill the email addresses where you want to send the passcode. This way, parents can buy the books created within edCenter easily without using kids’ or your login information.
Parents can buy edCenter only books anytime they want simply visiting the edCenter bookstore, and they can find the book they wish to buy with the passcode provided. It will eliminate your administrative work to collect money, order and distribute the books.
Access to your class’s edCenter bookstore is controlled by your exclusive passcode assigned by you, the founder of the store, and sent to parents in that invitational email. Only those with the passcode can view and purchase the edCenter member only books.
You raise funds through the sale of each book, essentially by setting up author profit when you publish the books. For example, if you set author profit for each book as $2.00, then every time a copy sold to people other than yourself, your fundraiser earns $2.00. You can set the value to whatever you wish, as long as you think it will still sell, but it should not exceed 50% of base price. The base price is listed during your publish process. As an author, you buy your book at base price all the time.
Safeguards for Student Accounts
Student accounts are designed to help educators enroll their students into the edCenter without the use of email invitations. Additional safeguards are in place for these accounts, like activities online are confined within the edCenter, in a secluded online environment. All student accounts are linked to the educator that creates the edCenter. So, any communication from Bookemon to the student members would be sent to the email address of the founder.
More Benefits of an edCenter Fundraiser:
- Group Privacy: At your discretion, books and information can only be accessed by members.
- Student Accounts: Teachers can add student accounts for added privacy and ease of oversight on students’ works.
- Free for educators: There is no cost to create your own edCenter. There is no obligation to purchase.
- Educator Discount on Purchases: You receive 10% off the cost of books you purchased.
- Mobile Access: Using bookPress or Bookemon Mobile apps, you can access your edCenter via iPhone, iPad or Android devices.
- Membership Control: Management tools for founder/administrators to control who can join your group.
- Ability for Group Collaboration: Members within the group can create book collaboratively.
Access to bCloud for edCenter
If you would like a secure, online storage space for edCenter members to capture favorite photos, documents, page designs and artwork, bCloud is a feature that provides that secure space to contribute photos, creative writings and designs, which can be sent from an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or a PC. This allows complete collaboration on a yearbook or other group project, allowing students and staff to create a collective keepsake together.
Perfect for Student Learning and a Fun Fundraiser
There may be a few options out there, but you want to choose a format that is easy to use, allows students to be able to customize their book, the overall design, all the small details right down to the font. This gives students the ability to really make their book their own. Fundraising with student book sales is simple, fun, requires no money collection or delivery issues for you to manage, and the product is something parents will want to buy.
The free software allows for endless possibilities to publish virtually any type of book. Students can publish works of fiction, non-fiction, a memoir or even a comic book. Class photos can be preserved into a keepsake book that can be purchased by parents, which makes the perfect fundraising project!
The variety of books students can create, and fund raise with, is limited only by their imagination. Getting started is quick and easy and will open up a world of learning possibilities for your students and well as put the fun back in fundraising.
