I Dreamed of a Book

We probably have all been there, while taking a nap you have a great idea for a book! I happened to be staying with my friend and colleague Dr. Manju Joseph and told her about my dream. I thought, it would be easy to do make this book in Book Creator!! Together we constructed a prompt in ChatGPT and used Canva AI Text to Image to create images for the book.

Math is Not Numbers

Click to read this book, made with Book Creator

read.bookcreator.com

Back to School Hub for Book Creator

Do you have an idea for a book you want to share with your class? Reading with your class is a great way to build culture, no matter the age of the students. It took me hardly any time from idea to completion to make a book in Book Creator. Use the Back to School Hub for getting started resources and templates.

Book Creator Hub

Collaborating with AI

Using Generative AI is my sidekick. The key to creating content that is “me” is to create a really good prompt. When using ChatGPT or Google Bard you want to load up the prompt with as much information that you know so there is less for the AI to fill in the gaps on. My colleague Dr. Manju Joseph, professor at Fresno Pacific University, helped me to craft the elements in the prompt that we wanted to include.

Write an illustrated childrens book for me titled "Math is not numbers". The moral of the story is that math is our friend and is friendly and is about understanding, and number sense, and the history of math, and patterns. Math is not feeling dumb. Math is not filling out multiple math problems on a worksheet under a timer. Math is not a competition. Math is about thinking. Math is about communication. Math is about collaboration. Math is about problem solving. Math is not speed. Math is not algorithms. Math is the joy of figuring it out, even or especially if you get it wrong the first time. Math is about communicating the process. Math is about understanding the world. — Write an illustrated childrens book for me titled “Math is not numbers”. The moral of the story is that math is our friend and is friendly and is about understanding, and number sense, and the history of math, and patterns. Math is not feeling dumb. Math is not filling out multiple math problems on a worksheet under a timer. Math is not a competition. Math is about thinking. Math is about communication. Math is about collaboration. Math is about problem solving. Math is not speed. Math is not algorithms. Math is the joy of figuring it out, even or especially if you get it wrong the first time. Math is about communicating the process. Math is about understanding the world.

Since I asked ChatGPT for illustrations it described the images for me.

screenshot from ChatGPT showing in bold each page number with an illustration description and below not in bold the text for the story.

Illustrated Book

Of course to create an illustrated book you need a tool that makes them. Book Creator is the obvious choice. I can easily add images and text into an interactive book format.

Images

Book Creator connects with Canva. Using the AI image features in Canva I am able to create custom images for the book. For this project I decided to use the text to image option in Canva. The challenge is that I need multiple images for the book and a certain consistency for each character. I know that this will not yield me exact replica images of the characters and I am okay with that. However, I do need to have a sentence or two description that I include each time I generate an image.

screenshot of canva with text to image app. Arrow pointing to the app on the left sidebar. Ability to type text to describe what you want in the image.

Close but Not Exact

First, remember that AI is NOT pulling up stock photos. Rather, it is taking patterns and creating the images. When you get a picture of a cow it is not a real cow, but rather a rendition of the cow based on patterns of cows. Like when I ask you to “draw me a cow.” You are not looking at a cow, you are not drawing any particular cow. You’re thinking about everything you know about cows and then drawing your best rendition. This is what AI is doing also.

The result is… sometimes humorous.

Notice in this graphic that there are 2 arms/hands on the same side of the body.

AI generated image of a young boy with black hair and two arms on the same side.

I’m not even sure what to say about this graphic other than… not what I am looking for.

AI generated graphic of a little boy with dark hair but the bottom half of his face is pink like it has been ripped off.

Notice the distorted face on the 2nd character.

AI generated image from canva. The first character has a purple jacket and is at least passable for a drawing of a person. The second person in the graphic looks like their mouth is cut in half and hanging like a flap.

I needed to keep selecting “Regenerate Image” and refining the description to get an image that was good enough and wasn’t too weird. To say the least, it was a fun process.

Publishing the Book

One of the great things about Book Creator, besides how easy it is to use, is how easy it is to share. In your book library click on the standard share icon and choose “Publish online.”

screenshot of book creator share icon with the option to publish online.

Check Out My Published Math Book

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