Introduction

In Bloom, the term book includes books as normally understood. Book also can include other publications such as a wall calendar. In this module, we will focus on making a regular book.

Later modules will help you learn about Decodable Readers and Leveled Readers.

Prerequisites

You have installed Bloom.

The Bloom program is open to your vernacular collection.

You have downloaded and installed the Art of Reading collection.

Add a Basic Book to a Collection

When Bloom is first opened, you see only the Collections tab. Look in the lower left pane in the Bloom window. There you see Sources for New Books. Below it, you see Templates, Sample Shells and Books From BloomLibrary.org.

Let’s use the Basic Book template to make a book.

1) Click the Basic Book template. It looks like this: .

The template appears in the right pane.

2) Click the Make a book using the source button.

Bloom makes a book from the template. It opens to the Front Cover page. Notice that the book appears in the Edit tab ( ). The left pane is called Pages. It shows the pages that are in your book.

The right pane in the Edit tab is called Template Pages. It shows templates you can use to add more pages to your book. The name of each template describes the page layout for that page. For example, the Picture On Bottom template lets you put words at the top of the page, while the picture is below the words. Basic Text & Picture puts the picture on the top of the words.

Before we use any of those templates, let’s add content to the “cover pages”.

3) The Front Cover page should be displayed. You see that at the top left corner of the page. Let’s add content to it.

The top text box holds the book title in the vernacular language. Type a book title in that text box in the vernacular language.
The next text box holds the book title in English. Type the book title in English.
A picture placeholder appears in the middle of the page. It looks like this: . We will insert a picture later.
The text box below the picture placeholder is a place where you can type information about the author, illustrator, or anything else that you want to appear on the front cover. Type a brief statement there.
At the bottom of the page, you see a yellow box. It looks like this: . The words are a hyperlink that opens a dialog box. You use it to choose a topic for the book.
Click that yellow box. In the Topics dialog box, click a topic, and then click OK.
The topic you choose appears on the Front Cover page.
Now, let’s insert a picture on the Front Cover page.

The steps to insert a picture are the same on any page that shows the picture placeholder.

4) Do these steps to insert a picture:

Hold your mouse pointer over the picture placeholder .

Notice that buttons appear at the top right and bottom right corner of the box. Hold your mouse pointer over each button. A ToolTip appears to tell you the purpose of that button.

Let’s use the button that is at the top right. It looks like this: . The ToolTip says Change Image.

Click the button.

The Image Toolbox dialog box opens. The Art Of Reading button is selected by default. Other sources of picture you can use are Scanner, Camera, and File.

Let’s insert a picture from the Art Of Reading collection.

Click the search box. It looks like this: .
Type a word that describes what you want to see in a picture. For example, you can type man, woman, tree, house, and so on. To begin the search, you can press the Enter key, or you can click the button ( ).
Press the Enter key.

If one or more pictures matched the word you typed, those pictures appear. A scroll bar appears if there are many pictures.

Click the picture that you want to use.

Notice that in the right side of the Image Toolbox, you see a larger view of that picture, and some copyright metadata. This metadata is part of the Art Of Reading file.

If you got a picture from a scanner, camera or file, you would need to add your own Credit, Copyright and License metadata. You can learn how to do that in the Help files that are installed with Bloom.

Click the OK button.

Now you see the picture instead of the picture placeholder. If you hold your mouse pointer over the picture, you see another button. It looks like this: . Hold your mouse pointer over this button to see the metadata.

Again, if your picture came from a scanner, camera or a file on your computer, you could click this button to edit your picture metadata.

5) In the Pages pane, click the Credits Page.

The Credits Page appears. Notice that it has yellow boxes. Each describes the purpose of the text box or other box that appear on this page.

6) Click the top text box. Type a few words that acknowledge someone.

7) Books need to have copyright and license metadata. To add this metadata, click the yellow box that looks like this: .

The Copyright & License dialog box appears. The Help files that are installed with Bloom give more information. For this exercise, do the following:

Edit the copyright year if necessary.
Type the copyright holder.
Choose the license information.
Click OK.

8) On the Credits Page, you see the ISBN box. If you have an ISBN for your book, type it here.

9) In the Pages pane, click Title Page.

10) The Title Page appears. Notice that it has the titles you typed on the Cover Page. There are two other text boxes on this page. The yellow callout boxes describe what each text box should contain.

Click the text box for contributions, and then type appropriate information.
Click the text box for funding agencies, and then type some information.

Now, let’s add some “inside pages”.

11) Click the Basic Text & Picture template.

Notice that the picture placeholder is at the top of the page.

Insert a picture there, using the same steps as you did on the Front Cover page.

12) Click the text box that is below the picture.

Notice that the lower right corner shows the language that this text box is expecting. It will be the same language as the language you choose when you created the vernacular collection.

Notice that there is a symbol in the lower left corner. It that looks like a cogged gear: . Hold your mouse pointer over this symbol. You will see a yellow box with these words: Adjust formatting for style.

13) Type a sentence or two that describes the picture you chose.

Now, let’s change some font and formatting.

Click the cogged gear symbol ( ).

The font and formatting control panel opens. It looks like this:

Hold your mouse pointer over each down arrow ( ) to learn what each one controls. Here are two examples:

Notice the information at the bottom of the font and formatting panel. It informs you which other text boxes will be affected by your changes.

First, only text boxes that use that same language will be changed.

Secondly, only the text boxes with the same style will be changed. You cannot see or choose styles anywhere in Bloom. However, consider that the text boxes on the “cover pages” use different styles that the “inside pages” of the book.

Change one or more of the controls, and then click anywhere that is outside of the font and formatting panel.

The panel goes away from view. The text you had typed in the text box shows your font and formatting changes

At this point, you can practice with other page templates if you want to. The Custom template page is different, and is not discussed in this module. The other templates are similar to using the Basic Text & Picture template. Therefore, let’s move to the back cover pages.

14) In the Pages pane, click Inside Back Cover.

The Inside Back Cover page appears. Notice that is has only one text box. It has the same cogged gear control ( ) as all the other pages. The language for the words also appears in the text box.

Click the text box and then type any words you want to appear on the inside of the back cover.

15) In the Pages pane, click Outside Back Cover.

The Outside Back Cover page appears. Notice that is has only one text box. It has the same cogged gear control ( ) as all the other pages. The language for the words also appears in the text box.

Click the text box and then type any words you want to appear on the inside of the back cover.

Now you have a simple book. This book uses only one language. Books can use one language (monolingual), two languages (bilingual) or three languages (trilingual). You can learn how to set up other languages in the Help files that are installed with Bloom.

16) Click the Publish tab ( ).

Click Simple to see your book as one page per screen.

Another module will discuss how to publish your book.

If you want to edit your book or change a picture, simply click the Edit tab ( ). Then find the page in the Pages pane that you want to change. Click that page and make the edits.