It’s that time again and I need to start making online teaching resources for my students. I made a decision over the summer to make flipbooks instead of the old tired pdfs I have been using. I wanted to try to make my resources more modern for my students. I really want them to interact with articles and tutorials that I make. This sent me on my quest to find a way to make a free online flipbook .
Why did I decide to make flipbooks? I’ve been noticing that my students haven’t been using the PDF tutorials and articles that I’ve made available online for homework help. I’ve been trying to figure out why. I think one reason is that they don’t look dynamic and instead look like they are stuck back in the 1990s. In fact, I tried to make them with more appealing colors, but it didn’t really improve their usage.
I also think it’s related to devise usage. Students aren’t just using their laptops or even desktop computers for classwork. Students are using tablets and even phones to read tutorials while doing their homework. Unfortunately, my PDFs don’t really work on phones and tablets very well. I’ve tried to make changes to them to make them work better and be more responsive but I haven’t had much luck.
These issues bring me to flipbooks. I really don’t know where I first ran across flipbooks, but it just struck me a few months ago that if I make a free online flipbook, then I could improve my students’ experiences. This sent me on the quest to find the best flipbook software . It was a bit of a chore finding the right site (and more about that later), but then I found Yumpu Publishing , and my problems were solved.
Honestly, I expected that I’d have an easy search when it came to finding a free online flipbook creator. All I needed was a place to create them and hopefully a place to host them. It seemed like there were many different places I could get them made. I was very wrong.
I started looking at sites that had software that I could use to make the flipbooks. I started looking for the sites and I realized these software sites all charged for the software. Sometimes more than $200! This was out of my budget range as a teacher making free resources for my students. I would still have the problem of hosting the flipbooks. Moreover, I was having a hard time determining if the files created could be viewable on all devices, including phones and tablets.
After seeing that the paid software solutions were too expensive for me, I tried looking for open source solutions to see if I could hack a solution. There wasn’t a real open-source solution to making flipbooks and if I wanted to get very technical, maybe I could hack together a few solutions. If I did that, then I’d have to worry about hosting the files. That’s another headache.
Finally, I decided to look at free online flipbook sites to see if I could find a site that would create and host a flipbook for me. I looked at a few sites, but they either cost money or had free levels that were very restricting. For example, one site only allowed a limited number of page views for the free level. This is when I found Yumpu Publishing. They have a free online flipbook plan with unlimited flipbooks and unlimited views. That’s perfect for what I am doing.
I was happy to see that it was so easy to open an account. All I needed to do was sign up with my Twitter handle, and then give them just a bit of extra information to create my account. It was very quick and easy to set up an account.
After setting up my account, I decided to try to convert an old PDF to get a good handle on how it works. Basically, all I needed to do was drag it into the upload area and then let it convert the PDF to a flipbook. It was very easy. I could have made a few adjustments before starting the conversion process, but I wanted to see just the basic method first.
The conversion process was very quick. After the process ended, I was able to either share it via Twitter (or any social media) or I could get a link to the finished flipbook to provide in a blog post or an email. This is a huge plus because I can choose how I share the flipbooks with my students. The links go directly to the flipbook. I can even embed the flipbooks on my class website. For this first one, I shared it on my Twitter feed.
I wanted to see how well it would work on mobile devices so I went to my Twitter account on my phone. I clicked on the link and the flipbook opened up. It was beautiful. I did the same thing on my Ipad and it was beautiful as well. I was able to create a very beautiful free online flipbook that really impressed me. I was very happy with the results. I’m in the process of converting all of my old PDF resources into free online flipbooks.
I’m happy with this Yumpu Publishing . The free tier should meet all my needs going forward with my classes. They do have a paid tier that does away with the advertising but I didn’t see any issue with the advertising at all. I might explore the ad-free tier in the future.
I’m happy that I was able to find a free online flipbook site to make and host my teaching resources. I hope these will help my students interact more with the resources I’ve made available and help them do better in their classes. At least I’m having fun making teaching resources for the first time in a while.