Tag Archives: magazine

Creating a Personalized Story Book with AI: Fun, from Start to Finish!

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Ever wanted to create a personalised storybook, for children or adults, with a touch of creativity,  AI magic, and a lot of fun? Well, I decided to try this recently, and let me tell you – I had a lot of fun! The best part? It didn’t take me more than 15 minutes! Of course, I’m not going to promise that it’ll always be that fast, but trust me – it can be an efficient, enjoyable process if you know where to start.

This time, I didn’t create a storybook per se, but I made a unique, personalized book aimed at B2+ adult English students, focusing on the theme of New Year’s Resolutions. I’m going to walk you through the steps I took – and how you can do it too!

Step 1: Crafting the Perfect Prompt for ChatGPT

The first thing I did was think about what I wanted in my book. Since it was for adult students, I decided to base the content around New Year’s resolutions – a topic that would naturally spark reflection and conversation.

To get started, I crafted a detailed prompt for ChatGPT, which went like this:

Create a short story for adult English learners at the C1 level about New Year’s resolutions. Provide a bit of context at the start, introducing Cristina, the main character—a cheerful woman in her 40s, with blonde hair, brown eyes, and a friendly smile, who lives in Pravia, Asturias. Each page should have a brief narrative appropriate for language teaching, followed by a question related to New Year’s resolutions to engage learners. For each page, also describe the image in Pixar style, ensuring Cristina’s physical description (blonde hair, brown eyes, friendly smile) is consistently included to maintain visual continuity. Design about 10 pages for the story.  Repeat cristina’s description for each image prompt. 

This was my blueprint. By clearly outlining the structure, theme, and tone, ChatGPT knew exactly what I was aiming for. You’ll notice I emphasized consistency in both text and illustrations because I wanted the book to feel cohesive and visually engaging.

Step 2: Generating the Content with ChatGPT

Once I hit “send,” ChatGPT took the prompt and began generating responses that were thoughtful and perfect for my goal. The AI produced a series of pages, each with:

  • A little context about New Year’s resolutions
  • An engaging question about resolutions
  • Suggested words or grammar structures for students
  • A prompt for illustrations

 

Step 3: Designing the Visuals in Canva

  1. Choosing a Story Book: I took the content I generated with ChatGPT and jumped into Canva to design the book. In the search box, I wrote Story Book and took my pick.
  2.  Creating the images:OK. I have the design and the text but what about the visuals?  For the illustrations, I used the prompts ChatGPT provided, foung Magic Media on Canva and c pasted the prompts ChatGPT had provided for  each page. I made sure  the images maintained a consistent style.

 

Step 4: Publishing the Book – Canva + Heyzine Flipbooks = Magic!

Now that my book is ready,  “How do I share this with my students or readers?”  Easy! Canva has partnered up with Heyzine Flipbooks, which gives my book a whole new level of interactivity. This feature allows me to create a digital flipbook experience – just like flipping through the pages of a physical book! Oh, and did I mention it adds sound too?

But how do I take  my storybook and take it to HeyZine? No worries, follow these simple steps

How to Use Heyzine Flipbooks on Canva:

  • Click on the “Share” button
  • Select “See All”:
  • Scroll Down and Find Heyzine Flipbooks:
  • Click on Heyzine Flipbooks:

And here’s the result.

Showcasing Students’ Written Work Using Google Slides Magazine Style

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Happy New Year to everyone! And here we are, back at the start of a new year. I am kicking off this one with a post about writing,  inspired by another post written by a fellow teacher from EOI Pontevedra, Paula Gómez. You can read her post here.

Have you ever entertained the idea of publishing students’ written work but were put off by the limitations imposed by free online publishing apps?  Not any more.

This post is about showcasing students’ written work using one of the greatest free collaborative apps: Google Slides.

How often, when you are marking essays think ” Gosh, this essay or this covering letter is soooo good! I only wish the rest of the class could have it as a model of good writing”   And then, you find yourself contemplating the idea of photocopying it and sharing it with the rest of the class.  But…what if I told you there is an easier way to do it? What if I told you you only need to have a free Google account to showcase your students’ written work in a beautiful way, for free and without any limitations? What if I told you that you can very easily change the dimensions in Google Slides to resemble a magazine?

You don’t believe me? Have a look at this Google slides-magazine style boasting some of my students’ book reviews here

Ready to make one? It is really very easy to set up. We are going to do it in 7 steps.  If you have already grasped the idea, you can stop reading now. If you need further guidance, I have recorded a video tutorial to walk you through the steps.

  • Step 1: setting up the slide
  • Step 2: creating the cover of the magazine
  • Step 3: creating the template
  • Step 4. Duplicating the slide
  • Step 5: sharing the magazine/editing permissions
  • Step 6: Sharing the magazine/present mode
  • Step7: downloading and printing the magazine

Before you watch the video, some highlights:

  1. Log in to your Google account and open a Google Slides presentation here https://docs.google.com/presentation/u/0/ and open a blank presentation
  2. The first step to making my magazine on Google Slides is changing the default dimensions. The slide needs to have the same dimensions as an ordinary page in case you want to print it. To do this go to File/ Page Set up/ Custom/ and choose: in cms 23×28; in inches 9×11
  3. Now we need to set up the two most important slides: the cover and the template the students will need to duplicate and fill in with their own content.
  • The cover: Amazing the results one can get inserting shapes, pictures and playing with different fonts. It is all about creating a beautiful inspiring cover.
  • The template: This is also an important part. Spend some time deciding what your magazine will look like and design the template students will duplicate and use to write their own content.

Eager for more? Watch this video tutorial and  show the world what your students can do

 

The memorable life of….

Students' Corner, Writing, , , , ,

There is little that gives more satisfaction than publishing students’ work; they are  the reason behind all the hard work that means keeping  this blog going.

Today, I want to show you some essays written by students in the Elementary level under the heading “The memorable life of… . I would have wanted to include all of them but the truth is that they were too many so I have just published half the ones I was sent. I hope nobody is disappointed!

As I have often done in the past, to publish the content I have used the free digital publishing platform Issuu.

Click to enlarge .

Carmen Menéndez’s presentation of The Memorable life of Amelia Earhart is also worth  publishing . I hope you enjoy it!!