One tool that I loved using with my students was Mixbook. While there are many uses of mixbook, one of my favorite was creating Poetry Books.
What I loved about this tool was that students could completely personalize their books. They have the ability to add text, pictures, backgrounds, and “stickers”. I gave my students several options for adding illustrations to represent their poems. They could take their own pictures that represented their poem, draw their own, or they could find them on the internet. If they drew their own pictures, I scanned them and uploaded them as jpgs. I also had a student who wrote a shape poem, so we were able to scan that in and incorporate it as well.
Mixbooks can be embedded in class websites and a link can be emailed. Once parents have the link, they can order hard copies of their child’s book. One thing I always did, was chose the cheapest version to get the kids to started, that way if parents did want to order it, it wasn’t too costly.
Here is one example of a poetry book created by a student.
If you’re interested in using mixbook, but don’t know where to start, Jennifer Barnett created a step-by-step guide to get you going.