BookWidgets 5.3 release

We just released a new update to BookWidgets for Mac, Windows and the web. Release 5.3 brings two new widgets (Planner and Spot The Difference, more on that below), a greatly enhanced Active Plot widget, as well as a host of smaller fixes and enhancements to various widgets and the tool itself.

New Planner widget

The new Planner widget lets you easily build a simple, yet versatile checklist. Use it to provide students with a checklist explaining a process, as a simple list of instructions, or even to put together a day plan for special needs students.

You can predefine a list of items, as well have students put together a list by themselves. Simple configuration options give you full control over whether students are allowed to add, remove or reorder items in the list. Have a look at the examples, it really is a quite flexible widget and we’ve received excellent feedback from early users.

Essay writing process Day planner

For more details, check this post: “Discover the all-new Planner widget”

New Spot The Difference widget

If you’re a fan of our other game widgets, there’s a good chance you’ll love this one as well: the new Spot The Difference widget. A classic game which probably doesn’t need much explaining, that we took to the next level:

  • Images don’t have to be (nearly) identical, as the spots can be positioned for each image separately
  • A pop-up can offer additional explanations using text and images, as students are marking the differences

Here’s a simple example:

You can find more details in this post: “Spot The Difference widget”

Active Plot enhancements

The Active Plot widget has been around for a while, and was designed to let students play around with the parameters of an equation, thereby developing an intuition for how the formula “works”. In this release, we added a number of enhancements:

  • Students can now add their own expressions
  • Teachers and students can add points to plot on the graph (great for curve fitting exercises)
  • Teachers can add instructions / questions for the students to answer
  • Axis can now be labeled
  • Students can write on scratchpad pages to perform calculations

Try your hand at this example:

Thanks to the teachers of Christ Church Grammar School for working with us to add these powerful additions!


For the full rundown of all the fixes & enhancements in this release, check out the release notes.

Niels Vanspauwen

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BookWidgets enables teachers to create fun and interactive lessons for tablets, smartphones, and computers.

Choose from over 40 exercise templates (quizzes, crosswords, jigsaw puzzles, ...), and adapt them with your own content.