After my time in the quiet north woods, it was quite a shock to find myself in the packed Philadelphia Convention Center this week. I attended the 2015 ISTE Conference (International Society for Technology in Education) as a member of a presenting team from Long Branch Elementary School, where I’ve been helping ELL students (English Language Learners) tell their stories. The school’s proposal, “Immigrant Students Build Literacy Skills Through Technology,” had been selected for a poster exhibit, and we had three hours to explain our methods to the crowd of teachers stopping at our table. Though video and science projects are part of the Long Branch Literacy initiatives, my contribution has been to help third, fourth, and fifth graders create story books about their families. What have books got to do with technology? I’ve been working with the form as an artist, writer, binder, and teacher for a long time, and I’m pleased to report that books continue to be useful and attractive (as well as being portable and easy to read without a costly device)! I still guide the students through a process that includes interviewing a parent or grandparent, organizing their responses into sentences, arranging their sentences into the most effective narrative, and storyboarding their ideas for illustrations, but now everything is put together on an iPad. Using an app for creating photo books (we’ve been using Shutterfly for the classroom), the students are able to create easy layouts, type in their stories, draw their illustrations, photograph artifacts, import photos, and include an author page (I take their photos). When they are finished, the stories are sent off digitally to be turned into handsome paperback books. The resulting stories are heartfelt and often funny, and when the students hold their “published” books, their thrill and pride are obvious. Judging by the number of ELL teachers eager to learn about the family story books, I’d say books go hand-in-hand with technology in the classroom.