The Power of Publishing

Recently I ran two online workshops via Google Meet for the Emmanual Foundation's Innovative Schools Project.  The workshops were to help their graduates try to meet the needs of online learning now that all schools in Indonesia are closed due to the pandemic.

The first workshop was designed for teachers that are new to Google apps. I introduced Slides and led the participants through how to make a simple layout with layered photos in Slides. 

I wanted to keep things very simple so we stayed completely within the app and used the Google Image Search that is inside. I taught the participants how to add .png to a photo search to get vector images with transparent backgrounds. 

The task I set was to make a lesson that used photos and instructions. The participants were so keen that the workshop went on for 2 hours. 

For the follow-up workshop, I taught the participants to create a virtual reading room. Here is the example that I used Virtual Reading Room.

The example that I used with the group was in Indonesian. I published these stories almost 8 years ago. They were written as a part of the backpack project that I did back in 2012 in a small village in North Sumatra. I worked with the children in that village to write every day stories about their life. 

There was a lot of discussion about these books and I hope that I inspired these teachers to try publishing stories of their own. I used Book Creator to publish these books and they even have a free version that includes 40 books. 

I was so proud to see that these teachers (70 attended my session) were able to make their own reading rooms. Here's an example from the class. Here is a screenshot of a virtual reading room created by one of the participants. She even put links to each book and filtered the YouTube videos with SafeTube. I'm happy because I did go in detail about online safety and whilst YouTube has so many awesome videos, it's much safer to filter out unwanted content. 

eBook Little Fish Hits 3,000 Downloads!

The success of Little Fish the eBook has been quite staggering. I first made this book with my son, John about a year ago in a printed version. John came home one day from playing to show me a tiny fish that he had caught from a river in the housing complex that we live in. He had so much to tell me about this fish and I encouraged him to take me to the river to show me where he caught it.

I took my iPhone to take photos and John rode his bike. I asked John to tell me the story as we went and I took photos to be later put into the book.

We downloaded the photos onto my Macbook and I put the story together using the program called Keynote. John was able to retell the story easily. We put a sentence for each photo keeping the story simple yet engaging.

Originally we wrote the story in Indonesian as John had only just turned 5 at the time and his English wasn't very fluent. Later I translated it into English. The result was then printed onto paper and I took it to a book binder to put a hard cover on it. John was able to share his book with his class but that's as far as it went.

I have been making books such as these for years here in Indonesia. Simple stories that can be printed up and hard bound for classroom use. It is very difficult to publish a book here in Indonesia. Most publishers will only print 3000 and so therefore will only choose books that have the potential to sell well.

'Little Fish' was well received by John's class and we kept a copy at home on our bookshelf. At that time there were no apps for creating books which allowed the user to have control over the layout. I have always used a simple layout style featuring large photos and simple text. I have preferred to use a landscape page orientation for picture books as I can make the picture really fill the page.

A few months ago I learned about an app on the iPad called Book Creator. I read that it can produce a file that is compliant with the requirements for the iBookstore. I started to use the app in different classes to produce books but I had not thought of publishing any of them. I decided that I needed a test product so I quickly revised 'Little Fish' making it in English only and adding voice recordings to make it more engaging.

I uploaded the book to iTunes Connect and set about getting it published. I have already written about that experience in a post here.

To date the book has been downloaded 3,000 times. I find myself thinking about why ...

It is simple and personal
It has full colour photos that show what happened
It has a voice recording which can help young children learning to read
It has been created by a child with help from his mother - not by a professional publishing house
What this means ...
It is amazing to think that people can now share their stories in this way. My son's book is regularly featured by Apple in the iBookstore alongside professional authors such as Beatrix Potter.  John gets feedback about his book from people on the other side of the world.  

 

The difference here is this book has gone through the same system that other authors experience - yet it was made by ordinary people.

Production - Editing - Selection (by Apple) - Marketing - Feedback

I know I keep saying this but this is the beginnings of the publishing revolution.

IQ Bar aka Genius Bar at SWA

This morning I had the honor of being the guest speaker at the K12 Online Echo. I had previously published my 'Living History - Authentic Learning Empowered By Digital Technology' presentation last December via the K12 Online Conference

This morning my video was live streamed and then I was asked a series of questions by those people who joined the chat via Skype. One of the many questions asked was about the technology set up at my school. I mentioned that we have a Genius Bar modeled after the ones that can be found in Apple Stores around the world. This school-based concept was developed by my CEO John McBryde.

The IQ Bar concept is the same as the Apple Genius Bar model with the only difference is that this facility in located in the school. There is always an IT technician available at the desk and students, teachers or parents are able to drop in for assistance with their technology needs. As well as this, teachers can iChat across the school campus and request assistance remotely. I have had student laptops fixed remotely by chatting and explaining the problem. The assistance is made possible by using Apple Remote Desktop.


Sinarmas World Academy IQ Bar

Google Safesearch - Updated Service

When you're searching on Google, SafeSearch, is a feature that lets you filter sexually explicit web sites and images from your search results. While no filter is 100% accurate, SafeSearch helps you avoid content you may prefer not to see or would rather your children did not stumble across.

Today they launched a feature that lets you lock your SafeSearch setting to the Strict level of filtering. When you lock SafeSearch, two things will change. First, you'll need to enter your password to change the setting. Second, the Google search results page will be visibly different to indicate that SafeSearch is locked:

Even from across the room, the colored balls give parents and teachers a clear visual cue that SafeSearch is still locked. And if you don't see them, it's quick and easy to verify and re-lock SafeSearch.

To use SafeSearch lock, go to the "Search Settings" page on Google. For detailed instructions, check out this video:


I will teach my Parent class this afternoon about using this new feature.