Authoring eBooks with the Deaf School in Jakarta

My current class is working on a project to author eBooks with the deaf school here in Jakarta. We have already had two face to face meetings. In the first meeting the Grade 4 from SWA travelled to the Santi Rama Deaf school. We paired up each student and got down to work.

As preparation, both Grade 4 classes learned how to do some simple ASL - American Sign Language. We learned to perform the song Fireflies in ASL. It was interesting to learn the song and quite fun too!

We learned during our first meeting with the deaf school that Indonesia has it's own sign language. Luckily it is really similar to ASL so we were able to use a lot of what we had learned in preparation. We found that being able to spell out words came in very handy!! My first sentence in sign language was 'What's your name?' and 'My name is Jane'.

Prior to our first meeting I travelled to Santi Rama with my partner teacher Ade to meet with the principal and discuss the details of the project. We agreed that the deaf students needed to prepare their stories in advance by writing them down on paper. We also asked that each child supply some drawings for the book illustrations.

In that first meeting we were able to begin making the story in Keynote. The plan was to create all the layouts in Keynote and then do the final formatting in Book Creator. Out issue is that there is only a small set of iPads at our school and we can only borrow them for a short period of time. It takes time to create a quality book so I will do the final format for the students in my class. The students will simply export their Keynote pages as JPEGs and I will put the videos and pages together and export them out of Book Creator as an ePUB3 files. 

In the second meeting the Santi Rama students travelled on our school bus to SWA. They had a great time playing with our students and working on the final video shoot for the sign language. It proved to be challenging for the deaf students to sign each sentence as they were using vocabulary that was not common so they needed extra support from their teachers. This is the first time that they had ever tried to make a digital story book that included sign language videos inside. Take a look at the school Vice Principal supporting this Grade 4 student to do the correct sign language for the sentence, 'Ghina was really happy and thanked God'. This story is about Ghina herself and how she celebrated her recent 11th birthday.

The books are looking quite nice and I am slowly putting the final touches on them in Book Creator. Take a look at these cover designs. My students are currently making Book Trailers in iMovie to promote each book. I can't wait to show you the finished products. It's certainly keeping the teachers; Jocelyn, Ade, Julie and myself all very busy!

Create - Publish - iBookstore

How can teachers support students to create books and publish them?

Yesterday I helped to upload the 9th book from SWA to the iBookstore. This book was created by my own daughter so I can explain each step here for those of you who may wish to publish a book.

You can download the book here for free. It is called 'Catch a Dragonfly' http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/catch-a-dragonfly/id536106960?mt=11 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Choosing an idea. 

This seems simple enough yet it can be the hardest part of the process. Luli, my daughter loves nature and we were chatting about when she first learned how to catch a dragonfly. Luli is a very caring girl and only likes to catch the dragonflies to take a closer look. She then releases them again to fly away free.

We chatted about how she could turn this into a story book.

2. Making the book. 

When making a book with children, it's best to keep it simple. Luli and I went for a drive to find a rice field. We found a few but we needed the rice plants to be tall and almost ready for harvest. This is what attracts the dragonflies. We also needed to go late in the day when it is cooler.

I asked Luli to think about what needed to be included in the book. I took the photos so that Luli could concentrate on the story.

3. Choosing the photos. 

I downloaded all the pictures onto my Macbook and Luli chose which ones she wanted to include to tell the story. She then put them into order and we imported them onto my iPad. It is very easy to create picture books directly on the iPad. This allows children to focus more on the story because learning to use the App only takes a few minutes.

4. Book Creator App  

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/book-creator-for-ipad/id442378070?mt=8
We used the Book Creator app for iPad to make the story. I really like the professional finish that Book Creator produces. Luli was easily able to insert all the pictures into the book and type in the text to go with each page. We decided to use a lot of double page images to really show off the photos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. Previewing the book. 

Book Creator allows for an easy preview in the iBooks free app. You just tap the export to iBooks button which automatically opens the iBooks app and opens your new book. After previewing her book, Luli was able to change the order of some of the pages and then preview again by clicking export to iBooks.

6. Recording the book reading.

Luli wanted to include a recording on each page of her reading the book. This is so that her book can be more accessible for younger readers. She did this easily using the Book Creator app by separately recording each page. She was careful to read slowly and clearly.

7. Exporting the finished book.

When the story was complete. Luli added one last page 'About the Author'. I insist on all my students including a page about the author. I think that it is important for the reader to know who wrote the book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8. Uploading to iTunes

To upload the book to the iBookstore, you need to have the parent create an iTunes account (with a credit card on file) and then an iTunes Connect account. To create a Paid account you need many things such as a US Tax file number, ISBN for each book and also complete tax requirements for the country in which you reside. For students I recommend creating a Free account as it is instant and the iBookstore supply each ISBN for free.

If the child is under age, the parent must be the one creating these accounts as the parent will become the publisher for the child. 

Once the account has been created, any subsequent books can be easily published via that same account.
I had already created an iTunes Connect, so it was easy for me to upload this book to my account.

9. Creating the Publishing Package

It is important to read the instructions that are inside the iTunes Connect account as to what requirements are necessary for your book. There is a limit on images used for publishing to the iBookstore. Each image must be less than 2 million pixels. I needed to reduce the size of all of the photos for Luli's book as I had taken them with a DSLR and they were 10 MB each. To do that you can open each photo on your Macbook using Preview and in the Tools section reduce the size for each image.

In the publishing package you will need to include a category for your book, title, description and target audience. You will also need the exported ePub file, cover image and some sample pages. The sample pages must be 1024 X 768 pixels which is easy enough to re size using Preview on a Mac.

10. Publishing

The iBookstore will run several checks on your book. In my experience, if the images are under 2 million pixels, there is little more to worry about as Book Creator produces a file that is standards compliant with the iBookstore requirements. The iBookstore does check the content which can mean delays in publishing. My daughters book that I uploaded yesterday at 6pm was published only 6 hours later! This depends on your content. Not all books are released that quickly. Some books produced by my students have taken as long as 6 weeks to publish.

Good luck to you who wish to publish. My daughter is so happy today. She is already planning book 2!!

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.

My iBook Adventures

Today I went back to school very excited to show my iBook on my iPad. This book is in Indonesian my second language. My first job was to get my language proof-read by my Indonesian colleagues. I wanted to make sure that my Indonesian was not too formal and therefore suitable for children as my book is a children’s story.

Then I tried using iTunes Producer to create the .itmsp iBook package. I am still a little confused as Indonesian is not on the list of languages. Does that mean that there are no books in the iBookstore in Indonesian?

There are only 14 languages in the drop-down list. When I tried to type over the option to add Indonesian. It continued to fail when I uploaded the package to iTunes Connect. Consequently I have had to put my book language as English even though I have written it in Indonesian.

I hope that I can create a series of books for children written in Indonesian. I need Apple to add Indonesian language to their list of languages.

A word of advice ...

I neglected to read the fine print and had to resize both my cover art image and my screenshot images for my book.

For the Cover art:

Cover art should be at least 600 pixels along the larger axis and must be a TIFF, JPEG, or PNG file in RGB Color mode. For an average trade paperback, this could be 400 x 600 minimum size.

For the screenshots:

Screenshots should be a clear picture and be a 1024 x 768, 1024 x 748, 768 x 1024, or 768 x 1004 pixel
JPEG or PNG file with the appropriate file extensions (.jpg, .jpeg, and .png) in RGB Color mode.

Once I had done this I had only one other error - language. I tried to type in Indonesian but it is not one of the language options from the drop down list. In the end I put English.

Needless to say the upload was successful. Now I am wondering what happens next. I have gone into the settings and made it available to the world.