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!

The Ups and Downs of Being Back in the Classroom

This year I am back in the classroom full-time. I have been the Technology Coach at my school for the past four years and felt that I was getting too removed from teaching as a homeroom teacher. Last year I was back in the class part time but I really needed to go back in full time so that I could have the full responsibility for the class.

It has been four months and I need to reflect on my practice ...

Homeroom teachers are very busy people. There is so much to juggle but at the same time it is all about setting routines and sticking to them. Sometimes I do well and sometimes it's very hard. I am constantly struggling with keeping a balance, hitting all my goals and keeping it on track. I also work as a part of a team which can be very hard as we are all busy, all have commitments and all have different teaching styles and opinions.

The Ups ...

I love being able to connect with the students again. I am getting to know them more and more everyday and starting to see some progress. What I love is seeing how the whole writing process has gotten so much easier. At the start of the year I was lucky to get a few sentences from each student. Now most of my class can write in greater detail and much more quickly. I am even getting some consistency with paragraphing.

I am very proud of my students' most recent work which was to each write a digital book on a body system. They created these books on their iPads. Each student has written a book which is research based, includes a video, voice recordings, hand-drawn diagrams and photos that were taken by the students themselves. I have uploaded the first two books already to the Apple iBookstore and we now wait for them to be published. This week I hope to upload three more. 

Writing books is a very big process, especially when the books are research-based. I have proof-read these books over and over and over and yet I still find small errors. I have had to check each fact to make sure that the students have not changed the meaning when writing it into their own words. I have also had to check that they cited the resource correctly. I will write about this process in more depth in the next blog post.

In Math we started with a geometry unit which was fun and very practical. The following unit was measurement which has shown me how many students needed some explicit teaching but - now we are past that and into the final stretch. The upcoming unit is number which is proving to be more challenging. I have started some PD on my own which has already taught me so much. A colleague of mine put me onto this resource - NZ Numeracy Project. I have started to diagnose my class through a series of personal interviews. Wow! I am learning so much. It does take a long time to get through each one but I feel that learning about how my students actually think when working with numbers is invaluable.

The Downs ...

Differentiation is hard. I have a typical class which as you know has students who can work easily and those who struggle. There are learning needs in the mix that are really challenging me. I can ability group and I do but sometimes it is hard to work with groups that have such a great need for explicit teaching. I try hard to give personal attention to each student but often my focus will drift to those who have the greatest needs. I strive to give ample focus to the top students as they deserve attention too. Ohhh it's such a balancing act!! I often feel quite frustrated but this just makes me like it all the more. Teaching is the hardest job I know and that's exactly why I do it.

Now that I have settled into this year, I feel that the hard work is just about to begin and I look forward to the challenge.