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!

My Dream for Education Has Come True

Today was an exciting day for me. My school hosted a press conference to celebrate the publishing of Keily's book 'Chen Chen Goes to Space' to the iBookstore. Keily Setiawan is only nine years old and is in Grade 4. I worked with Keily over several weeks in her Mandarin classes to create an iBook. When we first sent it to the iBookstore it was rejected as the iBookstore doesn't support Chinese script.

We were so disappointed but Keily suggested to make her book bilingual and add English. I had asked Apple Singapore if there were any books in the iBookstore that were in Chinese and found out that the ones that were there were bilingual.

So we revised the book.

Actually it made the book become better. We realize that Keily is probably the first child in the world to publish in English and Chinese. Download Keily's book here.

My school sent out an infobyte (newsletter) to the school community to announce Keily's achievement.

The next day I was approached by a Grade 11 student. Her name is Nahyeon Kim. Nahyeon is a very talented artist. She told me that she made a book last year for her personal project. This book was hand painted entirely by her. Nahyeon's dream is to become a graphic artist. I persuaded her to add voice recordings to each page to make the book more accessible for young children.

She agreed.

On Wednesday we uploaded the book to the iTunes iBookstore. Both students had to ask their parents to come to school to work with me to create iTunes Connect accounts as you need a credit card as a part of the verifying process. Keily is actually under age and Nahyeon doesn't have her own credit card.

Late last night I received the news that Nahyeon's book had been published. It was uploaded on Wednesday and published late Thursday night by Apple. That's the fastest I'd ever heard of getting a book published!!! Download her book, 'Threescoop's Snowy Adventure' here.

Previously Nahyeon had tried to publish her book. It was too expensive to pay for a print run. She had shared the process on her blog - but that is not the same as being officially published to the world in an online bookstore.

Today I presented these books by Keily and Nahyeon and 12 other exemplary books to the press. We had about 30 reporters come to school. Actually I have about 70 books that have been made by students. Today we wanted to show just a short range of books made by students from Kindergarten to Grade 11.

Tonight I sit and reflect upon this week of meeting the press and getting books ready for publishing. I remember it was about 4 years ago that I had an interview with The Jakarta Globe. Read the article here. I had met with the Globe having just presented at the 2008 Indonesian Teachers Congress in Jakarta. My presentation was about the power of digital storytelling. I presented entirely in Indonesian.

My dream back then was to publish digital stories and have them on a website. The point was to share stories. Sadly it didn't really take off. I have always had a passion for helping students to write and I have created many books over the years with my classes. These are great keepsakes but rarely go beyond the class and parents. In my previous school I actually published a book with my Grade 1 but we only printed 500 copies and that was very, very expensive.

In 2008 I became an Apple Distinguished Educator. This changed everything ...

Apple has supported me. The software, training and inspiration that I have been given to grow as an educator had changed the way I teach. It's all about the student voice. I realize now, that this was what I was trying to do back in 2008. I was trying to give students a platform, an opportunity to be heard and to have a greater audience to read their work that went beyond the teacher, the class, their parents and even their school community.

Today I realized that dream ...

My students are no longer writing for the teacher, for their parents or for their school community. Students are able to actually publish their work to the world. Keily now realizes that she has an audience on the other side of the globe. Her work is now alongside professional authors in a high profile online bookstore.

Keily is now an author!

Nahyeon's book that she painstakingly created over a year ago can be downloaded and viewed by people from 32 different countries.

Nahyeon is now an author and very talented book illustrator!

Yes I know that blogging can give you that international audience. But to have your book published in a forum alongside professional authors is something that is quite amazing.

Amazing!

Amazing for me to realize my dream as an educator. This is something that I will continue to build upon.

Thank you Apple 

Mother Tongue Week

Soon it will be Mother Tongue Week at school. I thought that I'd get a jump-start on things and make a story together with my youngest son in his Mother Tongue which is Indonesian. Today is a public holiday so we went to explore the river at our housing estate. My son likes to play there and catch little fish. We made a story about this. I plan to get it printed up with hard back binding.

Ikan-Ikan Kecil (Little Fish)

Digital Stories for Inquiry

Today in Grade 1 the class continued to create a digital story about the habitat at school that they have been studying. The students have been studying the Koi pond at school and the story that they are making is about about the Koi fish that live in that pond.
Here is one of the stories in progress:


Where the Koi Fish Live

A Digital Story from a Kindergarten Kid - he is only 4!

This wonderful story was created by a Kindergarten student. It is about playing together and includes a moral.

Pangeran Katak - The Frog Prince in Indonesian

This story was made by a Grade 2 student during Indonesian language time. The characters were hand drawn and captured with a digital camera. The frog was made using Spore Creature Creator. The story was completed using Keynote with voice overs and animation. This is the level that Grade 2 children can get to given support and plenty of access to technology. We run a mobile lab of Macbooks for Grade 1-3 students at Sinarmas World Academy.

Digital Storytelling in Grade 2

The Grade 2 students have their end of year class party today. They will present their digital stories to their parents.
Each story was written by a student, then the characters were hand-drawn on paper, photographed, then saved as a gif. These pictures were then put into Keynote and each student made their story with 'move' animation and voice overs. Here is a finished example:

Digital Stories for the iPad - Character Update

The Grade 6 have been busy creating their digital characters using Spore Creature Creator. They had some fun putting themselves into the picture this morning but using Photobooth and overlaying the Spore creature in Keynote. A screen grab was made and then uploaded to the school LMS Studywiz for sharing. I put them all into a Slideshow at www.slide.com to show you here.

iPad Digital Stories - the Main Character

Today the Grade 6 students started creating their main character for their iPad story using the Spore Creature Creator (free version). The advantage of using Spore Creature Creator is that you can easily create in 3D and then make screen captures (with no background) which can be layered over other pictures.

The students made their characters with Spore Creature Creator and captured them with a transparent background.





The students next used Photobooth to take a photo of themselves and dragged that photo into Keynote. The character picture was added on top and a screen capture was made of the completed composition.



Here is an example of a character created by one of the students during class this morning.

Spore Creature Creator

To make the characters for your digital story ... you can use Spore Creature Creator. I made this bird today by using the program.

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Watch this great tutorial from You Tube

Digital Stories for the iPad - Part Three

Part Three

Problem -- The challenge your character must face and overcome
Without a problem, your story would be dull. When you give your main character a problem to solve, your story comes alive. Be sure to make it a big enough problem.

Important tip:
Use the magic of conflict. Conflict means someone or something tries to stop your character from solving the problem. The more times your hero tries and fails, the better.

Ask yourself these questions:
• What is your main character's problem?
• Is it a big enough problem that it will take a whole story to solve it?
• How does your main character try and fail to solve her or his problem?

Write about your story problem - make a screen capture and upload it to the Story Problem Gallery in Studywiz. Comment on 5 different students work.

Next ... Spore Creature Creator - Advanced Tutorial

Digital Stories for the iPad - Part Two

Like every good thing that is based in technology, without quality content ... well you basically have nothing but dazzle. Whenever I begin a project with a class I always focus hard on the content first. That's why in order to make a digital story ... we will focus on the story writing just as much as the digital part. Here is part two of Digital Stories for the iPad ...

Setting -- Where your story takes place
Every story needs to take place somewhere. Your story's setting can have either a big or little impact on the story.

Ask yourself these questions:
• Where does your story take place -- on the moon, in Hawaii, inside your dad's nose, or someplace completely different?
• When does your story take place: past, present or future?
• How much does your setting affect your main character's problem?

Answer these questions be replying to the discussion thread in Studywiz in the Technology section of Gr 6 Curriculum.

Digital Stories for the iPad - Part One

Today in Grade 6 we started our digital story making for the soon to be released iPad. The students are writing a children's story about either animals or insects - or both! To start things rolling we went to the school library to look at traditional picture book stories. I gave the instructions to the students via our school LMS which is Studywiz. Here are the instructions for the lesson today:

Task 1
Find 3 picture books in the library and read them. Choose the one that you think would suit to make into an eBook. (this is for ideas only - do not copy the story)

Task 2
Your Own Main Character -- The animal or insect your story is about

Every story starts with a main character. For this story it can be any animal or insect you want it to be. One suggestion: try choosing a main character you like to draw.
Start by asking yourself some questions:
• Who is your main character?
• What does he, she or it like/dislike?
• What is your character's personality?
• What does your character look like?

Task 3
Draw a character web. Put your main character's name in the circle in the middle, and all of his or her characteristics in different circles connecting to the character circle.
Use Inspiration to make your character web.
Upload your character web to Studywiz in the Character Web gallery to share.

Here is one example of a Character Web created by a student in the lesson this morning.

Storybird for Story Creation

Today via Twitter, I found a wonderful site called Storybird


It is a lovely site for children wanting to write their own stories. Storybird is a safe site as all stories are approved by the site before being made public. There are beautiful illustrations to choose from made by professional artists.
Here is an example book http://storybird.com/books/seeing-things/

K1 Has Started Their Tomato Journal

The K1 students will photograph their tomato plants every day to make a photo journal of the growing process. We have already started to make this digital story book.