More about the African Storybook project and the free online course starting on 15th April. Please join us...

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The African Storybook Project is really something to get excited about. We have written a number of blogposts about this exciting venture on this blog:</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />a)  </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://e-blogschool.blogspot.com/2012/12/this-is-fiona-beal-from-schoolnet-on.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: blue;">Introducing The African Storybook Project</span><span style="color: black;">...</span></a><br />b)  <a href="http://e-blogschool.blogspot.com/2013/03/30-days-of-writing-1-welcome-to-african.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: blue;">30 days of Writing #1: Welcome to the African Storybook project</span></a><br />c)  <span style="color: blue; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://e-blogschool.blogspot.com/2013/03/an-exciting-free-digital-storytelling_25.html" style="text-decoration: none;">An exciting, free digital storytelling course and writing opportunity for South African</a> </span></span><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://e-blogschool.blogspot.com/2013/03/an-exciting-free-digital-storytelling_25.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: blue;">educators. Please sign up</span></a></span><a href="http://e-blogschool.blogspot.com/2013/03/an-exciting-free-digital-storytelling_25.html" style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-decoration: none;">…</a><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>The ‘Digital Storytelling and the African Storybook project’ short online course for teachers</b></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The African Storybook Team has asked SchoolNet to create and run a free short online digital storytelling course for teachers around the country starting on 15th April. This course is open to any educators who want to improve their own writing skills and perhaps discover the writer within them! It is hope that they will donate the story they write during the course to the website, and that they will encourage their learners to write a story suitable for a Grade 3 reader. This means the writers could be foundation phase, intermediate phase or high school students – even tertiary students who would like to help the children of Africa with reading material. There is a great prize for a teacher from the school that submits the most useable stories for the website. There is more about this course and the incentive on our Free online courses page on this blog - we invite you to sign up </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://e-blogschool.blogspot.com/p/courses.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;"><b>here</b></span></a>.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"> </span> It starts on 15th April.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="image" border="0" height="163" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnQqcdNk_qMC_dNFwZX1iGOHKVbcRODOxn2QC2a6CNzwqJ3RPiKdSl4f8hJcPs4SyjkpghyphenhyphenDjpU4kNtPQrhz3Q0sKu_cTMJs3VeHHMJXi3Xi_sKxD7sxC_mq9-bPK7mJRMTzKUX18Fuds/?imgmax=800" style="background-image: none; border: 0px; display: inline; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="image" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Caption taken from <a href="http://digitalclassroom.co.za/digitalclassroom/index.php" target="_blank">Vodacom's Digital Classroom portal</a></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now to add some background to this project and also add the brochure about it as an e-book…</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><strong><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What is the African Stoybook project again?</span></strong><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal;">The African Storybook Project (ASP) is a project that will create and encourage the use of a digital library of stories for the first few years of reading in digital formats, openly licensed, with a process and tools for translating and versioning stories for local African languages and contexts. These will be shared on a website which is in the process of being created.This will enable users to upload and share versions of the stories in their local languages, providing numbers of stories in a range of languages way beyond the scope of conventional publishing.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz-Hv3nYZzuesReZCZ6dghFIDV5gR649zVqBJJQd0ziDyQOjUdePc375UImdoEEqD-C0wy_qPgq7-UZYBGDpyCjjx9nkcbLCPJYFqsjareu_tNXsSlGxRyBc0rNFoTwlIxEGTQZukuY-c/s1600-h/image%25255B10%25255D.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="image" border="0" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFBgD4_J91UElmLGeW7WD53JZ8vnpUwQXQIwu6nwvOahUQCNjTBIaKkwmj0j6BtL6QFZTFUs27x0jkMVCtd6RdNswXn9K2Am7RyX2M2mSX33Bw_0i7j8O7UY-1niQvRSkWfCOxBzfPLIE/?imgmax=800" style="background-image: none; border: 0px; display: inline; margin: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="image" width="244" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Taken from the African Storybook Project brochure</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br /><h4><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">How will the African Storybook Project help to meet the literacy needs of children aged 2-9 years old in Africa?</span></h4><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The African Storybook Project will facilitate availability, access to, and use of sufficient good stories for early reading practice for African children ages 2 to 9. It will do this by setting up an interactive website with stories for early reading and by encouraging educators and literacy development organisations working in early literacy of young children in African countries: </span><br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to access openly licensed digital reading resources of various levels and types on the site</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to translate and/or adapt the stories into a familiar language and context for the children they work with</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to create their own stories and upload them in the templates provided,</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to contribute already published stories and make them available under an open licence, and </span></li><li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to use them in a variety of ways for literacy development.</span></li></ul><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The project will initially operate mainly in the pilot countries (Kenya, Uganda and South Africa) in schools, community libraries/reading clubs, early childhood and family literacy settings. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The main advantage of openly licensed stories on a website will be that educators and parents who want stories in their own language or dialect can translate some or all of the text to suit their context, without having to ask permission or pay any fee. And the adapted version of the book will be available for reading and printing immediately. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><strong><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What are ‘good stories’ in this context?</span></strong> <br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL_lC6W-YohftxAwiLRL1lAZS_sqnVWw70VIfU3LjwNx1s3EqbgTvWTBHctXk3ZuqyQlOx-qrcNIiqH5JP2e44J2y4qFKayfaK-D0RsbUYDowHfmTJL-1BD8LHXnNiPQrAvrsf49LGF-I/s1600-h/image%25255B6%25255D.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="image" border="0" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigKTz4TTBCa8wJIRJZFREhYK6NV8Sy0BucqJ-9XTtuAjl0Tr8Vu11uMiEKIkxqTs4jWDkbUZIuRWuPl-qOcvFnqiN5beZUOOBphGwExz7v4icALhRunu6ZipS-WfYDfdhqvi0uARiePZY/?imgmax=800" style="background-image: none; border: 0px; display: inline; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="image" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Taken from the African Storybook Project brochure</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Good stories in this context: </span><br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">speak to children’s reality and contexts;</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">have rich visual images that make sense and can support the reading of the text; </span></li><li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">encourage interest in the sounds and shapes and meanings of words; </span></li><li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">have a story, a happening, an event or sequence of events, and characters with which children can identify;</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">can be scary: it’s OK to be frightened and take risks in a story. </span></li></ul><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But above all, they need to leave children ‘panting for more’!<br /> </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>How will the African Storybook Project get their stories?</b></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We will draw on African oral literature and traditions of storytelling, songs, riddles, rhymes, on high quality published stories that the copyright holders are willing to donate, on openly licensed material already available on the Web, and on stories developed through workshops and competitions specifically for the project. But our main intent is to encourage creation and adaptation by users themselves in the ‘easy to use’ templates we provide on the website. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We will develop partnerships with literacy development organisations across the continent (but particularly in Uganda, Kenya and South Africa) to use the stories and the website in their project, contributing both lessons of experience to improve the website, and stories or versions of stories. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>The brochure</b></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here is the brochure for the African Storybook project presented as an e-book.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span> <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.youblisher.com/p/600590-The-African-Storybook-Project/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="The African Storybook Project" height="400" src="http://www.youblisher.com/files/publications/101/600590/200x300.jpg" width="282" /></a></div></div>

African Storybook Project More about the African Storybook project and the free online course starting on 15th April. Please join us...

The African Storybook Project is really something to get excited about. We have written a number of blogposts about this exciting venture on...

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