In my last post I blogged about how we started creating our own textbooks, now I’m ready to give some more details about the following step: “Creating E-Textbooks”.
Project: Students create their own E-Textbooks
Why this project?
I think that helping them create their own E-Textbooks would be just one more way to express my gratitude to my learners for sharing our learning journey. I feel this is a powerful way to develop pride in their learning process as well as develop self-awareness of their achievements during the year.
Teaching-learning scenario:
I teach one to one students either face-to-face or online. I teach Young Learners and Adults.
Students take 1 hour and half or 3 hours a week.
Why an E-Textbook
As I said, we use Google Documents as our sandbox to share our activities and productions. Our documents usually look messy, and they do not clearly display all students’ productions.
E-books will allow learners to download their creations to their mobile devices and document their learning journey.
Short-term goals:
Learn how to attribute images, and other authors ‘materials
Learn about creating CC License for their E-Textbooks
Edit work
Long-term goals:
Learn how to improve design to create more attractive material
Develop autonomous designer skills
Develop writers’ awareness from day one of each semester/year
Starting point:
I invited one student to join me in the project.
My student chose one project we did during the year. We used a Word document to collect all her work and then converted it into a pdf.
We edited the material using Adobe Acrobat.
We edited the material using Adobe Acrobat.
Then we watched this video:
I downloaded calibre, uploaded the material and voilà!
Judith, my student has always been enthusiastic, but I have never seen her so actively involved in a project like this time. She emailed me every time she had a new idea on how to edit a paragraph, to ask me to change some questions, to ask me if she could do something else.
She kept thanking me, when I was the one that could not find the words to express my gratitude.
This is just the beginning, it will take time and dedication. But in the meantime we are learning and having so much fun.
“You make me feel important” – Judith
Oh My Gosh! How much I love her!