Tech4Good Awards Winner

The DETA pre-conference workshop 1: “Creating children’s storybooks in the languages of Africa using the African Storybook Maker App (Saide)”, this App that Ms Dorcas Wephukulu will be demonstrating has just won a major award.

Creating children’s storybooks in the languages of Africa using the African Storybook Maker App

Presenter: Ms Dorcas Wephukulu. Click here to read her biography.

We anticipate that this workshop will integrate issues from two of the four sub-themes of the conference, namely:

• Pedagogical considerations in Distance Education (DE)
• Technologies of DE

 

Saide’s African Storybook (ASb) Maker App is a free app which is downloadable from Google Play or the App Store onto a phone or tablet.

With the help of the African Storybook Guide to Creating storybooks with Children, teachers can support and encourage the children they teach, to create their own picture storybooks offline and publish them when they have an internet connection.

 

There are 250 story pictures preloaded on the Maker App, mostly sets of four to eight pictures from storybooks published on the African Storybook website. With teachers’ support, children can use these pictures to develop short and simple stories. Teachers can also refer children to the App pictures to create their own drawings which they can then use to create storybooks. They can also help children to combine their own pictures and App pictures to create their storybooks.

 

Requirements for participants

• Smartphone or tablet.
• African Storybook Guide to Creating storybooks with Children (supplied in pdf format).

 

Workshop outline (draft)

• Participants download the ASb Maker App onto their device (smartphone or tablet). It’s important to ensure that the device is running the latest operating system. Ideally, this should be done before the workshop or can be done at the start.
• Using the app on their device, participants familiarise themselves with the story creation process – this will be facilitated during the workshop.
• Create a storybook using the app. Participants can do this exercise offline during the workshop.
• Selected participants share their storybooks in the workshop.
• Participants practise editing the storybook.
• Participants understand the Publish and Delete functions.
• Participants use the supplied guide on Creating Storybooks with Children to support children to create their own stories.