Earlier this year, StoryWeaver conducted a Bengali Translation Hackathon with a group of enthusiastic teachers and language students. The hackathon saw over 70 level 1 and 2 stories translated to Bengali and reviewed.

The participants were excited by the possibilities the StoryWeaver platform afforded and left the hackathon with many ideas on how they could use it in their work with children.

Participants, Anupam Dam and Suman Das, was particularly excited by StoryWeaver, and wanted to introduce it to students and also to teachers. He wrote back to us soon after the hackathon with the idea of conducting a StoryWeaver workshop for some of the teachers in his school.

Anupam is a a government aided school teacher and is keen to provide his students with the best possible facilities and resources.  Suman Das is a Head Master Of Chalitatali Prathamik Vidyalaya of Nadia District.

“I wanted to arrange the workshop to spread awareness among teachers like me about the vast scope of using StoryWeaver in the classroom” Anupam shared. “All the participants chosen to attend the workshop were equally dedicated towards education.”

 

Team StoryWeaver had shared a suggested schedule for the workshop. “This helped the workshop go as planned, from the introduction stage to final publishing of stories.” recalls Suman.

The workshop facilitators were pleased to notice that participants willingly involved themselves in the workshop and performed the tasks asked of them flawlessly. They had very few queries, and the most frequently asked question was "Is it possible to edit already published stories?"

“My colleagues were engaged throughout the workshop and enjoyed it the most when the saw their stories published on the  StoryWeaver platform, ” added Suman.

Sudeshna Moitra, our Bengali Consultant Language Editor, was an observer at the workshop and  had this to say about the experience: “Yesterday’s workshop was very enriching for me. All the fellow teachers were quick to grasp the concept and participated equally and intelligently. Their enthusiasm to learn and know more made the workshop quite fulfilling. Had a great experience from my side as well. I enjoyed the opportunity to interact with a group of interesting minds and hope to do similar workshops more. It feels great to conduct such workshops and the feedback from them was wonderful. Hope I have managed to contribute something meaningful to them through the workshop.

The workshop ended with teachers discussing ways in which they could use StoryWeaver in the classroom environment and sharing their takeaways from the session. Some of them  were happy to have learned a new way to share stories with students and planned to ‘create stories based on school syllabus’ while others were happy to have the opportunity to create and translate stories in their mother tongue.

We look forward to seeing more teachers conducting StoryWeaver workshops in their schools. If you’re interested in introducing StoryWeaver to your peers and in your classrooms, write to us at [email protected] today.
 

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Khyati Datt, a member of our outreach team writes about two of our recent workshops in Mumbai and Mysore.

It’s not often that you have 25 Master Teachers from different walks of life, speaking 5 different languages, living in 4 different states and still engaging with each other and sharing their thoughts.

This was the scene at our recently conducted StoryWeaver Workshop in Mysore. Pratham Education Foundation invited their wonderful Master Teachers for a training workshop in Mysore and we, at StoryWeaver, got the chance to interact with them on the last day of their training. Our facilitators, Mala, Shruthi and Payoshni ensured that the session was multilingual- in Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, English and Hindi.

The beautiful weather at Mysore served as the perfect setting for a 3-hour long session where interesting teacher practices came to light. As the session progressed, we deep dived into the intriguing world of stories and explored how stories open a child’s eyes to a world filled with joy and learning.

The teachers, then, went on to try their hands at StoryWeaver. They decided on themes and explored the platform for five stories/flashcards that talked about their theme. Their biggest takeaway from this exercise was that they can use the platform in their classrooms and combine storytelling with teaching. The second part of their task was getting down to becoming authors! Each group was given a task sheet with a specific theme and encouraged to create a story/flashcard. The most exciting bit was teachers realizing how easy it is for them to create in their regional languages and taking it to their classrooms back home.

 

We got some great stories from the teachers, who presented their idea for the story and the flow behind it. With so many tongues in the room, everyone promptly translated what was being spoken in the room which ensured language was not a  barrier for a fantastic session of  idea-exchanges.

A discussion ensued on what are the different ways in which the teachers can use StoryWeaver in the classrooms. It was wonderful to see how the teachers could align their existing classroom ideas with storytelling practices, like by getting their students excited about a topic by narrating them a story about it. Using illustrations as writing prompts, and spotting books for teaching sight words were one of the many ideas that the teachers dwelled on.

We closed the session by showing the participants videos of teachers using StoryWeaver to build a reading culture in their classrooms. The rain shower that followed was the perfect end to a wonderful workshop!

In the previous week, a similar workshop was conducted in Bombay with 30 teachers from Pratham’s ECE wing from Maharashtra and Gujarat. The crackling energy in the room led to a session that was interactive and fun! The teachers came up with ideas to use stories in the classroom to make the lessons engaging and to ensure that the students learn in a different manner. As Smitin Brid, Program Head of Early Childhood Program for Pratham Education Foundation, puts it, “ I’m thankful to the StoryWeaver team for conducting wonderful and useful sessions at Mumbai and Mysore workshops. The key resource people in both these regions have got information about this platform and we’ll ensure continuous engagement with them on using the resources available on StoryWeaver.”

A big thank you to Pratham Education Foundation and its ECE wing for giving us the opportunity to interact with the teachers and their consistent support.

If you are interested in hosting a similar workshop for your organisation, drop us an email on [email protected]

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Reading is one of the most essential components of a child's learning & development journey. At Pratham Books and StoryWeaver, we understand this and StoryWeaver came about with the exact purpose of increasing access to books for children in languages and context that they enjoy - in a boundary-less digital way.

StoryWeaver (http://www.storyweaver.org.in/) is an open source, digital repository of multilingual children’s stories. StoryWeaver is an especially useful tool for organisations and individuals working in Education, allowing them to:

• Browse, read and curate a reading list from over 9700 stories across 122 languages

• Download stories for offline reading

• Create a new story or a set of flashcards from an image bank of over 13000 illustrations

• Re-level or remix a story to suit your child's needs

• Translate stories to a language of your choice

And best of all, ALL of this is absolutely FREE

We invite educators, librarians and resource people to attend the StoryWeaver workshop to be held in Hyderabad. To celebrate the diversity of languages we have, we are planning to conduct the workshop session in English on the 29th of November and in Telugu on the 30th of November. You are requested to give your preference for the date/language while signing up and we will confirm the final date and the venue of the workshop to you at a later stage. However, just in case we have lesser number of participants for the Telugu workshop, we will be looking at doing a bilingual one on 29th itself. Please do make a note of this.

(Image from 'A Book for Puchku' by Deepanjana Pal and Rajiv Eipe.)

The workshop would cover the following:-

1. A detailed Demo of StoryWeaver – how to navigate and use the platform

2. Examples of how educators are using StoryWeaver effectively in their classrooms

3. Dedicated work time for participants to try their hands on StoryWeaver

4. An opportunity to meet other educators and make interesting conversations

If this excites you, REGISTER HERE   to book your place in the workshop, latest by 22nd November, Thursday.  

Please note that the seats are limited and we might not be able to accommodate more than 2-3 people per organization.  Confirmed participants will get a separate email confirming their participation and other logistical details. 

The workshop will be held between 9.30 a.m to 4.30 p.m and there is no fee to attend the workshop.

Feel free to reach out with any questions to Khyati at [email protected]. Look forward to seeing you there!

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