“Open source is a philosophy and a movement, and what makes open source thrive is the community that grows up around it.” says Abby Kerns in The Newstack. Community has no physical or geographical definition but rather is defined by a shared attitude, interest and goal and spans  geography, religion and political affiliations. Stories are the soul of open-source platforms, which prompt children to rapid fluency in their mother tongue, before they can read simple sentences in English. 

Illustration by Huynh Thi Kim Lien for 'Don't Wake the Baby!' 

Pratham Books’ StoryWeaver and Room to Read are partnering to combine the power of open, community and stories so that children can read over 400 storybooks in English, Bengali, Chinyanja, Chitonga, Hindi, Khmer, Lao, Marathi, Nepali, Sepedi, Sinhala, SiSwati, Kiswahili, Tamil, and Vietnamese. “Room to Read and Pratham Books share a common commitment to providing underserved children with high quality storybooks. We are delighted to have Room to Read’s books on our digital platform, StoryWeaver,  which are now available under open licences, so that children everywhere can discover the joy of reading”, says Suzanne Singh, Chairperson Pratham Books.

Room to Read is a non-profit organization that seeks to transform the lives of millions of children in low-income countries by focusing on literacy and gender equality in education. Founded on the belief that “world change starts with educated children," the organization focuses on working in collaboration with local communities, partner organizations and governments to develop literacy skills and a habit of reading among primary school children. 

They have partnered with StoryWeaver to publish 200 of their original language titles and their English versions on the StoryWeaver platform under the Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license. The StoryWeaver team has worked closely with Room to Read on editing these titles for publishing in Engalish, doing image enhancements and migrating the books to the platform. Alisha Berger, Global Publisher at Room to Read says “We are thrilled to partner with Pratham Books’ StoryWeaver to bring our books into the digital space for the first time. We hope these 400 openly-licensed books will inspire, motivate, and share the joy of reading with the wide and engaged audience on Storyweaver, as well as showcase Room to Read’s 20-year commitment to making exciting and fun books for children in their local languages.” 

Having these storybooks under the CC BY license on StoryWeaver takes these Room to Read stories to a larger audience, worldwide. At the same time, it gives the StoryWeaver community new stories to read and translate, thereby giving children around the world access to more stories in their mother tongue. Many of these stories have already been versioned into other languages like Punjabi, Filipino, Malayalam, French, Italian and others. Here’s hoping the stories continue to grow so as to put a book in every child’s hand. 

If you would like to partner with us please write to [email protected] 

Be the first to comment.

---

This position has now been filled.

Pratham Books is a not-for-profit children's book publisher that was set up in 2004 to publish good quality, affordable books in many Indian languages. Our mission is to see ‘a book in every child’s hand’ and we have spread the joy of reading to millions of children in India.

In 13 years, we have published over 3,000 books and distributed over 14 million copies of our storybooks and 16 million story cards. Last year, Pratham Books' increased its footprint by going digital. As an industry leader, we were one of the first publishers in the country to open license our content. All this content is now available on StoryWeaver, our digital platform that hosts stories in 60 languages. The stories can be read, translated, versioned or downloaded for free.

We are looking for an Art Director

Today, Pratham Books creates books suited to both print and digital mediums in multiple languages. We are looking for an Art Director to help us create visually appealing picture books with a strong understanding of how each of these mediums work.

As an Art Director, you will be responsible for the design and production of books created for both print and digital. As most of our titles are migrated to StoryWeaver, we are looking for someone who is tech-savvy and eager to find ways of minimising loss between print and digital book design. This will require you to work closely with our editorial team and external content creators we collaborate with (illustrators, consultant art directors). The candidate needs to have excellent graphic design skills and experience in print production.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage a team of graphic designers to ensure that the book design is completed within agreed timelines
• Work with freelance illustrators and consultant art directors to create visually-appealing books keeping in mind print and digital requirements
• Find innovative ways of reducing losses when a book is adapted from print to digital, or vice versa
• Ensure highest quality of print books
• Work closely with the editorial team to create stories with rich, diverse and nuanced visual narratives
• Bring in expertise of typography, keeping in mind multilingual content

Required skills

• 6-8 years of experience in Graphic Design
• Strong understanding of print production
• Strong communication skills
• Expertise in Photoshop, InDesign
• Ability to multi-task
• Be a team player

Nice to have but not mandatory:

• An interest in illustration and book publishing
• Knowledge of children’s books

Location: The position is based out of Bangalore

Salary: Will commensurate with experience. We are looking for a passionate individual who wants to be part of a team that is creating a new model in multilingual publishing to address the scarcity of books for children in need.

Write to us: Email your resume with Art Director in the subject line to careers(at)prathambooks(dot)org

Be the first to comment.

---

Vineetha from the Partnerships Team talks about StoryWeaver’s collaboration with the Kerala government’s initiative, KITE, (Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education) to take our books to more teachers, classrooms, and students through their digital initiatives.

It’s a bright, sultry day in May at Cotton Hill high school in Trivandrum where an ICT training session for 150 primary school teachers is underway. Cotton Hill school is one among the 500 such locations across the state where teachers are currently being trained by the KITE,a Kerala government initiative, on the latest ICT innovations for the classroom. Over the last 3 weeks, the academic team at KITE has been conducting large scale trainings for nearly 90000 teachers  at nearly 500 locations across the state part of ICT capacity building initiatives.

 

Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE) is a Govt of Kerala establishment set up to foster, promote and implement modernisation of state run and aided educational institutions in Kerala.

As part of the Hi-Tech school project that works with over 9000 primary schools, it is conducting a large scale training for government school teachers. The objective of this training is to train teachers on the latest tools and platforms and basic ICT tools such as  open source software for documentation and processing, spreadsheets, audio recordings,and more.

 

And here’s where StoryWeaver fits in.

StoryWeaver, is now one of the tech platforms that primary teachers in Kerala will be trained on annually.

Our collaboration with KITE is very special to us, thanks in no small part to their commitment to the open source philosophy. In fact, KITE was recently in the news for its massive success with the use of open source software in Kerala government schools. After our initial meetings with the KITE team, and our shared commitment to ensuring open access, we couldn’t wait to get this collaboration off the ground. It began with the annual training that StoryWeaver was integrated into. The academic team at KITE explored the platform and further trained master trainers who took the programme out to the field and the 90000 primary teachers across the state.

At the training in Cotton Hill school, we met Sadhana M and Anthony Raj, two government school teachers and masters trainers for KITE who are leading the training on StoryWeaver. Cotton Hill school is one of the 12 centres in Trivandrum where this training is being conducted.

When asked about the common struggles they face as language teachers, Sadhana who has been teaching in government schools for over 20 years, says “The level of the books is either too high or too low. It’s always a challenge to find something that’s just right for our students.”

When  asked what the children liked to read, they added that in most schools in Kerala, children are exposed to mainly English and Malayalam books, in addition to some Hindi books. Anthony Raj, who teaches English,adds “Children are only going to learn to write and communicate better when they can read. Children need to read more to develop vocabulary in any language. So, reading is not something we can afford to ignore in classrooms.”

 

 

The teachers and trainers at the centre echo the role that technology plays in education in today’s day and age. They mentioned how all teachers are invested in their professional journeys, where tech plays a huge role today. They add that considering how comfortable children are with technology, it’s time for teachers to catch up, and platforms like StoryWeaver are a great way for teachers to integrate technology in the classroom.

For us in the StoryWeaver  team, workshops and trainings are a great way for us to interact with and learn from the educators on the ground. The KITE workshop was no different.

We saw the trainers using Ammachi's Amazing Machines to highlight how stories could be used to teach Science, while another trainer showed how Busy Ants could be used to introduce vocabulary and grammar in early grade classrooms. The Readalong stories a big hit with the trainers and teachers alike, who agreed that AV stories are always a great way to engage students’ attention and build listening and reading skills. We would like to thank the KITE team for letting us be a part of their work, and are committed to supporting this collaboration to work with more teachers and children across Kerala.

We came back from this workshop with a lot of ideas and suggestions, and of course, renewed commitment to put ‘a book in every child’s hand’. With partners like KITE, we know we’re a step closer to this vision.

 

Be the first to comment.

---