Teaching with Technology

A week or so ago I posted about a site called Lulu which allowed you to publish children’s work.   I recieved the results yesterday and I have to say that I was very impressed with the results.

The whole process from ordering to the books arriving took just over a week and the quality of the printing and binding was excellent.   The children were absolutely extatic when they saw the results.   As mentioned in the previous post I think that this is now a real alternative to buying a traditional book for the children to record work in.

In September I’m going to try and do all my children’s History in this way and see where we get to.   I’ll be giving the children different aspects of the Victorian period to research to bring together in this way.

The question is will the quality of the work match the quality of the end product – I’m sure it will.

AIM: To write a Year book for the leavers of Year Six.

WHY:

• To give the children a nice momento of their time at our school.
• To create a sense of occasion as the children leave.

When I was on a course on Friday Stephen Drury showed me a great publishing site called Lulu. Immediately all thoughts of a small red headed Scottish singer were abandoned as it became clear just how powerful the site coud be. (Ignore the German on the thumbnail, the site is in English) 

The great thing about the site is that you can upload Word / PDF files to create different types of book that can be published, but crucially from a school perspective you don’t have to put in bulk orders.   This ment that the Yearbook once created could be purchased by parents and delivered to their own homes.   No more hassle for the school collecting orders etc.

The other amazing thing was the price.   Each book cost only £3.80 to produce and because the site is in America £6.00 to post.   Under a tenner for a 80 page properly bound book!   I think as these things go that is great value.

It was really easy to sort out the yearbook itself.

1. Download a template from Lulu for the size of book that you want.   This is well worth doing as there are funny margin settings to do with printing and this just makes life easier.
2. Set up a template for the kids to put their pictures/thoughts in.
3. Set up file for the teachers/head/significant others to record their thoughts in
4. Bring them all together when complete into a single file.

    5.  Next upload the file to Lulu and follow the on screen instructions to publish.   This is when you can set the price etc.   The only thing that was slightly tricky was getting the cover art sorted out, but there is a template that you can download to help you.  

Once you’ve completed the upload you can share the web address with those children who want to but the book.  I decided to go for this approach rather than opening it up to the web as there were pictures of the children with their names on.   This way I felt was an acceptable compromise.

The wonderful thing is that now the whole ordering / delivery side of things is taken out of my hands.   Parents can go online with the children and order the book to bring in before the end of term to get it signed etc.   Just a word of warning though, the site is American based so there is quite a long lead time on the order, we’re keeping our fingers crossed that everything will arrive on time!

However I think that the most important and exciting prospect for this type of development is the impact it could have on the way children produce work using ICT.   In all the time that I’ve been involved in ICT in primary schools the main criticism from those unwilling to change their practice has bee the argument that children will ‘have nothing to show’ for their work.

Surely this is the solution!

Imagine the scenario where at the end of the year a child is able to produce a professional looking book that contains their work over the entire year!   This would surely give that sense of audience and end product that raises attainment.   There is no limit to the things that could be shown blogs, experiments, photos in fact anythingthat can put into a word document.

You could also produce a book per topic for the class eg when the children have researched a topic all their work could be put into a single book for display.   The possibilities are endless.   School could also use it as a fund raising exercise if they wanted to.   I think it could have the power to change my practice fundamentally.

LESSONS LEARNT:  

• The incentive for children to produce a professional looking end product will motivate and engage children.
• This is a great site that is easy to use for anyone with a basic level of digital literacy.
• The speed of the process is one of it’s strengths, it took us two days to produce the book from start to finish.
• This type of printing could do away with the argument of children not having ‘anything to show’ for their ICT work.
• The cost is reasonable and in no way prohibitive.
• The site takes the hassle out of the organisational side of things for school as everything is delivered to the child’s home.

This is something I’ll definately be doing again!