Pratham Books is a finalist in the Google Impact Challenge. Our idea is to create an open source platform for children’s books. We need all our readers and supporters to VOTE FOR OUR PROJECT IDEA so that we can win this grant and make this dream a reality.
Our project will build collaborative web platforms that solve the three major problems that affect children in India – a very low number of books available for them, a lack of linguistic diversity of books and a lack of access to funding for libraries and books so that children can experience the joy of reading.
The ‘I am …’ series written by Mala Kumar will give you an insight into how this platform can be useful to you – as an author, an illustrator, a storyteller, a publisher, etc. Today’s post is from the viewpoint of a teacher.
Illustration courtesy : Mansi Parekh |
I am a Teacher – How will this platform help me?
This open source platform is a teacher’s magic den! You will have access to many stories and illustrations that can be used to make your lessons more entertaining. Students love stories, and when the stories can be used to drive home history, geography, science and other academic subjects, it is a win-win situation for students and teachers. The content can be used to create worksheets in your classroom. What’s more, students can collaborate to come up with their own worksheets too. If you so wish, these worksheets can be shared by you on the platform, helping other teachers in their work.
The stories can be used to spark debates in class about a whole lot of topics – language, grammar, civic sense, environment, politics, hygiene. If students do not like a story, they can remix the openly licensed illustrations and stories on the platform to create their own. The platform becomes a multi-purpose tool in the hands of both teachers and students, finally evoking the creativity in children to become authors, illustrators, translators and storytellers.
The posts we are sharing about the project will help you understand our vision as well as the scope of this project. Related posts:
1. Introduction
2. Let a Thousand Tongues Speak – Increasing language diversity in children’s books
6. Read. Create. Remix. Give – A Platform to Make Stories Accessible
You can also spread the word by :
2. Sharing it with your friends and family on Facebook (You can also use this fun approach to get your friends to vote)
4. Writing a post on your blog about why you believe in our mission and why you want readers to vote for us. Here’s an example from one of our champions.