Teachers creating their own original books, and translating into mother tongue, using a mobile phone and mini-printer

In sub-Saharan Africa: few suitable books exist for early readers in any language; even these are seldom in the child's mother-tongue. Thus many children cannot learn to read in their mother-tongue.  Example:... [ view full abstract ]

In sub-Saharan Africa:

• few suitable books exist for early readers in any language;
• even these are seldom in the child's mother-tongue.

Thus many children cannot learn to read in their mother-tongue.  Example: EI's chief trainer was 13 before holding her first book  – which was in English.

In Ghana we have adopted ground-breaking techniques:

• rescuing existing books.  We find stocks of large-format culturally-suitable books languishing in warehouses because written in the "wrong" language.  We train teachers to translate them into (a) their mother-tongue, and (b) English (making them bilingual), outputting from their phone to a mini-printer, over-sticking each page.  We have rescued nearly 3,000 "Big Books" this way.
• running a competition for teachers to create their own books, again using their phone to print text and stick in. Winning books are published on www.africanstorybook.org and/or hard copy.
• connecting teachers in Ghana with primary-age story-writers in UK classrooms – using whatsapp and Skype.

In the Quickfire session we would present this work, with physical and digital examples.