IATEFL Workshop – How to Create Amazing Interactive e-Books with your Students

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In today’s world, anyone can write books online for free. Currently, several platforms enable teachers and students to create their own digital books online incorporating text, artwork, videos, quizzes, games, maps, puzzles and more.  Teachers are able to share their original educational material in digital picture book format. Perhaps more importantly, educators can now encourage their own students to create their own content in digital picture book format.  Foreign students can write about their home countries, including moving maps and photos. They can write about their families, cultures and their favorite foods. Students of any age can write stories about their favorite music and bands, incorporating videos within their books.  Such platforms take advantage of two new phenomena: (i) the ease of uploading text and artwork in page-flipping format; and (ii) the plethora of free websites offering the ability to embed a wide range of material in other platforms. In this manner sharable e-books can now contain videos that play, interactive games, maps you can move around and quizzes that can help test progress.

During my talk, a teacher was invited to the podium and together we created an e-book online within minutes. The book contained text, photos, a video (embedded from YouTube) and a moving map (embedded from Google maps). Teachers suggested the ways that they could use such platforms, including classes from different cities and countries collaborating on books together.

Such books have several distinct advantages. First, they empower the students to become authors in the language they are acquiring! Students share their work with one another, their families and the world. Some of the e-books created in this manner are subsequently read by thousands of readers. In this manner, students are empowered to tell their own stories and translate their ideas. I call this process “reverse literacy” – the ability not only to read content, but also to create it. At any stage the students and their teacher can make changes, improve grammar, etc.

During my talk, I shared a glimpse of what the immediate future may be – minibooks created by students, which can be printed on a single piece of A4 paper and folded into small books which the students share both online and off.

In this sharing environment in which books are free to create, publish and share (via their url’s), how will authors be rewarding for their self-publishing? How will teachers be compensated for their preparatory work? One direction which I addressed in my presentation is donations which will allow readers and fellow writers to reward one another for their efforts. My guess is that this will exceed the current system of selling non-sharable pdf’s for minute amounts of money.

Two other issues came up during the lecture. One was the question of publishing educational material that falls outside the mainstream, and might dissuade traditional commercial publishers. There is the possibility that publication of e-books that deal with difficult subjects and portray unconventional and minority heroes will provide a wealth of literary opportunities not previously available. Steve Brown in his talk spoke about so-called “Parsnips”, i.e., uncomfortable subjects that mainstream publishers do not touch.  e-Books are a viable option for these difficulties.

Will free English readers become increasingly available online in coming years? This is another issue that we discussed. Currently, a variety of publishers produce paper copies of novels and stories that have been carefully prepared and abridged for student study at various levels. What would happen if such books were suddenly offered free over the internet? Would that be a good thing or not? Would teachers and volunteers undertake to produce online readers, postponing or completely forgoing financial reward, in order to create a world where readers are widely available for free? What about grammar books? Will they be provided for free by teachers who want to share and benefit from other teachers who do the same?

Certainly e-books provide opportunities for the teacher that cannot be ignored.  One is the opportunity for children to express their creativity, to tell their stories, to share their emotions in English using free, simple-to-use platforms. Another is to aspire to create and share their own material. Third is a chance to make educational material freer and more accessible in e-book form than ever before.