Discussions

Your Name and Title: Francis Jim Tuscano, Grade School Teacher and Ed Tech Coach and Consultant

School or Organization Name: Xavier School, Philippines

Area of the World from Which You Will Present: Philippines

Language in Which You Will Present: English

Target Audience(s): teachers, especially Intermediate/ Middle School to High School teachers interested in student-publishing

Short Session Description (one line): This session aims to shares on how enabling students to publish their original and creative eBooks online - to the authentic global audience - could foster collaborative building and sharing of knowledge.

Full Session Description (as long as you would like): With technology, anyone can become a published author, even the young grade school students!

Using tech tools in class should enable students to share their work to the global audience. More than sharing their knowledge to the world, educators must go beyond the four walls of the classroom and guide their students to collaboratively help in creating new knowledge that other learners can use in their own learning process. One way of doing this is to give students easy to use platforms for publishing books.

With my own expertise and experience, I will be sharing how my Grade 6 (11-12 years old) students worked on their eBook that narrated their experience with the physically-challenged students from a local school that caters to the welfare of visually-challenged students. These books had become an inspiration to other students in the school and have been recognized by an award-giving body that focuses on recognizing high-quality works of students. But more importantly, the books have touched the hearts and minds of the readers to take action and to respect the physically-challenged members of the society.

In terms of global awareness, I will be also showcasing created eBooks of Grade 6 students in their Chinese Mandarin class as they created bilingual/ trilingual books that teach readers on how to converse in Chinese Mandarin.  English and Filipino translations were included in the eBooks as a way to open for more international or global readers. Creating bilingual or trilingual books provides a creative venue for students to start thinking about the global audience. It is through these books that they can mindfully practice the idea of a common or global language to communicate their ideas but also to accommodate languages in the local contexts. Hence, these published eBooks become an interactive locus or meeting place of the global and local contexts. 

At the end of the session, the participants will be called to action through providing authentic venues for students to create their eBooks that could help deepen global collaboration and sharing of knowledge - one project could be a bilingual/ multi-lingual eBook.

In summary, the session will start with an overview of why publishing student’s work is one of the best way to foster a globally connected learning. Then, the process of how to publish original eBooks of students will be discussed. To make this more concrete, I will be sharing the process I took to publish my students’ work.

Websites / URLs Associated with Your Session:

https://francisjimtuscano.com/tech-integration-in-education/5dsframework/

http://bookcreator.com/blog/2016/04/the-5ds-framework-for-integrating-technology-in-the-classroom/