Case Study 1.3: Cross Curricular Story Writing

At Terakki Foundation Schools (Istambul) a year-long project was conducted. This was a cross curricular story writing project which involved three different subjects: English, Art and ICT. The project consisted on creating an "audio-enabled talking book" in order to consolidate new vocabulary that five- and six-year old children learnt.

Firstly, the students had to write a story based on two imaginary characters "Bubble" and "Pebble," during English classes. At the same time, "children were provided with a number of different character models and other assets upon which to design their animatios for the story," during Art classes. 

Afterwards, the narrative was recorded by a few confident students using a 'sound recorder,' and, finally, the book was created and published as an e-book using 'Adobe Creative Suite 5.5.'

Apart from the "talking book," children created a website containing language games, introduced by the story characters "Bubble" and "Pebble."

If we pay attention to the "background" of the project, we can see that TPCK is applied.

CK: All of the teachers aimed to work with common themes.

PK: All the activities that the students performed were "fun-based activities."

TK: The whole of the project succeeded because of the use of different types of softwares.

When it comes to the SAMR model, we can say that the teachers are clearly in the last level of the model, that is, the Redefinition level. This is to say that the teachers were looking at new tasks that have been previously inconceivable without the technology.

If you click on the following link, you'll be able to read "Bubble and Pebble" e-book:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bubble-and-pebble-story/id444909635?mt=8

If you want to have a look at "Bubble and Pebble" interactive games, click on the ff. link:

www.bubbleandpebble.com

In my opinion, this project is absolutely great because you're making chihldren learn in an interactive and different way, achieving different goals (and lots of them, by the way.)

For me, writing a story is a bit boring but if I was told that my story will be "transformed" into an e-book that can actually be read and heard by everybody, I would be more than happy and encouraged to write it. 

Apart from that, it's very important to know that we can assemble many subjects and, by working together, we can obtain an excelent and gratifying result. By "together" I mean teachers with teachers, children with children and teachers with children. Don't you think? 

Food for thought!