Okanta Kate, a 17 year old Ghanaian girl who was lucky enough to be included in the work of Worldreader in Ghana (In which they have provided hundreds of Ghanaian kids in small rural Ghanaian schools with Kindle ereaders and thousands of ebooks to read with them, both in school and out of school) has discovered what she wants to do with her life as a result of reading an ebook written by a female Ghanaian writer.

Since getting her Kindle, she has read more than 100 ebooks on the thing, which in itself is a wonderful thing, but it was her discovery of a book by Ghanaian woman writer, Peggy Oppong called The Shark (link to this below) that really set her on fire.

She describes her feelings and motivations in the video below much better than I can, so I shall leave that side of it to her, just watch the video and be happy for her.

See what I mean?

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Worldreader have been given a large collection of Puffin and Roald Dahl ebooks for those lucky kids in Africa to enjoy on their Kindle ereaders

Worldreader’s Director of Digital  Publishing, Elizabeth Wood announced this at the Frankfurt Conference 2011 in the following way:

This is a huge win for the children in our programs. Dahl’s wicked sense of humor has delighted children—and adults—in the developed world for more than 50 years.  Now, children in the developing world will have the opportunity to meet Matilda, Augustus Gloop, the evil Aunties Spiker and Sponge, and all of the other wonderful characters from Dahl’s beloved classics. This is the caliber of books we want to offer the children in our programs.  We encourage other publishers to follow suit.  Ask yourself what books would turn reluctant readers into avid readers?  Those are the books we want.

This is yet another sign of how successful the projects that the good folk of Worldreader are being, and the sort of response that they need to make the whole idea flourish.

Obviously those kids in Ghana and Kenya will have enormous fun reading these books, books that seem to be able to cross borders and cultures with no trouble, appealing to something that all kids seem to have inside them.. a sort of anarchic view of their worlds.

For their part, Puffin in the person of Francesca Dow, managing director of Penguin Children’s Books, had this to say.

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Worldreader report yet another big step forward – Penguin ebooks come on board:

In a new post on their blog, Worldreader tell us that Penguin ebooks have donated a large number of their ebooks to them to be used in the African schools where they are currently working..

Specifically it is the Penguin Young Readers Group who have donated these ebooks to them and the kids they are working with.

This is tremendous news for all of us who are concerned to see the sensible use of ereaders in developing countries, and means that these kids now have an even wider range of ebooks to choose from – at no cost to the kids.

To start with Worldreader have decided to go with a series from Penguin called “Who Is / Who Was” series, specifically “Who Was King Tut” and “Who is Barak Obama,” and then later add more ebooks from Penguin to their lists.

What we are seeing here is that publishers, both international and national are seeing that by supporting the work of Worldreader, they are in fact helping to create a future market for their products, as well as simply doing good for these kids – A happy conjunction of interests.

In fact, Worldreader already have Random House (one of the world’s largest publishing houses) onboard, and even more important perhaps, some 15 African publishers are already producing ebooks with the active help of Worldreader for these kids, which is obviously a very good thing, as those ebooks are written by African authors and are thus highly relevant to the lives’ of these kids, and their communities.

It is intriguing to see how this idea is spreading and flourishing in both Kenya and Ghana, and to see how the hard work and dedication of the Worldreader folk and the teachers and publishers they are working with is beginning to take off.   Months ago, when I first became aware of Worldreader and their plans to bring ereaders (kindles) and ebooks to the world’s poorer schools and communities, I felt that it was a superb idea, but  was far from sure that it would work.  But as a result of the very careful and well planned and organized way in which the project has been carried out so far, it is working wonderfully, and will surely spread to other countries before long.

It is appropriate technology: Read full story »

Amazon have just announced their new money saver for you lucky students:

From now on you no longer have to buy (and lug around with you) loads of expensive and heavy text books any more, you can simply rent them from the Kindle store.

You can now simply rent them for as long as you need them, and at the end of the period, they will simply Self-Destruct, but, and this is an interesting aspect of this scheme, all your notes and any other things you have saved while using the etext book will remain available to you via the wonders of Whispersync.

Obviously this system will work on any device you happen to prefer to use for reading Kindle eBooks, thus on any computer (both PC and Mac), smart phones and any other device in which you have a Kindle ebook reading App installed.

As Dave Limp, vice president, Amazon Kindle puts it:

“Students tell us that they enjoy the low prices we offer on new and used print textbooks. Now we’re excited to offer students an option to rent Kindle textbooks and only pay for the time they need–with savings up to 80% off the print list price on a 30-day rental.”

In fact you can rent these etext books for any period from 30 days to 360 days, and should you for example rent one for 55 days, and then discover you will need it for another few days, then you can simply lengthen the rental period by the needed few days more.

Amazon claim that you can make savings of up to 80% on your text book spending if you make use of this scheme, which seems to me to be a no brainer really.

Keep your notes for later use:

Also, as I mentioned above, they offer a really useful extra to this scheme, namely the following:

We’ve done a little something extra we think students will enjoy.  Normally, when you sell your print textbook at the end of the semester you lose all the margin notes and highlights you made as you were studying. We’re extending our Whispersync technology so that you get to keep and access all of your notes and highlighted content in the Amazon Cloud, available anytime, anywhere – even after a rental expires. If you choose to rent again or buy at a later time, your notes will be there just as you left them, perfectly Whispersynced.”

Good eh?

One has to admire Amazon, they seem to be able to come up with good ideas that meet real needs in the reading community,  and this one has to be one of their better ideas it seems to me. Read full story »

Worldreader have been working in Ghana now for over a year placing Kindle ereaders in the hands of African kids and teachers:

As regular readers of this blog will know, Worldreader have been running a pilot scheme in several rural schools in Ghana now for some time, and have recently started in Kenya as well, where they have set up a second pilot scheme in a rural school there.   Further they have gone into partnership with  The Kilgoris Project, a group who are concerned with education in Kenya to bring ereaders to all rural schools there as soon as possible.

They are busy on a number of fronts to make this experiment a success, not least being their active work with Ghanaian publishers to encourage them to bring out ebooks by African authors to ensure that the kids have African literature to read, instead  of only Western ebooks, for obvious reasons, and it is succeeding, African publishers have taken this idea on board with enthusiasm, and are bringing out more and more of their books in ebook format, thus ensuring a steady and growing number of ebooks that relate exactly to the cultural experiences of these kids and their communities.

I thought you might enjoy this short Worldreader video, to get a feel of how it is working, I found it very encouraging to see how ereaders can have such a positive effect on people who normally have no access to any books, paper or otherwise.   In the developed world, we see ereaders as simply another gadget to make our lives more fun, but for these kids in Africa, they are much more than that, they open a whole world of possibilities to these kids, and to quote Shadrack Lemiso who is the headmaster of Intimigom Nursery and Primary School,one of the teachers involved in this project, who sums it all up rather well:

“If you want to plan for a year, you plant rice.  If you want to plan for 10 years, plant trees, and if you want to plan for 100 years- you educate.”

So, here is the video, enjoy it as I did…………………

If you wish to know more about the work of Worldreader, use the search window at top right of the screen, type in “worldreader” and it will take you to the fairly numerous  posts  I have written about this group of wonderful people who are Worldreader, and tell you all you need to know about their project.

Link to Worldreader: http://www.worldreader.org/

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Do you have any thoughts about this project, and where it is going?   Do share them with us here.

Worldreader announce that their pilot project in Ghana with Kindles is working, and working well!

Those of you who have been following my series of reports on the work of Worldreader, who are engaged in a large scale project to bring ereaders to poor rural schools in Africa will know that they had placed about 450 Kindle ereaders in a couple of schools in Ghana as a pilot project to see if ereaders would help the kids (and their teachers), and it would seem from the first results in  from their external assessors (ILC Africa) it is working.

Whilst the developed world is far from convinced that ereaders are a help in schools, (with the exception of the iPAd which is making real inroads into schools) it would seem that in developing countries they are a definite help in a number of ways.

Some figures:

To judge from the data of the first 6 months of this project those Kindles have been real agents for change and improvement, the figures are impressive:

• Teachers and kids have downloaded vast numbers of ebooks of their own choice, specifically about 18000 free classics, newspaper samples and games.
• Been working their way through the approximately 35000 ebooks that Worldreader had given them.

Further, there were concrete improvements in a number of areas of the kids school work:

• Students with e-readers are spending 50% more of their time reading than before.
• Test scores improved 4.4% on average, with the younger students showing the greatest improvement.
• Primary students improved an average 13% in Reading Comprehension.
• For each 2 books we have sent, students and teachers are downloading another book, game, magazine, or sample.

Favorite downloads include:

Other popular titles include: ESPN Football Playbook and Joke of the Day.

As well as these measured improvements, the teachers have noted and reported on a general improvement in language fluency and dictation results among the kids

To make this all rather more personal, watch this short video in which Gideon talks about his discovery of the joys of reading.

So, there we have it, Worldreader’s idea of giving ereaders to kids in underdeveloped countries is a success.   It brings books into the reach of kids who normally have to attend schools that will have almost no text books or any other sort of book, introduces them in a way  that works (courtesy of the 3G mobile phone networks that enable them to download ebooks) to the wider world of reading…..

Nice to be able to read about something good in the world for a change.

Link: http://blog.worldreader.org/

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Any thoughts on this?