Create your own 2012 Olympics E-book

I am starting a new project in the new year focusing around London 2012. I originally got this idea through @kristianstill and his interactive fiction stuff however this is not about the actual games but about creating interactive books instead, but thank you Kristian for helping me formulate the idea. I am planning to do this with our 7 primary partner schools but am looking for anyone else who would like to be involved to use the lesson plans and resources that we are making for you to use in your own classroom.

Following the success of creating an E-book from a group of students about Facebook as part of a social enterprise project I decided to create this.

It will enable the opportunity for students to complete a creative writing piece of a series of short stories. The stories however would follow the ‘Interactive Fiction’ technique where the reader can make decisions whilst reading the story to reach a different outcome, perhaps being able to reach two or three different endings to the story.

With 2012 being the stage for the Olympics, I thought that this would be a good theme to focus on, each story could follow the lines of Greek mythology but an alternative story, complete with new characters and outcomes but follow the principles of Greek mythology related to storytelling.

It would also be good if each E-book from each school consisted of at least seven different short stories, made up of small groups of children writing one story. Each story could represent a theme of one of the seven core values of the Olympic games:

Therefore every E-book created would represent the Olympic games and the readers would learn about these core values through a creative piece of fiction. Through using ‘Interactive Fiction’ the E-books will engage the young readers and make the reading a more active process.

Technology to be used:

Students will need to write up their stories electronically showing clearly at each end point to a chapter where the option will take the reader. The teacher will then be responsible for putting the E-book together using Open Office. This is free to download and should be compatible with most schools. It is also really easy to use to create an E-book. There will be demonstrations and a series of ‘How to’ videos created and available of YouTube to help support the teacher.

The E-book will be converted so it is able to be read on a normal computer or on a E-reader such as a Kindle or Ipad. The E-book is not meant to be printed out and read as hard copy as it will be interactive and the reader will be able to navigate through the book by clicking on links.

All the support materials will be produced and available soon – the project can run anytime from January to when the Olympic games start so please let me know if you are interesting in taking part.

To register initial interest take the 60 seconds to click on the link below and fill in your details:

http://bit.ly/rtDHaS