Where technology meets literacy: the Bay Area movement to catalyze reading with local language content

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Four San Francisco Bay Area based organizations are at the heart of a global movement to inspire reading by delivering compelling, local language books to children at home and school. They share a belief that education interventions that foster joyful habits of self-directed reading produce curious learners who are better equipped to exercise agency over life choices and to contribute to their communities. Panelists will also identify content that predispose children to topics that the UN cites as critical for sustainable development, namely inclusive societies, peace, and environmental sustainability.

The objective of this panel is to provide attendees with exposure to approaches that extend highly relevant reading resources to hard-to-reach children. Each organization’s approach emphasizes assistance to key influencers in a child’s learning ecosystem, from librarians to families to teachers. The first presentation will focus on the efforts of a San Francisco based organization to use national library systems and local content publishers in Africa as changemakers to support early literacy development. Results from the first year of a project to establish an evidence-based, replicable model in Ghana, Zambia and Uganda will be discussed. The second presentation will focus on a model to increase family engagement in reading with an Asia-wide digital library of new, local language stories and traditional stories adapted into children’s books. The third presenter will focus on a series of projects in Indonesia to build a sustainable publishing ecosystem and to create local video, print, and digital literacy training content for book creators, teachers, librarians, and literacy coaches. Finally, a leading tech for good nonprofit whose platform makes books accessible to learners with visual and learning disabilities will share the results of a recent project that provided mother-tongue language books in audio and braille to four boarding schools for blind children in India. This panel of hands-on practitioners will share their challenges and successes using specific examples of interventions in the global south aimed to create a more sustainable approach to education for all.

Sub Unit

• SIG: Global Literacy

Presenters

• Rachel Heavner, Worldreader

• Alicia Berger, Global Children’s Book Publisher, Room to Read

• Brad Turner, Benetech

Individual Presentations

• Leveraging Africa Libraries for a Sustainable Supply of EGR Local Language Content: Results from the LOCAL project in Ghana and Zambia - Rachel Heavner, Worldreader

• Fostering self-directed readers with relevant content - Melody Zavala, The Asia Foundation

• Towards a sustainable storybook ecosystem in Indonesia: print, digital, and video solutions for book creators, teachers, and libraries - Alicia Berger, Global Children’s Book Publisher, Room to Read

• Producing mother tongue books in audio and braille with Bookshare - Brad Turner, Benetech

Discussant

• Derek James Jentzsch, BroderickHaight