Email 2

[Email 2] Welcome to the ‘Digital Storytelling and the African Storybook project’ online course (Monday 21st July)

Dear All

I am really delighted that you have signed up for the 2014 Digital Storytelling and the African Storybook Project course which starts today, Monday 21st July 2014. Thank you! I hope that you haven’t felt neglected after signing up, wondering when you are going to hear something! This is my first group email to everyone and my focus is now totally on the upcoming course. To date 206 educators from South Africa, Kenya, Lesotho, Uganda, Ghana, Tanzania, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Zambia, Ethiopia, Swaziland and even Canada (where there is a great interest in the African Storybook Project) have signed up! I am hoping that you will also get to know one another on this course! This is exciting because there is a drastic shortage of appropriate local African language stories available for early literacy development for African children. The African Storybook project is a Literacy project that aims to address this problem and this course forms part of the strategy.

About the African Storybook Project
The African Storybook project is a Literacy project that is being run by Saide (South African Distance Education) in Johannesburg and funded by Comic Relief in Britain. It aims to facilitate availability, access to, and use of sufficient good stories for early reading practice for African children ages 2 to 9. In June this year the African Storybook Project launched their amazing website which will feature quite strongly in our course http://www.africanstorybook.org/ . Last year I posted a brochure (it is also downloadable) about the project should you be interested in finding out more http://www.youblisher.com/p/600590-The-African-Storybook-Project/ - but I imagine all that information is now available on the website.

How the course will be run

• You will receive numbered emails from me regularly keeping you updated on what is happening. 
• The course materials can be found at: http://2014africanstorybook.blogspot.com/ You’ll notice on the right there is a widget that says ‘Follow by email’. If you fill in your email address there you’ll be notified of any new posts. 
• I have created a Facebook group and I’d love you to join. It is called ‘Digital Storytelling and the African Storybook Project’ and can be found at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1457819221139491/ This is the first time I have created a facebook group to run a course so it is a new experience for me! The purpose of the Facebook group is to provide a place for us to interact, add reflections and ideas and get to know one another and more. I’ll also add updates on the group. If you choose not to join Facebook then you can quite easily just comment and interact on the course blog. 

Aim of the course
Another important aim of this online course you have signed up for is to encourage you to discover the writer within yourself, and write a short story that you would be willing to donate to the project! We are looking for very easy stories this time round for beginner readers. We are also hoping you will then encourage your students of whatever age (if you are a teacher in a classroom) to write a story suitable for a Grade 1-3 reader in order to help the children of Africa with reading material. We’ll talk more about the website in upcoming emails.

Today’s tasks
This is just an introductory email to say hello and to ask you to do a couple of things:

• Look at the blog and see who has joined the course. At the bottom of the post called ‘Welcome’ you’ll see ‘Comments’. Click on that an all the Introductions will appear. (I still have to add another 20 introductions). Please say hello to at least three people by clicking on the word comment under their introductions. Where it says ‘Comment as’ select ‘Anonymous’ if none of the categories apply to you but PLEASE add your name to your comment. 
• Please join the Facebook group mentioned above and you are welcome to post your first comment there as well
• Thanks again so much for joining our course. Tomorrow will see the start of the actual course. You’ll get another email from me about the plan for this week, Week 1. In that email I’ll also outline which applications to use on the various devices. 

This is the type of course that you can fit into your schedule – if you get behind due to a busy week you can easily catch up in your own time. Looking forward to exploring digital storytelling with you!

Warm regards
Fiona Beal