Dominique Raccah of Sourcebooks cites
the growing functionality of e-books as a new opportunity for growth in
the children's market. Right now ebooks are 5-7% of U.S. children's
book sales according to Bowker. This will only increase.
There has been so much speculation about kids publishing and apps this past year.
Nosy Crow's first game app with Axel Scheffler
"According to a survey conducted among publishing professionals,
representing 74% of all U.S. trade publishing revenues, 15% of
publishers think that apps represent a significant revenue opportunity,
down from 34% a year ago." Jeremy Greenfield, Digital Book World
I've heard people who work in publishing say: they cost too much, we don't have the technology skills to produce them, there are too many discoverability issues, we are book people, we do books.
I see their fear. This is an evolutionary shift for publishing. As kids content creators we have to educate ourselves. (my rant) I don't see publishers working to educate their authors let alone illustrators. Maybe if you are lucky to be a bestseller, you might be assigned a savvy editor to help you develop your story across platforms using transmedia storytelling methods.
Maybe.
But that's if you are a bestseller. How many are there? Is this a viable business model? Hope for bestsellers?
This approach just doesn't work anymore.
"I have trouble seeing a future for book publishers in the kids’
content world. Everybody seemed to agree about what the apps of the
future required (interactivity, game elements, animation) and that the
parents of five years from now will be much more likely to hand their
kids in the back seat an iPad than a book. So I asked them, as books
diminish, what will publishers have to offer here? Wouldn’t this
business belong to people who know gaming and animation, not books?
Kate seized the question from the stage and answered in a way that
seemed to confirm my conjecture. “We don’t hire people with book
experience,” she said. When I checked in with her later, she agreed that
books were a revenue-generating convenience to get her company started.
She sees the day when they won’t be part of her business anymore. What
excited her (and well it should) was that they’d just made their fifth
app and had created all the software tools they needed to build it while
making the first four. The cost of creating their apps is plummeting
because they’ve built the toolkit."
Nosy Crow's award winning Cinderella app illustrated by Ed Bryan
YES! I applaud Kate Wilson of Nosy Crow fame for investing the time and energy it took to create the toolkit to decrease her P&L for delivery of some of finest apps out there like The Three Little Pigs and Cinderella.
But I disagree with Mike about kids publishing belonging to "people who know gaming and animation." I wonder if Kate could have delivered such a rich experience without her 25 years as a book editor? It's not an either or choice. Publishing needs to embrace ALL OF IT and collaborate. A good story has to be the cornerstone of the experience-that 25 years as a book editor pays off. An animation has to be narrative and a game experience immersive to deliver the emotional experience a great book can.
I still believe book people will deliver the most interesting app experiences for kids. But it will happen through collaboration and investing in educating kids content creators. New kinds of editors (like Kate) are needed.
But don't wait for editors, agents or publishers.
Educate yourself. Build your platform. Check out what other kid's content creators are doing.
Think of yourself as a tiny publisher building an agile platform for your book experiences.
Shout out to Class 62 and Heidi Siwak for receiving The Ken Spencer Award! You can follow Heidi on twitter @heidisiwak and read her generous blog: The Amaryillis to see how she cocreates curriculum with her students and meets them 'where they live.' It takes dedication and empathy to create a classroom of engaged learners. Having Collaborated with them along with Ian Chia and Esa Helttula continues to inspire me. Even a small meaningful connection with kids can produce positive outcomes. I share this experience with kids I work with here in NYC. THANK YOU! You never know where your CONNECTIONS will lead you. I'm very proud of what you guys accomplished.
Here is an excerpt from THE KEN SPENCER AWARD FINALISTS BOOKLET:
In April 2011, the Grade 6 class began a collaborative inquiry with programmers from Australia
and Finland and a digital media artist from New York City. Under their mentorship, students
created content for their own iPhone application – an augmented-reality tourism app for
Dundas, Ontario. As the project evolved, key elements distinguished this meaningful project-
based learning from other classroom learning experiences:
Real Work: From the outset, students recognized that the project was different and were
engaged. They had a “real” audience with Apple, and recognized that their work could be
rejected if it didn’t meet Apple’s standards. With this intrinsic motivation, students developed a
professional work ethic, demonstrated willingness to engage in difficult decision making, and
were committed to high quality work.
Uncertainty and Chaos: This was pioneering work that hadn’t previously been attempted in a
school, so there were no models to follow. The students took ownership of developing
processes and the project itself, and were involved in continuous problem solving, including
learning from failures.
Web 2.0 Tools: The Internet gave students real-time access to experts. We transcended
traditional ideas of “teacher” and “learner”. Students and experts shared ideas and problem-
solved. They listened carefully when advice was offered, and asked meaningful questions.
Blogging, Skype, Twitter, email, and a wiki were used. Global interest in the project grew and
transparency was part of the process. Students recognized their responsibility to work with a
sense of professionalism.
Trust, Respect, and Commitment: A genuine sense of teamwork developed. The nature of the
project required students to listen to ideas and set egos aside. Social status became irrelevant
as a determinant. Decisions came down to: “would this be good for the app?”
Disappearance of 20th Century Classroom Models: The nature of learning became dynamic.
Work space was privileged based on requirements for the project; gone were traditional
concepts of seating plans with the teacher as dominant figure. Free movement was constant,
and students independently found their roles within the project. Natural talents and leadership
skills emerged and evolved.
Students honed their skills in:
*Literacy/numeracy
*Geography, including a GPS-based mapping system
*Digital photography, photo editing and GPS augmented reality camera system
*Visual arts/interactive design to create user interface
*ICT technology for digital content management
*Project management using online resources (Wordpress, Google Sites)
Other schools have begun to use this project model to create their own apps and websites.
Among them, a Grade 4-6 class in Canada, Grade 5 students in Ohio, and a high school
Indonesian language class in Australia. The next phase of the project will integrate global
classrooms into a shared platform where students around the world can collaborate. The aim is
to build a global base of culturally relevant Creative-Commons licensed curriculum. With this
platform and model, students will learn digital citizenship skills, develop global awareness and
experience firsthand the benefits of real audiences and meaningful work.
We all know by now that the digital shift taking place in publishing is nothing short of revolutionary.
The iPad was only released April 2010 and there are already 600,000 apps for sale in the App Store and over 55 million ipads sold.
Now factor in the explosive intersection of children's content and digital literacy (education) and you have a perfect storm for children's IP creators. Aligning your content with academic standards adds more value to your IP. By creating curriculum you can extend your story and create new revenue streams for your content.
Publishers large and small are looking toward education as a way to add value to their new digital products (ebooks + apps) and build an engaged audience.
Ruckus Reader"The Ruckus Reader is a breakthrough learning program, a unique series of digital storybooks
designed to help your child practice important reading skills AND keep
you up to date on your child's progress. All of the stories and
interactive activities are developed by educational experts to adhere to
national educational standards for preschool through second grade." - Ruckus reader Website
Scholastic / Storia, the "fun, interactive and educational eReading App for Children" that is "enriched with fun activities that build vocabulary."
Smart. Extending content they already own into the digital space.
Utales, a subscription based model that is "fun and educational."
TumbleBook Library, "an online collection of animated, talking picture books which teach young children the joys of reading in a format they'll love."
NookKIDS,"Play activities built right into amazing picture books and hear them read aloud. Find your favorite characters in this best-in-class collection."
Meegenius, "millions of parents are using this simple app to introduce a life of reading to their children." More than 700 kids' books to choose from, over 1,000,000 downloads in the App Store.
Ripple Reader, "A free ebook reader for kids. Parents and other adults purchase recordable ebooks that work on both a PC or MAC. The iPad Ripple Reader app is coming soon."
In his doctoral thesis: What Is Digital Literacy, Doug Belshaw, now aresearcher/analyst at JISC infoNet, defines the the 8 elements of digital literacy as: cultural, cognitive, constructive, communicative, confident, creative, critical and civic.
Slide from Doug Belshaw's presentation: How To Develop Digital Literacies In Yourself And Others.
How many of these can you build into your curriculum to enrich your IP?
Follow discussions around digital literacies by following the hashtags #digilit & #mlearning on twitter.
What is digital play? Are Moms and Dads looking for a more meaningful form of connected play to share with their kids?
Who is connecting analog and digital play using transmedia storytelling methods?
Talking Katsuma Moshi Monster
"More than half of children own a toy based on a virtual world."-Dubit Research
Kids registering to play in virtual worlds has increased from 179m in 2009 to 320m in Q2 2011. Virtual worlds engage kids in connected play through connected toys and community building which in turn fuels purchases of virtual goods and connected toys. That's quite a profitable transmedia loop.
KZero calls this the golden triangle.
“Today’s kids are platform agnostic and don’t care where their
favourite stories and characters come from. It used to be the case that
books or TV shows launched characters and toys, but now online
entertainment is proving just as important.” -Peter Robinson, head of Dubit research
Do publishers have a transmedia strategy for connecting their merchandise to paper & digital books?
You don't have to be Stardoll, Moshi Monsters or Legos to enhance the user experience & increase immersion through great connected storytelling.
Some companies are creating connected play through apps or what is known as "AppCessories."
I'm looking back at the conferences I attended last year and compiling notes about the presentations and comments that made me think or inspired me.
My #1 takeaway from the Storyworld Conference & Expo held in San Francisco, November 1, 2011 was from Jeff Gomez, CEO Starlight Runner Entertainment. No surprise there. The first time I listened to Jeff talk about transmedia I was mesmerized by his personal honesty and generosity.
His presentation at Storyworld was equally inspiring for the same reasons. This dude rocks.
I've worked in children's publishing for over 20 years so I was particularly interested in what he had to say about transmedia and publishing.
Excerpt from the Jeff Gomez Keynote: "World Building and Mythology".
"One of the problems that I’m seeing, especially in publishing
endeavors as publishing moves towards the multi-platform or transmedia
model, is that it’s decided somehow that the author is gonna go off and
write a book, and then everybody else is gonna do the transmedia, and
they don’t talk to each other much. There’s this disparity: “Well what does this have to do with that? How’s this laying the foundation for that?”
Some projects are doing this well, but a lot of them unfold as if
they’re two completely different experiences. The author, I believe,
needs to be a participant in the grand design. Authors need to join with
good producers, or editors with transmedia training, and a great
support team on both the production and marketing sides in order to make
it all gel.
Finally, we need an architecture for dialog. If you are doing
something on multiple platforms that does not include a basis for
communication back and forth, you’re doing yourself a disservice.
Believe me, I’ve worked with the big studios, and this scares some of
them. They don’t want to talk to people and it’s really frustrating. A
lot of dollars, and a lot of good will, and a lot of franchise longevity
is sacrificed, because they’re not looking into the eyes of the people
experiencing their story. We need to do this, we need to go where they
are, and reach out and dialog with them.
The age of broadcasting, these past hundred to one hundred-fifty years, is coming to an end. It’s no longer about be me saying, shut up and listen to my story for a half hour or hour or two hours in a movie theater or the length of a song or CD.
That’s over…it’s over.Now, if you don’t give them at least a way to
“like” you, you’re done for, because you’re refusing to give your
audience validation. You’re not including them, and we are seeing a
generation coming to power very shortly that won’t live without that
feeling of being included, of being given the option to participate. As
much as some broadcasters want to, as much as they’re hoping to be able
to, they’ll never put that genie back in the bottle. So you’ve got to
build that architecture into or around your narrative, and be open to
it.
It could be as simple as a Facebook page, but I’m promoting richer
and more complex ways for us to interact with one another in communal
storytelling. I think this is going to be one of the next great
frontiers in the conception and generation of our mythologies: the
technique of taking from our audience, and in subtle or overt ways,
weaving their will and their desire and their creativity into the
narrative, weave them into the mythology."-Jeff Gomez, CEO, Starlight Runner Entertainment The full speech is published here on Simon Pulman's blog, Transmythology.
Another favorite Jeff Gomez presentation from Tools Of Change 2010: "Storyworlds: The New Transmedia Business Paradigm"
10. More publishing companies will form in-house transmedia groups.
In April 2011, Random House launched Random House Worlds,
a transmedia partnership with Los Angeles-based gaming software company
THQ. Increasingly, publishing companies are looking at the intellectual
property they own as extendable across more media platforms.
“All publishing companies will either have a transmedia group
in-house or build that type of partnership with experts in the
transmedia field,” said Reilly. - Jeremy Greenfield, @JDGsaid
"There is still an obvious need for a traditional website but the
shifting habits of consumption mean you can’t make mobile an
afterthought." - Ryan Kim, Gigaom
What does this mean for traditional publishers & content creators? Do you have a mobile strategy?
FROM GIGAOM *30% of Fab.com traffic is from mobile 3 months after launching a mobile app *350 million of 800 million Facebook users access via mobile channels *54% of My Yearbook traffic comes form mobile *79% of smartphone users currently utilize phones to help with price comparison, product searches and locating a retailer
Neilson says US teens are among the biggest consumers of mobile content. FROM NEILSON *teenagers ages 12-17 consume nearly twice as much mobile video content as other viewers in different age groups *mobile subscribers 12-17 watch 7 hours 21 minutes of mobile video a month *58% look at mobile ads
Simon Pulman of Starlight Runner Entertainment interviews media scholar Henry Jenkins about his forthcoming book Speadable Media, co-authored with Sam Ford and Joshua Green.
Interesting comments about the participatory divide and how kids can engage with media in a "meaningful way."
"Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua
Green–co-authors of the forthcoming book Spreadable Media–share recent
experiments from independent filmmakers, video game designers, comic
book creators, and artists and discuss the promises and challenges of
models for deeper audience participation with the media industries,
setting the stage for the issues covered by the conference." - Annenberg Innovation Lab
"This
session is a discussion of the "I Live Over Here" web and iPhone/iPod
Touch/iPad platform as a tool to introduce global, culturally diverse
student groups to meet and share learning through interactive 360 photo
panoramas and short blogs, and a project-based learning approach for
deeper learning of multiple digital literacies for classes that decide
to create their own "DIY app" within the platform.
The "I Live Over Here" project is both a Wordpress based blogging site
as well as an iOS app (for iPod Touch, iPad and iPhone), featuring
collaborative content from contributing classrooms around the world.
This project came about through a collaboration between Heidi Siwak, a
Grade 6 & 7 teacher at Dundas Central, Ontario Canada and her class
of Grade 6 students, and three collaborators from Being Prudence, a
digital education publisher (Ian Chia in Melbourne, Australia; Esa
Helttula in Espoo, Finland; Cynthia Jabar in New York City, USA.)
Since April 2011, Heidi's Grade 6 class has been developing their own
iPhone app through a project-based learning approach, creating all the
content for their own tourism app for the town of Dundas. Their inquiry
project has involved multiple cross-curricula strands: literacy
(researching and writing marketing texts for local attractions in
Dundas); numeracy through real-world skills involved in digital media
and the maths involved in drawing computer graphics; geography through
the use of the app's GPS-based mapping systems; digital photography and
image manipulation for the photographic galleries and the GPS based
augmented reality camera system; visual arts and interactive design for
the app's user-interface; and ICT skills in learning/using digital
content management systems (Wordpress and Google Sites) for project
management and data entry and digital media asset management.
Since then, the project has grown to include a special-ed Grace 4-6
class in Cambridge, Canada developing a tourism app/website of their
town and a Grade 5 science class in Ohio, USA developing a biology
science app/website of their school's butterfly garden investigating the
ecology of the biosystem for the garden.
A high school Indonesian
language class in Perth, Australia is planning to create an app/website
of local Perth resources for the Indonesian immigrant population in
Perth, by researching relevant English speaking businesses and community
resources and translating/creating content in the Indonesian language.
We are moving onto the next phase of the project, where we integrate
global classrooms of co-creators into a common, shared, open and
semi-personalized "platform" to encourage further global connections
between contributors and collaborative learning.
Our aim is to build a
global base of culturally relevant creative-commons licensed curriculum
by organic contributions, along a similar approach to the
Rhizomatic/Connectivism model of learning as discussed by Dave Cormier's
"Community as curriculum" research. ("Rhizomatic Education: Community
As Curriculum" Dave Cormier - Innovate: Journal of Online Education, v4
n5 Jun-Jul 2008
http://davecormier.com/edblog/2008/06/03/rhizomatic-education-community-as-curriculum/
)
The project's has two primary approaches:
1) In order for K-12 students to be introduced to a connected "global
classroom", the barriers of entry must be sufficiently easy to introduce
gradual experimentation with relevant engagement to multiple systems of
education in different countries. "Your" local community as a subject
area is predominantly a starting point for social studies within the K-8
domain.
Blogging is also increasingly encouraged as a means to engage
learners for early language acquisition skills in the elementary level,
with evidence in the US, UK, Canada and Australia pointing to concrete
benefits with participatory commenting leading to strong student
engagement. However, a number of education blogging systems are local
"walled gardens" (such as Australia's Vicnet in public education),
protecting students from a global participation balancing concerns of
cyber-safety/cyber-wellness.
This poses problems for meeting/exchanging
learning for global partners.
The global blogging portion of I Live Over Here offers a free, and
limited system of blogging with a focus on a few posts from each
participant class on their local community. They are encouraged to use
the $2 iOS app from Occipital called 360 Panorama to capture
accompanying 360 degree virtual paroramas of their local school and
community, using their text to accompany a simple, immersive experience
of *where they live.* This offers schools the ability to "test the
waters" with collaborative global blogging in a safe environment where
participants are other schools from around the world.
Contributors are
pinpointed on a Google world map within the website and app, and
commenting is enabled for students to comment on other classroom's
contributions from around the world. The system is designed to encourage
learning digital citizenship skills through blogging and commenting,
discoverability of global participants and understanding more about each
others' local cultural contexts, and provide pathways to encourage
further global collaboration outside of the project between interested
schools using Skype, Quad Blogging and other means.
2) Classes who wish to delve into deeper project-based learning can
participate in growing streams of inquiry focus.
For example, the
tourism apps offer far deeper engagement in cross-curricula skills to
create content for their local community. The science stream hopes to
grow various apps of content about local ecology and energy systems from
around the world, allowing an audience to browse and download free
content created by these classes. Science classrooms can build upon
particular tagged streams (eg. butterfly ecosystems) and collaborate to
learn about systems in various countries.
The language component allows
learners to create content in different languages, opening opportunities
for foreign language exchange as well as offering resources to students
impacted by ongoing trends in global migration.
We are also
investigating the opportunity for location based storytelling for an
arts stream, encompassing visual and performance art integrated with new
media transliteracies.
We envisage that the project-based learning DIY app building component
of the project will have a nominal fee per classroom (possibly $15 per
class regardless of student numbers) in order to support the ongoing
hosting costs of the more comprehensive media assets and technology for
the PBL technology, and welcome ongoing discussion with global educators
in the developed world about practicalities in light of austerity
measures and cutbacks in the US and Europe.
For interested participants
in the developing world, the nominal fee would be far lower in direct
proportion to the means of the participants, and we welcome learning
about what would be practical for schools in these regions.
The session will explain the deep levels of engagement in student
learning through global collaboration thus far, and discuss and
demonstrate the next phase of this project. We hope to meet potential
educators and classrooms in this session and learn what would make this
project more useful and relevant to various regions' contexts.
A presentation by Heidi Siwak on the learning achieved in her classroom through the development
of the initial pilot app. This was presented at the 3rd Reform Symposium
online conference in 2011.
http://www.slideshare.net/siwak62/app-titude-for-learning-rscon3-heidi-siwak
Awiki where we have been documenting the ongoing process of open
development by the student learners, and the ongoing curriculum
resources that the classrooms are contributing to.
http://iliveoverhere.beingprudence.com/
Storytelling pioneer Lance Weiler created ROBOT HEART STORIES, an experiential educational vehicle for kids to talk to each other all over the world, tell stories about their life on earth and ask a girl robot who has crash landed in Montreal, questions about where she is from and why she landed here.
They ask questions like:
"What might you want to do here on Earth?" - Vincent, NJ
"Why is the heart on your chest so big?" -Brenna, NJ
"What would happen if you landed in New Jersey?" -Michelle, NJ
"What did you do on Earth?" -Daniel, NJ
"Why would you dress like that?" -Meghan, NJ
REMIX THIS MUSIC FROM BEN THOMPSON I
met Ben on twitter last year when I was looking for some music for an
animation script. I listened to his music again recently and thought it
would work really well for a ROBOT HEART STORIES REMIX of some kind. He
is nice enough to let kids remix it with their images &
stories. Come back and check to see what we do.....if you want to add an
image to our animation,,,let us know @cynthiajabar. Share your remix. ;
)
This is Laika on the cover of her first school not
So who is Laika?
Laika (named by the class in Montreal), is a robot who has crash landed on Earth and is making her way from Montreal to Los Angeles with the help of kids all over the world.
You can help her reach her destination by participating & sharing what you LOVE. Love makes her move!
Visit the website: ROBOTHEARTSTORIES.com and download a heartpack to color or make a toy robot.
Here is Laika chillin' out in NYC.
That's the George Washington Bridge in the background.
GO AHEAD, SHARE WHAT YOU LOVE
It's all in your hands as the collaborator.
"For each photo or piece of art featuring the robot that is submitted, the signal strength of the robot grows stronger and helps her get back home."
Here's what the LA science team has to say about what fuels their passion & creativity.
"I like to be creative because if I wasn’t I would be boring." –Gabriel Alaniz
This is Laika admiring the graphiti in Paris, France.
"I feel passionate about Laika because she is brave." - Caitline Molina
"I am passionate about flowers because they are colorful, smell good, and are interesting to watch sway in the wind." - Agenda Domsitz
"I like to be creative because then whatever I make, I like, because it came from my imagination." - Alessandra Rugamas
On the JOURNEY BLOG, you can also follow what Laika's has to say about science, geography & the other strange things humans do here on Earth.
Laika wondered what this tiny brown thing was.
En route to 46° 32’ North by 84° 20’ West.
Parry Sound is a “town” along a body of water called a “bay.” Smaller groups of humanbots live in “towns.” The buildingbots are fewer and smaller, too.
Teambots afraid of effects of air pollution. Alternative
energy sources identified: solar energy, biomass, animals, magnetic,
wind, geothermal, ocean currents, and ocean tides. Fear drains energy reserves.
Giant Laika visiting a class in Sydney, Aust
Check out this experiential learning project using math, science,
history, geography, creative writing & art to propel the
imaginations of kids across the world and help get Laika home!
