Materials Update #1: Illustrations

In order to get all our materials ready to be printed we need two things 1) content and 2) illustrations. Most of our content is complete, although it's in constant revision. But the biggest piece has been contracting out illustrations for this project. Not only do the illustrations have to be simple and bold, they have to be culturally relevant and appropriate for rural primary children in India. Currently we are working with five illustrators. We have collected 242 illustrations, but we still need 80+. We are desperately waiting for our illustrators to make corrections, send us sketches for approval and finally send us final images. It has been a really fun process thinking about what images we want to use to teach certain sounds or groups of sounds. And it has been really fun seeing what the illustrators send back to us. We are working with some very creative people. Here are a few examples of what our materials will look like and include:

"This pig has pants." This is the image on the 'p' flashcard.

"A rabbit rides a rocket." This is the image on the 'r' flashcard.

Solution #1: Alternative DVD Production Companies

With the news that our DVD production company was backing out, we swung into high gear and found two other alternatives. We met with them last week to discuss our concept and have submitted samples of our content. They will each write up a proposal and submit a budget by the end of this week. Let's hope our initial budget is within range of these new proposals. Both have different strengths to offer the project 1) is production focused 2) is education and multi-media focused. I'm secretly hoping that there is a way to bring them both into the project. Hopefully we will be able to make a decision and get a signed contract within a week.

Wall Alumni Service Award

An Exciting Announcement:

"Ready to Read" has been awarded the Wall Alumni Service Award from Grinnell College, USA.

The award will be used to:

• Design and print the Ready to Read Kit for schools. The kit includes: flashcards, picture cards, sight word cards, a graded reading library of 80 sentences, 32 paragraphs, and 32 stories, a blending flipchart, gameboards, a student activity book and a bilingual teacher's manual.
• Produce a supplementary DVD.
  
• Train and employ program staff.
• Support monitoring and evaluation of the program.

Within a few weeks we will be training local field staff and starting the program in 37 Eureka Learning Centers in 9 districts in Tamil Nadu. The initial reach of the program should extend to approximately 2220 students overall.

The Wall Alumni Award, in addition to AID and AIF fellowship funding will support this project through March of 2010. Please visit this blog often for project updates!

Thank you Grinnell College and the Wall Alumni Award Service Committee!

Challenge #1: DVD Production Post-poned

Let's face it, this isn't the first challenge the project has faced, but it is very frustrating, hence the blog post. Everyday seems to confront us with one more challenge: the illustrator is busy or wants more money than we can offer, the internet isn't working, the power is cut, our printer changes his initial quotes, our design and layout editor falls sick, etc. etc.

But two days ago I got an SMS from our DVD director/producer saying she would have to push back the time line by 2 months. Apparently, not everything in India works based on personal relationships and contacts....we should have insisted on a signed contract at our last meeting. Now we are scrambling to find a new film production company that can do this project for us and we were supposed to start filming in two weeks.

On the upside, we have a bit more time to finalize our content and go to print with our materials. Although we need a few more illustrators and a logo we can all agree on.

AID India's English Action Research Team

Celebrating our grant award with an afternoon ice cream outing.
(Kirsten, Sumangali, Parvathy, Priya and
Sumangali's daughter front and center)

Stay Tuned!

New and improved: This blog is being revised and revamped to host the progress and developments of the "Ready to Read" Program. This reading program aims at providing primary-age students in Tamil Nadu's government schools tools to begin reading in English through a time-bound module.

More Coming Soon!

Finished!

Sadly this blog became defunct as I packed my bags and left Japan in 2007 to travel and then finish my MA studies on campus at the University of Birmingham from January-April of 2008. After completing the second half of my coursework on campus I returned to Portland, OR, my hometown to write my dissertation. I submitted my dissertation entitled "Identifying the Socio-Linguistic Gap: A Comparative Analysis of Young Learner English Textbooks from Tamil Nadu, India" at the end of August. One week later I was on a plane to Delhi as an AIF Service Corps Fellow placed to work with the English Action Research Team of Eureka Child an AID India education initiative in the state of Tamil Nadu.

I've been living and working in Chennai since September of 2008 and after an exciting turn of events I'll be staying until March of 2010. There is more to the story....stay tuned.