Creation of children’s stories
OLE Nepal is developing an interactive digital platform to help early graders develop their basic reading and comprehension skills. We are creating and curating original stories for the platform, to help young learners through the use of familiar images and word references. These stories have features of both audio and animation, where learners can enhance their reading in an interactive way. The use of audio-visuals, illustrations and animations, combined with interactivity, will be highly effective in helping young learners to listen to illustrated stories, decode sentences and words, learn vocabulary, form words from letters and sentences from words. Children can also learn and identify the alphabets by listening to the sounds.
We want to share with you a few new stories and games that have been launched on the platform.
What do you eat? (Timi ke kanchau?): LINK TO STORY
About the story: While the initial intention was that of a culinary journey across Nepal, for someone who loves trying out new things, even Kamal was surprised and thrilled to discover so many interesting places, and experiences belonging to people of Nepal that are seldom visible in the mainstream imagination. Over the years, Kamal is hoping to befriend more people to understand more and is curious to know तिमी के खान्छौ ? (What do you eat?). Kamal was equally excited about the different modes of transportation.
Perfect Circle: LINK TO STORY
About the story: Children are the experts of their own lives but their sense of agency is rarely valued and we, adults, are quick to label them difficult instead of learning to listen to them and respect their autonomy. In this story, like any other child her age, we also see Zeya’s joy of discovery and single-minded fascination for something that she has learned recently.
Charlie Chamero : LINK TO STORY
About the story: With news of the corona virus setting in, we humans were quick to defame the bats. “Give a bat a bad name, and hang him!” – the authors were keen to do away with this single story of how bats are portrayed. Meanwhile, Charlie Chamero discovers a beautiful friendship with Prithvi, who loves solitude and explorations as much as Charlie does.
Ma Pani Sakchu: LINK TO STORY
About the story: This story (Yes, I can) is an adaptation meant for emergent learners. Although the basic idea of the story is for a child to imitate and do some actions that are easily achievable giving them a sense of accomplishment, they will also be exposed to new vocabulary through the introduction of some familiar and some not so familiar animals, actions and terrains as well. We also want to show a sense of camaraderie between the children and the animals: the children completely unafraid and uninhibited by the animals. We believe there is a possibility of co-existence until adulthood takes over, and we have also consciously tried to break away stereotypical depiction of the characters.
Puzzle/पज्जल: LINK TO GAME
About the game: A simplified crossword puzzle, where the users will be given visual and audio hints to guide them to drag and drop the correct letters in the puzzle. The words selected for the puzzles have been extracted from the stories in hopes of reinforcing what they had seen and read in the stories.
For the next phase, we will be exploring Karnali to collect children’s stories in Mugu district in partnership with the Karnali Arts Centre. Our team will collaborate with the Karnali Arts Center to conduct workshops that will help facilitate and capture oral storytelling in the region, and sketch out concepts for visualization of these stories in digital form with the help of local writers, artists and musicians.