Storyweaver is an inspiring offering from publisher Pratham Books as a digital repository of multilingual story books offered in the mother tongue of learners everywhere. Led by a mission of ‘A Book in Every Child’s Hand’ and doing this since 2004, Storyweaver is perfectly aligned with carrying out the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4:
“taking books to some of the most disadvantaged children globally, particularly where chronic under-investment in the availability of mother tongue reading resources poses a significant barrier to literacy.
As but one example, see The Kitten published in Lakota, with options to read the same story in 28 other languages. And see how storybooks are building blocks for open educational resources such as the STEM Literacy Programme (see it in Marathi) tailored at learning levels Grades 1 to 5, containing 80 learning experiences aligned to a curriculum framework.
From a start in 2015 with 800 books published in 24 languages, the current version of Storyweaver provides an astonishing 54000 storybooks in over 300 languages, all published under a Creative Commons license. That the stories can be made available in so many languages exemplifies a globally focused open initiative whose measurable impact is worthy of this recognition.
Storyweaver’s Open Philosophy includes not only their content, but also reflects a platform built on and shared as open source code, integrating open tools for services such as language translation.
The platform that runs Storyweaver provides a deeply interactive and engaging experience plus it includes the affordance of being able to be set up for use in places lacking internet access. Storyweaver offers a way for teachers to assemble collections by grade level, create lesson activities, and media from books is made available for remixes.
An excellent example of diverse co-creation in multiple languages and cultural contexts that is enriching and diversifying open educational practices across the globe!
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Podcasts from Open Education Global
In this episode we take you to Bangalore, India to hear about a remarkable publisher, Pratham Books and its Open Education for Excellence Award winning platform Storyweaver, core to Pratham’s mission of a book in the hands of every child in the country, published in that child’s mother tongue.
We welcomed in the studio Purvi Shah, Senior Director of StoryWeaver & Strategy to tell use the story of Storyweaver, which was recognized with a 2023 Open Education Award for Excellence in the Open Repository category. At this time, StoryWeaver offers now over 64,000 stories in more than 370 languages spoken around the world, and offers a place for anyone to contribute images, new translations, and also age and subject specific teaching resources. All of this came about from a bold commitment in 2004 from Pratham Books to embrace open licensing for their published storybooks.
Enjoy the enthusiasm in Purvi’a voice as she shares the missions and global reach of StoryWeaver, as well as sharing examples of her favorite titles. And we appreciate the serendipty, than when Purvi offered to read a selection of a favorite story, from among the 60,000 titles in StoryWeaver, the one she chose was What Will Today Bring? authored by someone we know well here at OEGlobal, University of Leeds open educator Chrissi Nerantzi.
We also want to thank Sreemoyee Mukherjee from Pratham Books who joined us in the studio and was instrumental in coordinating this conversation.
at Descript.com
In This Episode
FYI: For the sake of experimentation and the spirit of transparency, this set of show notes alone was generated by the AI “Underlord” in the Descript editor we use to produce OEGlobal Voices.
In this episode of OEGlobal Voices, host Alan Levine engages in an inspiring conversation with Purvi Shah, a key member of the StoryWeaver initiative by Pratham Books in India. StoryWeaver, a community-driven digital platform, earned the 2023 Open Education Award for Excellence in the Open Curation Repository category.
Key Highlights:
- Embracing Openness: Purvi discusses the organization’s decision to adopt open licensing to reach their mission of putting a book in every child’s hand. This shift from a traditional publishing model to an open platform allowed the community to create and translate stories, leading to the birth of StoryWeaver.
- The Genesis of StoryWeaver: The platform was launched on International Literacy Day in 2015 with 800 stories in 24 languages. Today, it boasts an impressive collection of 60,000 stories in 370 languages, serving as a vast repository of multilingual and multicultural stories.
- Innovative Features: StoryWeaver includes unique features such as “read-alongs,” which combine audio, video, and same-language subtitling to aid language learning and literacy. The platform also offers structured resources for teachers, such as thematic book lists and STEM programs.
- Translations and Impact: Purvi shares stories about the extensive translations available on the platform. “Rani’s First Day at School” has been translated into 138 languages, demonstrating the community’s active participation. She also narrates heartwarming anecdotes about how these stories have impacted children and teachers around the world.
- Community Contributions: The discussion highlights how users can contribute by translating stories or creating new ones using the platform’s vast library of images and easy-to-use creation tools. Purvi shares examples of innovative projects inspired by StoryWeaver, such as a literacy program developed in Mexico.
- Future Goals: Looking ahead, Purvi emphasizes the importance of expanding the depth of stories in each language and leveraging the community’s strengths to ensure that every child can access a book in their mother tongue.
Alan and Purvi’s conversation encapsulates the essence of open education and the incredible work being done by the StoryWeaver team to foster literacy and inclusivity. The episode concludes with a recommendation to explore StoryWeaver and an acknowledgment of the upcoming Open Education Awards.
Tune in to OEGlobal Voices to dive deeper into the world of StoryWeaver and the transformative power of open education.
(end of AI generated show notes)
Additional Links and Quotes for Episode 76
How can we work with the communities to increase the depth of languages? So that could be a potential future milestone. We were just discussing this in office the other day that it’s so interesting that while the platform has 370 languages and that’s a milestone in itself, but the real milestone is that for that one child reading the first book in their mother tongue is really the milestone.
We hit that milestone almost every day because every day a child is discovering a book in their mother tongue for the first time. That milestone will never get old, I think. And some of the other sort of milestones [has] been just not being a platform where we allow for stories, but say, when we created this whole different platform, the white label StoryWeaver for Room to Read in Indonesia and that helped kickstart their own platform called Literacy Cloud.
That was a pretty important milestone because whatever we have learned, we could empower other organizations. to build off our investments, our learning, in countries that they work with.
Purvi Shah on StoryWeaver’s milestones
- 2023 Open Education Award for Excellence (Open Repository Award, OEGlobal)
- Pratham Books
- One Day One Story (Pratham Books)
- First published In Scribd (2014)
- International Literacy Day 2015
- Storyweaver
- Our Open Philosophy
- Stories mentioned
- Goal!
- Why Do Sunflowers Love the Sun?
- What Will Today Bring? (author is Chrissi Nerantzi)
- Rani’s First Day at School
- Angry Akku
- Angre Akku (in Bahasa Indonesia language)
- Chintu
- StoryWeaver Foundational LIteracy Program
- Badan Bahasa (Indonesia organization)
- Worldreader (International children’s book reading programs)
- Room to Read (International organization improving literacy and gender equality)
- Literacy Cloud (Story platform based on StoryWeaver)
Our open licensed music for this episode is a track called Fairytale Story by Serge Quadrado licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Like most of our podcast music, it was found at the Free Music Archive (see our full FMA playlist).
The image of the reading octopus in this episode’s artwork is part the StoryWeaver web site, an illustration credited to Measa Sovonnarea.
Finally, this was another episode we are recording on the web in Squadcast, part of the Descript platform for AI enabled transcribing and editing audio in text– this has greatly enhanced our ability to produce our shows. We have been exploring some of the other AI features in Descript, but our posts remain human authored except where indicated otherwise.
