Read, Think, Create!

Read, Think, Create! delivers engaging and informative open license e-books that nurture children’s cognitive flexibility and trains young adults to use pioneering technology to adapt the content into underserved languages. Freely available to anyone, anywhere via the Collaborative's popular e-libraries, over 100,000 children and young adults will immediately benefit.

Read, Think, Create!, a solution of The Asia Foundation-Pratham Collaborative, uses pioneering technology, open licensing, and proven strategies to enable disadvantaged children to access storybooks that enliven their imaginations and nurture their critical thinking skills. Mobile access means even children out of school due to civil conflict, gender, or economic hardship can participate.

Our solution develops and delivers an exciting new genre of engaging, easy-to-read e-books that have compelling narratives and rich illustrations to exercise cognitive flexibility and introduce STEM topics that are indispensable to 21st century jobs. The content will be delivered via the Collaborative's highly popular Let’s Read! and Storyweaver free e-libraries and apps already used by over 100,000 children.  The short e-books will be devoured by children on mobile devices and in print using online and offline features.  Each book will have a supplementary resource module to aid in-classroom activities.

Our solution will produce 240 new e-books in 12 underserved languages and scripts in six countries across Asia. Content featuring ingenious female characters and local language adaptations are vitally important because mother tongue-based education is the key to unlocking literacy and improving educational outcomes and economic opportunities.

The series will be designed by Pratham Books’ (India) highly skilled writers and editors then adapted during high visibility, one-day events at local universities, trade schools, and tech hubs in Nepal, India, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Timor Leste where young adults will be trained to use The Asia Foundation’s pioneering translation tool to contextualize the content and  gain marketable skills in new technologies.  Within 12 months, the solution will reach more than 100,000 children encouraging underserved communities everywhere to access and adapt the Read, Think, Create! content. Opportunities to scale the solution to new languages and reach children across the world are limitless.

Flexible cognition must be nurtured while children are young, yet students in the developing world endure years of rote learning that inhibits the development of critical thinking and entrepreneurial attitudes. Minority language and disadvantaged children are disproportionately affected as books are mostly available in majority languages or too costly.  Similarly, with 1 in 20 global jobs requiring STEM skills by 2018, it is imperative  to equip children with a love for learning in these subjects, especially girls. Research shows that if girls are not exposed to STEM opportunities by the end of middle school they are unlikely to pursue them.

Children can learn critical thinking skills through easy-to-read books regardless of the quality of schools they attend.  When cognitive flexibility is modeled and exercised through a steady stream of delightful books delivered directly into their hands, children will adopt entrepreneurial thinking. Rapidly increasing smartphone ownership rates among poor families have made Pratham Books’ StoryWeaver and The Asia Foundation’s Let’s Read! free, local language digital libraries and e-reader apps extremely popular among underprivileged children (over 100,000 readers in 190 countries). Research has shown that educational outcomes increase when children become literate in their mother-tongue before learning a second language.

• More than 100,000 children during the formative ages of 7-12 access and read a new genre of e-books to develop critical thinking skills, entrepreneurial attitudes, and an early understanding of STEM concepts.
• 240 entertaining open license e-books in 12 underserved languages and scripts in six countries are created.
• 1,000 young adults under age 24 in Nepal, India, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Timor Leste develop marketable technology skills using the Collaborative’s cutting edge translation tools and open platforms at high visibility translation events.  
• The translation events increase public demand for education that develops children’s 21st century thinking skills.

Track the number of books accessed and downloaded via the Let’s Read! and StoryWeaver platforms - More than 100,000 children access and read a new genre of e-books to develop critical thinking skills, entrepreneurial attitudes, and an early understanding of STEM concepts.

Number of high quality, skill building e- books created - 240 entertaining open license e-books in 12 underserved languages and scripts in six countries are created.

Attendance at translation workshops and pre- and post- workshop surveys regarding skills gained - 1,000 young adults under age 24 in 6 countries develop marketable technology skills using the Collaborative’s cutting edge translation tools and open platforms at high visibility translation events.

Three innovations enable children to develop 21st century skills quickly and independently regardless of school quality or interruptions in their education. First, children exercise critical thinking and cognitive flexibility by reading a compelling, new genre of books.  Second, the solution utilizes open licensing, open platforms, PWA compliant and wireless technology to deliver content directly into children’s hands. Third, our pioneering translation and editing tools facilitate the contributions of community members who need only basic smartphones or laptops to participate.  Read, Think, Create! is the first solution to make this complex process quick, easy and fully scalable within underserved language communities.  

Every aspect of Read, Think, Create! is designed in collaboration with underserved communities and human-centered values.  The solution’s digital platforms were developed in Nepal and India and continue to be refined with local involvement.  For example, a diverse group of school teachers, farmers, and community workers in S’gaw Karen minority communities in Thailand emphasized the need to represent the S’gaw Karen language in three scripts and include online/offline functionality. Surveys of perceptions and reading habits in ten S’gaw Karen villages helped us collaborate with local partners to integrate use of the web and Android readers into existing community programs.  

Read, Think, Create! provides children and families with multiple ways to engage with content.   More than 350,000 unique users already access Let’s Read! and StoryWeaver open license, online libraries via browser, the Let’s Read! Mobile app available on Google Play, and other e-readers.  Offline functionality allows books to be accessed without a constant internet connection.  Dynamic image rendering ensures the reading experience is seamless and cost-efficient in low-bandwidth environments. The series can also be printed for non-digital environments.  The Asia Foundation and Pratham Books actively partner with ministries of education and community-based programs that encourage early grade reading.   

The Collaborative team comprises staff seconded from The Asia Foundation offices in San Francisco, Cambodia, Nepal, Indonesia, and Thailand and Pratham Books’ offices in India.  The Collaborative will be supported financially by the annual budgets of their home organizations throughout the project.  The solution’s Let’s Read! and StoryWeaver platforms are built to handle any Unicode compliant language and designed to scale with relative ease and without incurring additional development costs. The Collaborative is actively engaged in outreach to attract external support to scale Read, Think, Create! beyond the number of e-books and countries outlined in this proposal.  

Educators and parents may not appreciate the urgent need for critical thinking skills nor understand they can be exercised from a young age through well-crafted books and pleasure reading.  Not all children have access to mobile devices or will be allowed to invest time in reading.  To overcome these challenges, the solution uses high visibility public education campaigns and targeted outreach to parents, educators, and pediatricians.  Partnerships with the private sector will be sought for device donations and zero-rating.  To reach children in non-digital environments, the Collaborative will liaise with community based programs to encourage use of print-to-PDF options.   

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-cambodia-women-books-idUSKBN19X1YT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3D0zPaTbGAhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDKrOVzfdB4

http://asiafoundation.org/what-we-do/books-for-asia/lets-read/

We seek collaborators with expertise in refugee education, online learning, 21st century skills, STEM education, girls empowerment, and primary education to help inform our project strategy and tools.  Since Asia is home to over two thousand minority languages whose speakers are among the region’s most marginalized populations we also seek investors to scale Read, Think, Create! to many more countries and languages to help make Sustainable Development Goal #4 a reality and equip all children with 21st century skills.  

• India: Pratham Books
• Nepal: Ministry of Education,  National College,  Southwestern State College
• Cambodia: Ministry of Education, TEKHUB, University of Puthisastra, Royal University Phnom Penh, Sipar (publisher), KAPE, Room to Read
• Indonesia: Litara Foundation, Mizan (publisher)
• Thailand: Foundation for Applied Linguistics, IMPECT
• Timor Leste: Ministry of Education, Alieu Resource Training Center

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