Project Overview

This project was an open pedagogy collaboration between the English Language Learner and Art student populations. Students wrote stories from intermediate to high-level ELL classes that reflected some aspect of their lives: My Neighborhood, A Person I Admire, or some other personal aspect of their lives. Students who participated in this project agreed to share their stories to become part of a library book. Their teachers shared their stories after a review process with the students. The librarian (Sue Wozniak) provided instruction on open licensing options and collected licensing permissions from students. The stories were shared with students in drawing classes. Each student was assigned one story and completed an assignment to create a drawing that represented their personal interpretation of the story. The librarian combined stories and art in an open source publishing platform: PressBooks.

Book Creation

Here is the process I used to create the ELL-Art books. Feel free to use any of this that is helpful.

Start by choosing a publishing platform. PressBooks is the publishing software that I used to import the written and visual content. Our institution has an account through OpenWA, a consortial account organized by the State Board of Community and Technical Colleges in Washington State. PressBooks allows seamless integration of written, visual, audio, and interactive content. The presentation is professional and you don't need programming or desktop publishing skills to use it successfully. Use the PressBooks - Getting Started document for basic instructions.

When you are done importing and formatting your book, use the Export tab to export as pdf for print.

Licensing

I provided instruction on licensing options and gave students permission to choose their preferred type of license. This video points to a form to choose licensing at Lake Washington Institute of Technology.
Open Licensing Options Video.
I used a licensing form (in the format of MS Form) from our college's marketing page for students to choose their licensing option. I am sharing the content I used from our form to create your own.
Licensing Form Content for Student Work

Printing

To print the book I used Lulu.com.

Use Create a Book, and the choices I made include:

Print Book
Book Details - Book category - Education & language
Don't worry about the error messages about pixels etc. I received this message in the process, but it did not impair the format and I thought it came out well.
Interior Color - we used B&W standard
Paper type - we used 60# cream
Book binding - paperback
Cover finish - matte

These are obviously individual choices, but just wanted to let you know what I used given that you saw how it came out.

You get to preview it before you print.

Resources to Use Sue's Books

Here are the links to the 2 books I have created and printed as library books. They are open source, so if you have a way to share ebooks through your catalog, please do.

Stories from Our Lives: LWTech English Language Students in Words and Images, Volume 1 (Links to an external site.)

Stories from Our Lives: LWTech English Language Students in Words and Images, Volume 2 (Links to an external site.)

To print these books I have separate files for the cover and interior book content.

Volume 1

Volume 2

If you have any questions please email me - sue.wozniak@lwtech.edu

Here is a the PowerPoint for my ELL-Art Presentation of this project.