Friday 4 October 2013

Exciting times!

Two exciting developments have happened today! One is that our website is ready enough for people to look at it. Check it out at explorablestory.org! There's still lots more content to be added, of course, but hopefully what's there will give everyone a clearer picture of what we're hoping to achieve with the resource. If after seeing the website you fancy writing or translating a page, please get in touch at contact@explorablestory.org!

Secondly, a lady named Joanna Grace has produced a sensory story version of our story. Someone on Twitter linked me to an article about her stories thinking I might be interested - I was! Joanna says:
 "I'm very pleased with how it's worked out in the sensory translation. I've tried creating more abstract sensory stories before and you always end up compromising on the stimuli, but for this one I've begun and ended the story with the students being asked to quite literally explore, and having various items to find at the end will provide a child with profound disabilities a way of expressing what motivates them, in a way that is meaningful to them: if they pick up a sound making toy, and a furry toy and drop the first in order to explore the second more carefully with their fingers they're clearly saying "I'm motivated to find interesting things to touch", where as if they push the smell away from them and vocalise as the sound is made they're saying "I want to find ways of making noise." I was surprised and delighted at how well it worked at this level and I can see many teachers of students with profound disabilities having adventures in their classrooms using this as a basis."
 I really hope that children with PMLD enjoy their experiences and their teachers find a way of sharing this with others via our gallery. 

On Sunday, we'll be heading to Germany to share the project with people at the UNAWE workshop 2013. I'm looking forward to getting some feedback (and trying to recruit a few more content writers,) from the astronomical educators who'll be there!

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