Who's ready for the easiest non-coding hackathon on the planet? 🎉

We are excited to announce that Curious Learning is partnering with the amazing folks at Open Source for Equality for this July hackathon where you will be contributing open content, Yay!!!

via GIPHY

About Curious Reader

Curious Reader is a digital storytelling platform designed to encourage interactive learning. The platform includes interactions—primarily between animation, text, and audio—that help anyone to learn to read.

The Curious Reader platform makes it easy to update an existing storybook to offer a richer interactive experience or to localize an existing book to other languages. There are several key features that distinguish a Curious Reader book from other learning tools:

1. Self-narration: The displayed text is narrated.
2. Interactivity: Taps to words and graphics produce audio and/or visual responses.
3. Tap to read: The ability to tap on individual words and hear the enunciation.
4. Linked text and graphics: This establishes a relationship between text and graphics.
5. Levelled reading: This allows a single story to accommodate multiple reading levels as a reader becomes more proficient at reading over time.

The Curious Reader platform is used to create web-based apps for Android and iOS smartphones, tablets, and web browsers (Chrome or Firefox).
Best of all, no coding experience is required!!.

About the Contributhon 💡

From 14th July to 12th August, we want to see you build interactive books using the Curious Reader Authoring tool. For this contributhon, you will choose among any of three tasks:

1. Translation - translate (an) English script(s) to a local language(s). Find out how to tackle this task here.
2. Recording Audio. Find out how to record the best quality audio here.
3. Compiling the book(s) into finished form. Find how to do this here.

You will also choose from this list of books, which book you want to localize or make interactive.

• Cicada’s Song
• I am not afraid
• Colors of Nature
• Hide and Seek
• Let’s fly!
• The bee and the elephant
• Friends
• The Lost Doll
• Colors
• Tall and Short

This is an excellent opportunity to unlock your translation and book-building skills with a great open-source project that speaks to one of the Sustainable Development Goals (#4).

If this is your first time using the Curious Reader authoring tool, you'll soon see it's super easy to get started, and there is well-written documentation.

How to participate.

1. Sign up for the Curious Learning track on the OSEQ website. Make sure to check the box "I am applying for the Curious Learning track". Registration ends on 14th July, 2022.

1. After this registration, you will be sent the Curious Learning sign-up form that will help the facilitators understand which book and task you would like to work on and whether you prefer to work alone or in a group. Fill out the registration Google form as soon as possible and then submit it.

2. You will be sent an onboarding email that will contain all the resources that you need to successfully create a Curious Learning book and submit it for consideration for the cash prize at the end of the hackathon.

3. If you face any issues with the Authoring tool or need to make any inquiries, feel free to start a discussion on the Curious Learning GitHub page under the channel #OSEQ hackathon.

4. After submitting your content/book, make sure to fill out the feedback form that will be sent in your email. This will help the Curious Learning team gain valuable insights on how to improve the tool in order to provide you with a better book-building experience.

Only participants who fill out the feedback form at the end of the contributhon will be considered for the cash prize!!

Hackathon prizes 🏆

via GIPHY

Are you ready?!

Complete Interactive books.

• The top 2-3 groups that submit (a) complete interactive book(s) will be awarded Ugx 1,500,000 each.
• Top 1-2 individuals who submit (a) complete interactive book(s) will be awarded Ugx 400,000 each.

Complete sub-tasks

• Top 2 individuals who submit (a) translated story manuscript(s) will be awarded Ugx 100,000 each
• Top 2 individuals who submit (a) recorded audio(s) in local language(s) will also be awarded Ugx 100,000 each.
• Best submission for compiling (an) existing script(s) and audio(s) into an interactive book will be awarded Ugx 200,000.

Evaluation criteria 🔎

Submissions will be judged based on the following criteria:

• Translations of manuscripts will be judged based on the accuracy of translation from English to the local language.
• Recorded audio in local languages will be judged based on accuracy and relatability of intonation of voice, the pace at which sentences are being recorded (remember these are children's books), clarity of audio recordings (no white noise, background sounds, etc), completeness of audio recordings (all individual sentences and words from the manuscript have to be recorded).
• Interactive books will be judged based on overall quality e.g how elements have been placed on each page, accuracy of synchronisation of words, animation and audio, etc.
• Please note that only individuals who fill the feedback form at the end of the project will be considered for the cash prize!

Winners Selection. 💬

Winners will be selected by the Curious Learning team.

Important dates and rules. 📆

• 9th July - Online registration of participants opens
• 14th July - Deadline for registrations and Online launch of the contributhon. Join us for the online launch on Zoom.
• 26th July - Online mentorship of participants
• 12th August - Closure of contributions
• 19th August - Networking event and announcement of winners.

Excited? 😍 Help spread the word ...

Feel free to tag Curious learning at @CuriousLearnGLP and OSCA Kampala at @oscakampala in your tweets and posts about this hackathon. 😊

Need Help? 🙋🏽‍♀️

Join the hackathon channel on the Curious Learning GitHub discussions page to connect with other Curious Reader community members and hackathon participants. Talk to us on Twitter at @oscakampala, @CuriousLearnGLP and @OSEQorg.

Good luck. ✌