 Then I think Paula, we can start. So a very warm welcome to our session. It's an open space session, which means that you will have the opportunity to contribute quite actively through a task also, which we will announce, but here just very briefly what this is about. It's about co-creating open picture books for learning assessment and research in higher education. And we have added to our title here, is this a wild idea? And I think you will understand what we mean by this when we talk. My name is Christine Naranzi and I'm an academic developer at Manchester Metropolitan University. And I have with me Paula today, Paula. Yay. Hi everyone, Tau. I'm Paula Corti, I am from Italy and I work at Politecnico di Milano here in Italy and at Spark Europe as open education community manager with the European Network of Open Education Librarians. So welcome everyone to this session. I think that we can move ahead crazy, right? To the next picture, to the next diapo. The plan for today is to have a brief overview of the experience that we had designing, co-designing at a distance during the pandemic, this open picture book that is called Together. We did it with great colleagues and we are going to list them in the moment. But then we are going to open the space to small group discussions because we want to ask you if you think that collaborative open picture books can be a great tool for learning, teaching and assessment in higher education. So we would like you to share your ideas with us if you are on board with it. Perfect. So the book that Paula just said we created was done in collaboration with colleagues from around the world based on GoGN Fellowship. As you know, I am a penguin and I know we have loads of penguins here in session today which is lovely. So we created together based on that fellowship and you can see all collaborators on the slides here and where they are based. Okay, well, maybe it's good to say that we focused on SDG for quality education for all and the collaborative picture book that we created together talks about the values of open education mainly. And we've been working through October 2020 till March 2021 from all over the places. Gino Fransman from South Africa, Ellen Pulcher from UK, Verena Roberts from Canada, Brian Maters who helped us largely with the design of the graphics from the UK and Penny Bentley from Australia. I am from Italy, you know me, Chrissie from Greece, but actually staying in the UK and then Odi Frank and Nasi Frank who are quite strongly related to Chrissie, I would say. Chrissie. Yes, these are my boys. I was very lucky to bring them in to a big cake with family project. Okay, great. So what we wanted to do is to work on a picture book that models the use of open education resources and the reuse of open education resources but maybe also of stories that are not intended to be or have been published as open education resources. So we took snippets from different stories and illustrations from the Rijksmuseum, from exhibits from the Rijksmuseum that we use that are made available under open licenses and created them on the right hand side, the visuals and what we say here on the left hand side, then the story. The story was also informed by a survey we shared with colleagues, the wider open education community and that informed A, what the story was about, brought out the values of open education, but also the animals that you see here on the right hand side. So on the left hand side here of this slide, you see the exhibits from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam that we use details of that can be found again on the right hand side. So maybe it could be actually a game, isn't it, to find what is where on the left hand side and then find it again in the final scene that we have added here. When we worked together with people around the world in order to understand how to work on how to design the picture book, we asked, as Chrissie just said, for feedback about which animals would represent the values of open education at best like heroes, antagonists, and then we chose the animals that were listed on both sides because we wanted to stress somehow with our choices that open education is really open to all and all of us as animals, as any human being, but also, let's say existing being in the most inclusive way possible have all sides in ourselves and it's a choice which values to work for. And even if the story is very short and does have just 154 words and 15 illustrations, then we worked quite largely writing about the process we went through the practice and you see how many words were in our blog post and in the fellowship report that Chrissie mainly prepared with our collaboration. But then we spread the word about the intention to have different translations of the story. On a volunteer basis, we now have more than 20 languages available and there are Google Slides formats also with multiple languages at the same time, which was quite an interesting experiment for us. Yes, so why picture books? I mean, I personally have a genuine interest in picture books. I also write on my own picture book stories and I love to illustrate, but picture books, what we know about them, they're often for non-readers even. They are written for people who can't yet read. So they are read by parents or carers or all the individuals to engage young children often in storytelling and let their imagination fly. They engage people also in an emotional way through creating stories and characters where we can jump in and be that person that happens in combination with text and images. And that's really powerful and can empower children here, as you can see on the slide. But because they are written in a way where they bring together different age groups, they are cross-generational and there's huge potential. And while often picture books are written for children, for young children, five to eight often or younger even, they are quite attractive also for adults and we find a lot of meanings in there and deep concepts that speak across the ages. And there are picture books that have been developed in the last few years especially, that are especially for adults. Okay, I think we can move on. So what we have done is because after the project, we have felt there is more potential here. Yes, we all came together. Yes, we all found it useful and we created something that we use in our practice, many of us. We felt that there is potential to explore the picture book a bit further. And Paula and I have been writing a chapter for a book publication on how we could be using picture books more widely, collaborative picture books and open in higher education for learning and teaching as it says here. Our literature review revealed very little is out there beyond what is used in art and design or in creative writing courses. So we felt that there is a huge potential there for the co-creation of open picture books in learning, teaching and assessment and also research. So what we have done here today and we hope that you will engage with this task in small groups is to enable you to explore that possibility and discuss it with colleagues as well. Hi, Antonio. Hello, good morning. Hi, Antonio. Morning, girl. Good morning. Sorry I'm late, sorry I'm late. No worries, we're just starting with the active part actually. So you're perfectly in time. So the resource pack we are providing now and I'm copying here the link to the, oh sorry, I moved the slide too early. It consists of many different resources. First of all, our research picture book and here in the chat, the link to it. And then we have the second resource that is a doodle fun and you can find it here. Let me copy and paste the link so that it's handy for all of you. And then we are, so this doodle fun was created by one of Chris's songs actually. And this is done for you to quickly recreate or play with the images and with the elements that we created ourselves, choosing the background and adding your words in your languages very easily and very quickly, which is helpful if you think that we wanted to be open to all and not all of us in the group also had a graphic experience or specific, let's say, creative skills. And then the third resource is the story weaver that is a wonderful resource that is full of stories created by teachers together with the students all ages and it's based on images mainly. So it's very close to picture books and this is a very interesting resource in our idea. So the task is to explore in small groups, ideas, if and how collaborative open picture books activities could be of value for learning and teaching. Please feel free to explore any kind of possibility. I'm not willing to give you any example because me and Chrissie won't, are not willing to somehow influence you but if you have questions, we are here and it would be great if we can now be divided into small groups. So I would ask for the support of our great ALT supporter here in the room Emma. Thank you. I'm just going to start transferring everyone to a room. I'm going to keep some of you in the main room and move some of you to another room so that we can still have people talking during the recording. So bear with me while you move around. Right, we can keep one group here even. Yes, yep. And also if anyone... Oops. Paula? Sorry Chrissie, I believe Paula's been pushed to the other room because I'd already started to transfer polities. That's fine. Christina, will we be able to move between the groups or not? You should be able to, yes. So if you bear with me, I'm just updating the setting and you should be able to do that now. Right, I can't see any groups. So at the moment you're in the main room. Good morning. In the participants list, you'll be able to see another group and you should be able to join that by clicking the little doors. So there's one with Anna. Antonio, no, participants. I can't see. I think Chrissie, hello. Yes, hello, hello. Hello, I think we are a group. You are, yes. We're in a group now and then Anna is in another room with a few other people. Yeah. Okay, so I'm working with Antonio then. I'm with Anna. You have Antonio and Anna and to Rumania's with us as well. Ah, to Rumania as well. Okay, great. Are we all here then? Yeah, yep. Can we all hear each other? Yeah. Feel free to turn on your videos and chat as well if you would like to, like Antonio has. Apart from Anna, Chrissie and myself, who is the other person? Sorry. My name is Rumania. Oh, Teru Mani. Hello, Teru Mani. Yes, I can see you now. Perfect. So have you understood what we have invited you to do? Yeah, yeah. I think. Yes. I think there's a lot of application at least in humanities and even languages within the humanities and social sciences. And I have a lot of possibilities, examples of tasks. In my view, they would work better if they are perceived as authentic tasks. So one possibility. Imagine that you have a module on gender equality in Colombia. Okay, because we teach that type of thing. So one possibility of a task for the students to use their creativity would be to draw a collection of pictures for an advertising campaign of a charity or of a government department. And in that brief, there would have to be a brief explaining the objectives of the campaign. And then you would put the students to create the assets or you could have the texts, for instance, for the campaign and you would have to get the students to create drawings and bring pictures and do collages. I'm sorry I have missed the first part of the session. So that's one possibility. The other is simply helping. The other one is very general. Students creating education resources for other students and for wider audiences. When you engage with wider audiences, you can use a lot of visuals to make your content more palatable. If you are at universities, more like you're based on text and articles, et cetera. But if you are disseminating to create education materials, that is a perfect place for illustrations, for collages, et cetera. So that would apply to absolutely every single subject, really. Thank you, Antonia. That's really useful. We are talking about picture books. I know you took it a bit wider, which is great. So Anna, what are your thoughts? I'm still trying to absorb and just thinking from the accessibility point of view, the picture book is great, but if you've got a visual impairment, there's a bit of a problem. So it's how would, my question is always, how would we make it accessible to those who haven't got visual abilities, et cetera? But then again, could you make a picture book, something that somebody could work on together to actually encourage people to help each other through accessibility problems? So if you've got a combination of text and images, which are guiding people through a story, would you therefore be actually getting somebody to tell the story regardless of whether they are, one person telling the story using the pictures and the other person telling the story using the words? It's a, yeah. It's a very good observation, Anna, and I got a solution. When I think of these type of pictures or these type of illustrations or images, whatever they are, there is an equivalent to it for visually impaired people, which is a literary approach. So you've got a sort of literary description rather than scientific description because the picture evokes certain senses and activates certain neuroconnectors in your brain and you kind of replace that with a straight, direct scientific neutral term. It has to be something that creates some kind of emotion. So it could be a literary description. It could be a short poem. It could be something that activates that side of the thinking of the person who is visually impaired and cannot see it. You need that person to sense it. Yeah. Even if they can't see it. Yeah, I really love the suggestion and it's an important point you made, like as Antonio already said, with accessibility issues, but also the opportunity the challenge presents for collaboration and for that peer-to-peer support, I think. I think it's a great opportunity to actually engender more collaboration and make people more aware of the fact that other people might not have the same abilities as them, but have got equally good things to offer or some interesting perspectives to offer. Yeah, and it's about complimenting each other, isn't it? And creating a mesh of experiences, of talent also and of competencies, but also developing new ones on that journey. Yeah, yeah. That's really great. So do you have maybe a concrete idea or a seed of an idea where you could try something like this or you would consider it? What am I teaching? Yes. For the picture book, because I missed the first part, I'm sorry, but I had family things, yeah. For my picture book, are we talking about pictures as in photographs? Or is it also designs? It can be anything, it could be drawings, like you said collage, it could be, we used bits that were already available, parts of OER, basically, that you can reuse and adapt. You can create new ones and mix them all together, that's what we did. Yeah, what you need first of all, yes, I have many ideas, too many perhaps. So my concern would be also equality and you have the answer, the answer is to create teams of students who are sufficiently varied, diverse in their skills because I can think of my students, doing Spanish and economics. So French and Spanish and Spanish and politics, I know them very well. Some of them may have taken a module in art or may have the right background and be good at drawing some others, to be honest. They don't even have the static sense of organizing a simple document. It's the sense of aesthetics and how I perceive the static value of their work and how all the students perceive the static value of their work. It's a massive cleavage. There is a massive gap. When it comes to Spanish language, they all have an A level in Spanish with an A, okay? So some of them are better, writing some of them better, but they are more or less, but when you see artistic inclination and creativity for visual, there are people who are absolutely zero, honestly, I know that we shouldn't assume that, but they haven't been prompted, they haven't been put through the challenges and that is a concern for me. So you need a very team and you need some kind of extra support so that those students can also find a creative side of it because I'm not saying that the fact that they are really bad at it, that means that they can never be good at it. Of course they can. But there are different stages that have had different preferences, inclinations, background, et cetera. So creating diverse teams to do these things. Yes. Thank you, Anna, you quickly. Sorry to interrupt, but we're just coming to the end of the session. Did you want me to bring everyone back into the main room? Because it's only a part of the session. Okay, maybe you can share your idea when we all come together, would that be possible? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Okay, great, thank you both. And Tiro Mini, I hope you were listening and found it useful too. Oh, it's done. Oh, it's done. Yeah, all back. That was quick. Sorry, Paola, we're getting very close to the end of the sessions. I thought I'd be important to bring everyone back so you can do a close-off and finish this slide. No worries, no worries. We've been adding our notes in slide 17 in the shared document. So... We did a lot of talk and I think we have two minutes. Maybe if we can have one idea shared by each team very quickly and I'll ask Anna to start, perhaps. Well, our conversation was mainly around accessibility for people who are visually impaired and how we could harness picture books to actually encourage collaboration between those who have different abilities to support each other through their learning. That was sort of the absolute crux of it, really. Yes, thank you. Thank you, and Antonio, for a very insightful conversation. Paola? Thank you. I would thank Joe and Leo for their wonderful insights. Yes, and also Ripley. And Ripley, whom we named our group to... You see, our group is named Ripley. And we've been discussing about the context of student teachers to develop early years resources and also could be higher education students practicing science or research communication through picture book medium. And the idea is to develop picture books for science, math and history in order to support students collaborate to understand how to best communicate complex topics to early years audience and also model activity with the pre-service teachers that could then co-create resources with young students. And this could also help work to promote and understand of plural perspectives on issues as well as basic understanding. So picture books as a tool to start the conversation instead of providing hard science content in a difficult way to be shared, let's say, but to start small and engage through the main concepts and then build on this. This was the idea. But please, Joe and Leo, complete my sentence if I was not. Thank you, Paola. I have a really good summary of what we talked about and it was a really, really exciting idea. I love it. I think it has great potential. Great, that's lovely to hear. And we hope, I think we are at the end of the session now. We hope the session was useful to trigger some new ideas perhaps and make connections also with each other that you could take forward potentially. So please do keep in touch. We are very much looking forward to hearing to what the idea sort of develop in the near future, hopefully, Antonio and Leo. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And Tiro Mani. And yeah, I mean, there is a big thing about during the pandemic, students felt alone. They had no friends. They were learning on their own. So could picture books bring students back to campus because there's that issue as well. And use that space in co-creation of picture books as an example. Yeah, beautiful. Thank you so much, Cristina Pelle. Thank you all. Thank you very much to everybody for joining us and Cristina for your support. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thanks. Very interesting pattern. I believe a lot of people have got more conversations they'd like to have about it. So feel free to share your resources on Discord and carry on the conversation there. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.