Studentworks digitally published

Studentworks digitally published

Class project put student works on e-readers

American Humanities, a new class offered this year combining American History II and English II challenged class participants to explore their creative side. “The students were assigned to write a piece of short fiction on globalization,” history teacher Rob Pittman said. “It was part of our unit on globalization and the economy.” Students could choose the form of writing that best coordinated with the message they hoped to convey.

“Some chose plays, or slam poetry,” English teacher Trudy McKeag said. “Some worked in pairs, some worked alone.”

In preparation, students both studied examples of globalization and its effects on economy as well as read fictional examples. Unlike most classroom assignments, McKeag and Pittman would not be the only ones reading the finished product. Each piece of fiction would be collected and compiled for publication as an eBook. For this particular class Pittman has taken on the responsibility of publishing the collection.

“It is the first time I have tried this in a class and I want to work out all the kinks and be familiar with it before I make students do it,” he said.

It wouldn’t be a book without proper cover art.

“Rosa Gastulam made a cover to the eBook,” McKeag said.

The collection is called, “Globalization: Short Stories, some poems, and a play or two.”

“During National Education Week (this week) it will be available for free download on Amazon,” Pittman said. “They have the ability for a free five day promotion.”

The free eBook can be accessed by visiting http:// www.amazon.com/dp/ B017X72QF4, or it can be downloaded at http://bit.

ly/1GZNYj5. Once opened, readers can scroll to the bottom of the screen where they will be prompted to unzip the ePub file or the Kindle mobi file. It can then be opened in whichever e-reader the reader prefers.

“I have found the easiest thing for people to do on that is to download the zip file, then open up the ePub file in Google Books that can be found in the Google Play Store,” Pittman said.

The Charles City Press has published a few of the students’ works. All of the fictional pieces can be read by following the bit.ly link and downloading the free eBook.

By Amie Johansen amie@charlescitypress.com