Yesterday was new, exciting, frustrating, exhausting, special and priceless.

Morah Ruthie, Mr. Pollowin, Mme. Jones and I worked with the students to create trilingual books for their grandparents and special friends, using bookcreator.com, where they were able to add text, upload pictures, record sounds and create beautiful ebooks to share.

At around 9:30, slowly but surely, the grandparents started to join our Meet, and we were able to welcome them, and even played a game together! It was so special to have guests from all over the world.

The morning didn’t go off without its hiccups, though. In order to protect our students, people outside of OJCS (anyone without an ojcs.ca email address) aren’t allowed to join our Meets without being given access by the teacher. I thought I had created a work-around by creating individual meeting rooms for each student, and directly inviting their grandparents as guests ahead of time. I was wrong.

When everyone broke off into their own rooms, there was a lot of frustration and confusion about how to join together. For this I apologize!

BUT some great things happened anyway. One of our main goals, both when learning in school and at home, is to help students become resilient, resourceful, independent problem solvers. Many students came to me and asked for support, others called their grandparents on FaceTime and shared that way, while others even set up elaborate computer/laptop/iPhone viewing contraptions. All in all, I hope everyone was able to see their book; from those who I heard from, they highly enjoyed them.

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Here is a tutorial on how to share your ebook with your family members. If anyone has any tips or suggestions for Android users, please let us know in the comments!

Thank you to all who came and joined our class, and to all the parents and grandchildren who acted as tech support at home 🙂