MILLEE now has a yearbook committee!

If you've been following along, you no doubt know that the kids at our school LOVE seeing their photographs. If you combine this our interest in learning more about their context, we have a new research methodology which we're calling "The Yearbook Project".

The goals of this project are several-fold:

1. First and foremost, we'd like to create a yearbook for the students of the school as a gift from the MILLEE team. Something that they can immediately enjoy, share with their friends, and share with their family.
2. We are looking to better understand the context in which they live.
3. We are looking to find topics that interest them so that we can hopefully develop a better syllabus. The thinking is that if the students are interested in the topics, they will be more likely to learn the English.
4. We are looking to find inspiration for new mobile games.

By asking the students to help us create the yearbook by filling it with aspects of their lives, we simultaneously make progress on all of our project goals! How fantastic is that?

For the past several days, we've been talking with the students about the yearbook, and asking them questions to help us fill in the details. There are several sections to the yearbook including the "yearbook quote", a section full of photos they will take with cameras that we lend to them, and a section of drawings we will ask them to make.

We've already created a sample yearbook for the students with their photos in it and showed it them to gauge how much they would like such a thing. So far, they seem to love it -- seeing pictures of themselves and their friends is so exciting for them. We've also been having a really good time interviewing the students and helping them figure out what their "yearbook quote" should be. We've also begun handing out cameras so that they can take pictures of their lives outside of school.

Above are students gathering around to look at the photos in the sample yearbook.

Here, one of the students is showing his classmates, who is currently sitting in class, the yearbook through the window.

I'm pretty excited about this project. we've been collecting a lot of great information and making progress on all of our research goals. But most importantly, I'm really glad that we can give the students this small gift at the end of the project.