The Green Book Project

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The Green Book Project

• -or-
• How to write and publish a book in fourteen weeks

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Graduating Architectural Technology Class

• Three co-ops
• Sixth semester of school
• Ready to leave

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Normally wrote a 3000 word technical report in
groups
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The students attitude?
So I decided to challenge them and have them
write and publish a book focused on green building

• Not inspired
• Just wanted to get out of there
• Unsure about career paths
• Really didnt want to be stuck with a
  communications class (aka english class)
• I cant write a thousand words!!

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How do I do it?

• I create the topic and the Table of Contents
• They decide
• the focus of each chapter
• The title
• The look and layout
• The illustrations
• Letting them make decisions is one of my key
  principles

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Learning Management system allows them to choose
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So far weve done Green Renovations and
Building a LEED Certified Home
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The Process

• I push the students through several steps to
  narrow the topics and to write more about a
  smaller topic
• I talk to each of them in the in the computer lab
  and make it clear I value everyones topic
• Submit, edit, resubmit
• Groups write chapters every student must submit
  a minimum of 1000 words
• The group edits each other

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Non Writing Work

• Photographs
• Sketches
• Technical drawings
• Text design and layout
• Interviews
• Formatting
• Facebook page
• Contact with other groups (PR)

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Examples Photos
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Technical Drawings
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Artwork
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The Biggest Advantage

• PLAGIARISM

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How do we guarantee no plagiarism?
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The final Product

• Printed in our Fanshawe print shop for under 10
  ea.
• Sold for 20
• Students all get a free copy

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Student Feedback

• I had fun this semester
• I liked seeing things in the news that I was an
  expert on
• Now I really want to write a book like this
  myself
• The book looks really good, my parents had a
  look at it and they were very impressed
  especially for the amount of time we had

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What next?
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What will be different next time?

• Graphic Arts students are going to design the
  cover as part of a class assignment
• A photography student will take photos
• The book will be in full colour
• We will expect to sell more copies

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What do you need to do something like this?

• The desire to make it happen
• Two professors working togetherone for content
  one for writing, layout, etc.
• The English teacher should preferably have
  publishing experience and strong opinions on text
  design