Interactive Books

An interactive books workshop run by GeoLab with the Tbilisi Mediatheka union within Tbilisi – World Book Capital, initiated by Tbilisi City Hall and supported by Bank of Georgia. Young people learned to make games and then, with Georgian children’s writers, illustrators and mentors, turned children’s books into interactive books.

Sandro conceived and developed the project, from the idea of the workshop to its three stages and the way the teams worked, and coordinated its implementation: bringing together the course, the mentors, the writers and the young illustrators and programmers until the twelve books were finished. Two of the books are based on his own stories.

For children today, tablets and phones are as ordinary as dolls and balls were for their parents, and they often start learning on their own, with an app instead of a book and a teacher. An interactive book sits between a book and a computer game; unlike a game, its core is educational, a kind of textbook through which children learn by themselves. Making one takes as much work as making an iPad app, and the genre has no tradition or established methods yet. Interactive books exist in many languages, but few in Georgian, and few people in Georgia could make them.

The workshop worked in three stages. Course: senior pupils and first-year students learned game development in Unity and programming in C#, meeting twice a week. Concept: mixed teams of young programmers, young illustrators with their mentor, and the author of the book defined each interactive book and wrote its technical brief. Production: the illustrators drew the scenes and characters, and the programmers built the book in Unity, with mentors on hand.

Weekly joint meetings sorted out technical problems and divided the work; guest speakers from games, graphic design and C# programming gave open lectures. Participation was free; applicants were selected by a test and an interview. The result: twelve interactive books by seven Georgian authors, for phones, tablets and computers.

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