By Nashby Carbajal, Staff writer
Earlier this winter, a group of Communications Academy seniors from Indian Trail 
High School & Academy took a field trip to Grewenow, Sommers and Jeffrey elementary schools to present interactive, online books they created in their graphic design class.
“My story was about a king who doesn’t treat people very well and took everyone for granted. I was bullied as a kid so I wanted to make a book that shows that if you bully people, it’s not going to pan out for you,” said Joshua Navarro, a Communications senior at Indian Trail.
As soon as the seniors walked into the classrooms, the kids emitted energy and excitement. They, as well as the seniors, were excited to interact and have a great time.
The students designed books for kids from kindergarten through fifth grade and had a variety of topics. The seniors took turns rotating from classroom to classroom in order to present their books to all the classrooms assigned.
Each book was presented on a Promethean board, and the children shared their opinion on the stories and the pictures. The elementary school teachers welcomed the seniors and said they were glad to see their students have a good time while listening to the stories.
The seniors added interactive widgets to their stories in order to make them even more interesting. Some of the widgets included sound effects, maps and pop-up facts about an object. The seniors worked on these books for a little over a month. They created their own storylines, graphics and interactive widgets in order to present them to children from the community.
Most stories were about 8 to 15 minutes long and the kids got to ask the seniors questions about them and their stories. The field trip even inspired a classroom at Sommers Elementary to write and create stories of their own.
“I really enjoyed the field trip. It reminded me of when my mom would read stories to me when I was little,” said Mariano Tenuta, a Communications senior.
From hugs from the kindergarteners to funny conversations from the fifth graders, the field trip overall was an adventure.
Photos by Nashby Carbajal