Ramp-up to Finnish book publishing - Tivi interview etc.

Last two weeks to wait and the Finnish version of the Dragons Out book is in my hands. Hopefully yours, too! Go to https://www.dragonsout.com/p/preorder-dragons-out-book.html  if you haven't yet : ). On the ramp-up, it is good to read my interview in the largest Finnish IT-magazine, Tivi. Among other things, I'm hinting at the hidden jewels of intriguing analogies in the book that only adults can spot! See if you can notice how real-life software testing is reflected in the fantasy world! Or compete with your kid about who notices most analogies.

Tomorrow, I'll speak about the book project in the largest software testing conference in Europe - EuroSTAR. That'll be great!

Feedback

My seven-year-old son finally agreed to listen to the Dragons Out book. He is still a little young considering the target age of the book (10-12 years and up), but mature enough to listen to the story and the testing examples. I read a few first chapters to him. He wants to hear more, and moreover, he says my book is better than Ella-books that he has been listening to most of the past year. He also wants to have his own copy of the book! To me, that is an unbeatable benchmark. I was so happy!

Finnish version

I've emailed all those who ordered the Finnish version of the book for confirmation of email addresses. The Finnish Dragons Out book will be published on Dec 1, in less than two weeks! The book is currently in the printing house. After Dec 1,  I will mail the book(s) to those who preordered it! Thanks again all!

The donation and preordering campaign I've been running this autumn is bearing fruit. I have direct donations to schools and also there are regular preorders, where I have promised to donate a book to schools for each 3 sold books. Over 20 Finnish IT companies added their name to the donation list by preordering. This on top of the crowdfunding campaign of 2019.  This will be an impressive list when I hand it to the Ministry of Education!

Earlier this autumn, I contacted many schools in Finland, some directly and many over math and IT teacher groups in Facebook, to find out who would be interested in receiving donated books from the IT industry. I got so many interested schools that I was swamped in email for several days. After that, I created a form to express interest in receiving donated books. As it is, I will be sending donated books to 50 schools. They will each receive several books - let's see how many that will be exactly. Preorders and donations are still coming in all the time. 

The schools will also receive a Creative Commons licensed PowerPoint which I have created and which is now in a trial in a few schools. With the PowerPoint, I hope to give tools for all the teachers in the world to tell their students about software testing. The PowerPoint will be available on my web site.

You can still preorder the Finnish book for a few more weeks https://www.dragonsout.com/p/preorder-dragons-out-book.html

English version

The English publisher is currently in tech edit. To be precise, they have done house-styling to the book and are in the process of proof-reading and reviewing. It will still take a bit of time before they announce the publishing date. However, it will be worth the wait. The book will come out in hardcover, softcover, e-book and audiobook.

You can keep preordering the English book at https://www.dragonsout.com/p/preorder-dragons-out-book.html




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Amazing feedback and school visits

Image
 I recently got some  amazing feedback  from a 9-year-old reader through his dad. The Dragons Out book was an exciting Christmas present that the boy started reading on his own. He did the exercises at the end of the chapters and was really thrilled about them ("I did all of those great exercises!"). Upon asking why the book was so thrilling, he answered, "It was a great book because it had true things and fantasy side by side, and the exercises were fun!". It feels so good to hear such feedback - keep it coming! The unique approach of fantasy coupled with testing works. Remember my school visits, earlier? It is  again time to have school visits in Finland , too. It is especially nice now that face-to-face meetings are possible, and I don't need to access the school class virtually over a Teams meeting. That works too, yes, with a teacher facilitating in the class, but it is so much nicer and more concrete to meet and teach children face-to-face. I asked for som...
Read more

Article in Dimensio-magazine

I recently had a chance to write in the magazine of math teachers. Mathematics is one of the natural stepping stones towards software development and software testing. The association of math teachers (MAOL) has been interested in cooperation with me. They considered software testing to be an interesting angle for anyone interested in mathematics. I wrote about my book writing project and how software testing can be taught to children via a fantasy book. The article is in Finnish here: https://www.dimensiolehti.fi/opetetaan-lapsille-ohjelmistotestausta-fantasiakirjan-avulla/
Read more

AI creating Dragons and testing stories

Image
In recent times, it seems like the whole world has gone crazy trying to use Generative AI (Artificial Intelligence). These LLMs (large language models) can create content based on user prompts.  Now I tried the LLM Brave Leo (Mixtral) to create a Dragons Out -like story for me. Although it was just experimental, the results are quite impressive. I used just three prompts. Finally, I tried to get a picture of all this - a fourth prompt. It didn't work, but I got a description, which I used in a prompt of a picture generation AI, Deep AI.  Did you learn something from the below? I think an LLM can help with quality like this. But the picture was quite disappointing to me. Anyway, I think I'll write my own stuff also in the future and ask Adri for more fantastic illustrations. Me: What is RPG? Brave Leo: RPG stands for "Role-Playing Game." It is a type of game where players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting and engage in activities to develop their ch...
Read more