Presenter M Guhlin from California showed us lots of exciting ideas and things kids are into on the net, with the point of view that if they’re doing this stuff on their own, we should be bringing it into the classroom.
I agree with that.
The classroom should at LEAST be able to engage children at the technological level they are already capable of, and where possible, of course, extend that.
However, what I struggled with is the BING BAM BASH thing. That’s where the kids do things like bring together different movie clips to create something different. One example that we were shown had space ships all shooting at each other.
When I think about what actual critical or explicit learning the children are doing here, I think, hmmmm processing…. umm processing….yup…. processing.
I’m all for processing.
But what I’m actually for is the critical thinking behind the processing. The thinking that says, “I’m trying to show people what I think about this….it’s this person I’m trying to convince, I think they’ll get the idea best if I…… and what about if I include a shot of this….then they’ll know THIS important point that I want to make. And if I put a lot of quick shots of this in then they’ll feel………” To me, that’s a totally different thing than bringing together a BING and a BANG and a BASH to make some exciting movie special FX.
Things that wriggle and jiggle and go BIM BAM BASH are all fun and exciting, and a sure-fire way to pull some kids in, who might be hard to motivate otherwise, but let’s make sure that there is some real and explicit learning going on as well!
