“Unless
you change and become like little children, you will never enter the
kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3).
Ideas,
reality and video
There
are current
ideas,
sometimes spread worldwide as in a delirium
of
words along
the digital networks, without
a real dialogue, since people
today do not listen one
another.
And
there are real
people,
whom we meet
in real life, with their bodies and minds, problems
and hopes, will of feeling alive and ability to express themselves.
Going
on, as
I do, for
so many
years meeting kids,
speaking
and working with them, simple
questions
arise: where are the supposed “digital
natives”?
Where are the so
claimed “differences”
between the present and the
older
generations? Nowadays
kids, when we approach them as young humans rather than as cliches,
love to play with puppets,
to run in meadows, to be listened by the adults and even to take
responsibilities, exactly as those I met in my first years with them,
in the early
Eighties.
I
do
not ask to believe me,
I
have the
videos!
That’s
not “the reality”, of course, but a good help to show things,
instead of only speak of
them, to watch what actually happens, instead of giving
opinions and questionable points of view as they were all the truth.
Video
is a
universal
language across the planet, that can
be used
directly by all kids.
With
nowadays means, powerful, easy and cheap, we can let kids make a
large part of them and, asking and allowing them to be humans and not
only passive
learners or
puppies
of consumers, they
easily begin to
play
and,
as play is the real culture of kids, in this way they express
themselves in their own language – generally
with no
bullying,
lack
of attention, digital addiction
- and
we
can know about them
much more than with queries, questionnaires, data and statistics put
together from the point of view of the adults
teachers,
psychologists,
researchers.
Examples
Here
are some
recent examples
from my direct experience, from
three different workshops.
In
Brescia,
Italy,
5th
grade kids, after having chosen a subject from
their school experience, go and interview one another and then play a
scene.
In
Pyrgos,
Greece,
during three
days the
6th
grade students are simply asked to begin to use cameras in their
school.
In
Siena,
Italy,
a group of boys and girls from 6th
to 8th
grade,
during
a longer experience, from
the
initial interviews
and
play invent a story and make a film. The
two
videos
are one
the final movie and the
other
the
workshop,
with
all
steps,
up to the meeting with a TV
professional,
with whom
the kids speak almost as colleagues!
For
a global project
I
have
already published in this blog something
for
a discussion and
a
project,
in
Italian
and
in Spanish.
Here is a further step, after speaking with international
colleagues and thinking how to coordinate better our
global work,
meetings
and workshops, festivals
and round tables, helping
the
public opinion to
know,
not only the insiders, what
real kids are and do.
And,
in a world where the overdose
of technological means
allowing people to do virtually everything more and more corresponds
in fact to a general
sense of impotence
about the private and the public, the politics and economics and the
future itself of the planet, maybe just seeing how easy it can be for
kids to take back technology and life, it can be a very strong signal of hope
also for the society of the adults.
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