Signs from children
Doors to Signs
Examples
Video is a Sign (a Medium), with multiple Topics!
So we have to make a choice and, among many possible, we point here on Making Video (or Cinema), when kids are protagonist as film makers, story writers, actors, editors, or when they simply apply video on various activities according to their own culture and use it to make, know, communicate them better. Video as an incredibly powerful tool of Meta Knowledge. That is, beyond the difficult and rather unusual word, a very simple way to live better!
They had been working in the project "Giocoperiamo" and we asked to tell it. In a couple of hours we gave them a camera and help them to make a real, good video! With Paolo Beneventi (who also shot the takes in the final event and did the editing) primary and middle school, Brescia, Italy 2017.
Here are the kids who educate and teach how things can be done! While doing, they understand and explain, from a point of view we all should pay attention to. Siena, Italy 2017.
Effects like these are from workshops (this is of Albert Alfonso) where kids generally appear in weird situations after following their master's instructions. They do not need to know what's the trick, but they sure can see that some special effects are not so difficult to be made. With a little attention and almost all editing software, it can be very simple for anyone (in school, possibly also for teachers!) to begin to try things like this!
The first video published by Paolo Beneventi on YouTube was a 1 minute work from a workshop with the kids of the barrio Timba in Havana, Cuba 2007. A message from Spain by and unknown colleague, Jacqueline Sanchez Carrero: "Can I put it in my blog?"
The 5 minutes version of this video is also available on line, as well as that of the 2009 workshop in the same place.
Inventing video stories in a library: how the kids play the game, using the medium in their own, original way. Calenzano (Florence). Italy, 2019.
It's only a wee beginning...
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How can we deal with a huge catalogue of videos made by the kids, in a way that allows us to easily find them, sorted by topic, place, language, age of the authors, year of production and what else? They can be gathered in a site together or people can find them by links and short presentation notes. It's not simple indeed, but it is what PC's and the World Wide Web make today possible, if we approach them on the side of literacy and active citizenship and not only of individual consumption.