Doors to Signs Computers & Robots Examples The hand drawing of a mouse is by a 4 old kindergarten kid. The digital picture of a robot (software Personal Paint, on Amiga ) is by a 5 years. Brescia, Italy, 1997 Computers are all "intelligent" and interactive machines: PCs, smartphones, tablets, and so on. They process data for a lot of tasks and make connections possible among the humans and the machines themselves. Robots do "real" things also without need of humans, as moving in the space, building other machines, but also washing clothes and preparing meals. Nowadays kids are familiar with computers and robots, though this does not mean that they are skilled in using them. This is what we did with an old (for those times!) "home" computer at the kindergarten in Brescia, Italy, 1992! How many people so easy talking of "digital" today, know that 30 years ago we could do with babies things like this? (various software on an MSX2 machine, with video superimpose and digitizer. Kids love very much "changing voices" using a computer. We collected several examples, the drawings and the voices themselves, very interesting if we can recover them from the the oblivion of time. This is from Brescia, italy, 1997 Giovanni Lariccia is the man who in the early Eighties brought to Italy the LOGO programming language, created by Seymour Papert just for kids. Since then, he has never stopped. LOGO is a powerful and interesting textual coding. Here is in its version "Iplozero" and the video is from Milan, Italy, 2014. Workshop at Arte in Gioco Fair (Art at stake), Arcore - Milano, Italy, 1999. Soft Elastic Dreams, on Amiga Very few things here! We have more and we need many, many more! For knowing, thinking, help the kids to really know the tools and use them to express themselves! Here we call "e-drawing" the pictures made by children with a computer. There are (or were, who ever noticed them, where are they now?) programs directly suggesting to kids not only to draw lines, squares and circles, but also to discover and explore signs otherwise impossible to be made by hand. If not, why using a mouse or a finger on a screen rather than a pencil, a crayon, a brush on a sheet of paper? Here are examples using the software Flying Colors for PC or Mac, from Brescia, Italy, 2002. Almost every "virtual" (not material) work today is made using computers, by everyone, kids possibly included, with a huge variety of solutions. But most are not used to think of this and go on imagining only few conventional, professional or commercial uses of electronic devices. For a multimedia communication of their activity (in the video on the left, many software on MSX2 and Amiga computers, MM software Scala on Amiga), the children of kindergarten chose this title: "With the mouse we can do many things!" Brescia, 1997. Harwdware and Software Workshop at Amico Libro fair (a book as a friend), Belgioioso - Pavia, Italy, 1999. Soft Power Goo, on PC and Mac.

An old experience Examples

"The Look of Children" workshop Brescia, Italy 2018 by Paolo Beneventi Two 5th grade classes. They had meet Paolo once the year before, taking shots for Giocoperiamo . Multi-ethnic groups, with many kids fresh arrived in Italy, few of them have skill in managing audiovisuals. They play with the means and think what could do. Section A chooses to tell something from their school experience and section B to tell a story set in the school. Having little time, they take camera in hand and also play with rough effects in chroma key, just a taste of the possibilities offered by hardware and software to kids' creativity. Here are the two works, a documentary and a fiction (both selected in Camera Zizanio Festival 2018) and also a video with the main steps of the workshops with the two classes.

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Signs are what Humans leave in their Activities: Memory, Communication, Ideas. Signs rely on Media and can be Collected by Type and Topic. ​ A Selection of the Signs that Kids leave, across Space and Time, from the Experience of Operators who bring them together on an efficient platform. ​ A Collection, Projects and Workshops , all around the World, connected one to another, for our collective Memory and Knowledge, towards the Future! A Multimedia Living Book to be written together Until a few years ago, Signs were accessible only in real sites and situations and they could be reproduced for the grand public only by the owners of the publishing and mass media. We were used to live in a World divided into Producers and Consumers, also of Information. Kids' Signs (drawings, texts, video interviews or documentation) had a few space in books, exhibitions, TV programs. To make people know what children do and think we had to copy down and print their words or interview them, but it seldom happened, and almost all we knew, as a society, about kids was told us by adults, teachers, psychologists, sociologists, journalists. Today, technology do not only allow people to chat on social networks or to enjoy the services of the big companies, but also to share and know by ourselves almost directly, as never before in history, signs and documents produced by everyone, kids included. This is a very recent opportunity that most people have not yet realized. Video Sharing Signs and Products, not only Didactic I already put, in the past, on some books the exact words of kids, taken with recorders and video cameras, thinking that, speaking in those cases of body expression and theatre , environment , computers , not only didactic is important, that is how to teach what we already know, but also and maybe more the living responses of children. We can learn much from them! In this rough site I begin from my own experience and of very few other collaborators. The idea is to go beyond the simple storage of documents, the reporting of tools or “news” from the digital market. We need to know latest activities as well as past experiences often very innovative but unknown, and to learn from all them. Future is impossible without history! ​ Let's find things We think of a final Web Platform, Topic and Tag Oriented, where people can easily find documents and compare them. This site is to give a first idea, to suggest around to professionals of education and programmers what we could do together. We'll correct things along the way, as indications from correspondents arrive. While others will work on the real site. In the meantime we can begin, starting from words and categories, searching for things... Observing Nature Computer & Robots ​ ​ Examples of productions by under 14 ​ To try to manage the huge amount of documents we produce and receive, it can be viewed as a huge task! But in nowadays times, without going beyond the old habits of individual consumption, we cannot be but overwhelmed by a charge of information we cannot stand, and so also the growing immersion in technology often decreases, instead of improving, our control on the reality. So, getting used to select, choose, put things in order, not leaving everything to the “market”, it can be important. ​ In my long career, for example, I collected a lot of documents that, reviewed, selected, indexed, could tell something interesting. But, as many others have similar collections, if the platform and the indexing are good, using the features of the web we can easily put 10, 100, 1000 and more experiences all together… And whole worlds can be opened wide! In my humble opinion, this is probably much more useful and exciting than only for example reviewing , in scattered sites, blogs and social network pages the latest piece of software, or publishing tutorials for works to be done, individually, in single schools and that probably never will be shared and known. A good platform for working together Now I am asking to programmers to set up a good platform made to work and to colleagues to share a selected part of their experience, as I'm beginning to do here, to build the foundations for a common work. Not only mine, yours, his, group, in competition, but active citizens for a future on a human scale, of cooperation and peace. That does not mean only to do things for free, as when people meet and work together, responding to society's needs, useful services for quality of life are given, wealth is produced and socially useful jobs can be created. ​ Paolo Beneventi StoryTelling Here are some pages as "doors to". That's to say that, in the collective platform we are working for, from these introductions, we'll have the possibility to go to the real collections, for example of many drawings for every series, as well as to other collections available elsewhere, in other connected web pages. All will be linked, tagged, and from documents we’ll have also the possibility of going to pages of reflections and theory, open to anyone who wants to participate (administrated, of course!) and also to pages just made for working, sharing experiences, building projects. But we can access content also from topics like Science, Mathematics, Art, Economy, Philosophy, Archaeology, Magic and many Other Subjects, from the Amazing Point of View of Kids. Cinema

Contacts Are you interested in this project? Do you want to take part in collecting documents here, in the upcoming site or elsewhere, as you prefer? Write us and send your message to the email addresses below!

Doors to Signs Storytelling Examples Storytelling is probably the most ancient cultural expression of mankind. Simply from the voice and the words of elders, all generations of children in history have always been fascinated listening to tales. But we can tell stories also using bodies, music and singing, painting and drawing, and machines of course, especially in our technological times. All kids like and enjoy it very much. Cover for a book, layout by kids and special effects from hand moving the sheet under a photocopier. Primary schools in Brescia, Italy, 1987-88. E-drawings are made with electronic devices by kids since 40 years, but we do not have generally memory of them. Many good drawing programs were forgotten and abandoned during the years, turning possible paths of creativity into the clichés of the unique thought and software (as well as the "author programs" of the 90s, who remembers them?) How many stories did we give up to tell? The story of a fantastic town made by children, with papers, with bodies. Inventiamo una città (Let's invent a city!) Brescia, Italy, 1982. Stories, layouts, illustrations, characters-cards, hand made folding books, and expressive tableau vivant s , Here below a lion goes into a hospital during a surgery! Mazzano - Brescia, Italy, 1983. Workshop at Arte in Gioco Fair (Art at stake), Arcore - Milano, Italy, 1999. The title kids gave to the story was: The Gioconda and Prince Lemon! Workshop at Amico Libro fair (a book as a friend), Belgioioso - Pavia, Italy, 1999. Workshop at 20.000 Libri sotto il Libro (20.000 Books under the Books), San Marino, 1998.

Coccinella septempunctata. Fam. Coccinellidae. Italia, Bovezzo (BS), 11 Mar 2011, Collodi pr.sc. Ia 1/14

Projects in Progress from the world, followed by Paolo Beneventi The Look of Children at the World The Children's Virtual Museum of Small Animals A collection of pictures taken with and by kids on the field, from school gardens in many parts of the world and shared on the web, with scientific indications, art, videos, and the living voices of the young discoverers and researchers at work! A small significant example of how children can take part directly in a cultural enterprise. Means today are easy, powerful and cheap and kids, using the audiovisual language in first person, can show almost "directly" their point of view, without the needs to be "explained" by teachers and psychologists! " The Look of Children " are videos made in a significant part by the kids, from different countries, a production that the whole of society should know. Others following soon

A new Copernican revolution? In summary. Let's think of how many words, images, messages we use for teaching, that is suggesting, settling how to do things! But then, why so little interest in what then we actually do? And especially in what children do, their responses to our teaching, their autonomous cultural expressions! Maybe this is also because we had been used to live in a world where things we do were difficult to communicate, where only very few of them could be selected for books, TV broadcasts and other mass media communication. But now this selection is no longer technically necessary and probably, if we learn how to know and communicate the world in first person, we would improve our active citizenship and overall quality of life. ​ From here... pieces of history, theory and comparison of ideas, as well as suggestions on how to set up the "real site", the common platform to be built where to store and consult documents, and to work together! Hard & Soft Publications