"What has to be done must be learned by practice. Artisans do not detain their apprentices with theories, but set them to do practical work at an early stage; thus they learn to forge by forging, to carve by carving, to paint by painting, and to dance by dancing. In schools, therefore, let the students learn to write by writing, to talk by talking, to sing by singing and to reason by reasoning. In this way schools will become workshops humming with work, and the students whose efforts prove succesful will experience the truth of the proverb: 'Our works makes us'."
Jan Amos Komensky or Comenius
"Didactica Magna/The Great Didactic" [1657]
This is a videotape of a festival that happened half a year ago in the Balie, it's a debating centre in Amsterdam. One of the most interesting installations during Kids and Bits was the one that could not be filmed of course, it was the whispering bed. Made by the artist Jaap de Jonge, it was a circular 2 by 2, furry bed, with lamps and microphones in it. And several kids would lay on this bed and whisper and tell dreams and stories. The amazing thing is, the bed would answer and would talk back. No specie recognition was involved. It was a hidden person behind the other wall. And that was so nice about Kids and Bits, it was high and low technology combined. It was a theatre, a film, and a live computer in which the kids play the leading role.
Kids and Bits was created by over a hundred people. It was three days, 800 kids. And a hundred people creating it, mostly artists. Nobody got really paid or credited. It was a playing together with ideas that are dear to you and your fellow players that makes participation in a project like this so fulfilling. And Kids and Bits was also very innovative in its architecture, compassionate for the handicap that most of us have to live with day by day hearing the rest.
"We did speak several times already on the importance of orientation and our ambition to let the children understand the unity of everything that exists and how they are part of it. () The 'jumps of ten' are a series of drawings and constructions that I made, some years ago, with the children, each time on a scale ten times smaller, thus, with every step, resulting in a depiction of a surface that is a hundred times bigger. Such a set of 'scales of ten' was made using simple daily things, from object scale (brick, matchbox, pencil) to room scale (ground plan of school) to neighbourhood, district and country scale (in maps) continuing with special models of paper, lamps, wires and pinholed cardboard of world, earth and solar scale. "
Kees Boeke
"Children community, experiences and perspectives"
[1934]
Now we go to the second layer. Here we say words that are crucial in designing schools and educational systems. Last spring people from ?? academy were visiting Amsterdam and we had a very interesting talk about their work at Redjomilia. Redjomilia is a school at a little village in Italy, where since about thirty years artists have been creating a kindergarten for kids between 4 and 6 and developed a very specific way of working. The dolmas people went into this school that had a very deep and long tradition and tried to find out what is actually happening, what makes this place so special. And they came up with ten design requirements. Which are the ones that you see in the game. That Dave and Kees made.
These words do inspire many of us today when we start designing for kids in a digital realm. We often do design for the child as the terra incognito. That will develop so many skills and concepts that we could never dream of before. The utopian, educational practises of the past. actually pave the way for the same romanticism of the future. Because technology goes so fast we do not yet understand what its effects will be the call for super schools is all over the place. A super school being loaded with technology and expertise will then function as an example for the policy makers and as an test ground for the industry. So let's join forces and let's make one super school for super kids. Will they be Cain's or Abel's? Will they be Frankenstein, Pinnocio, or really become Superman? What about the rest? Where are they going to be?
When we were preparing the talk, Riet, who's sitting there behind the computer, said "Oh Caro, I was one of those super kids. And it was great to be on a super school". And look here she is with me making beautiful games. You know this is not an easy debate. But I strongly believe one cannot design change without the people involved, the people who care, being part of the design that will affect our life. If not one lacks the human resistance, the human imagination, the human chaos and lack of many things.
'In der Beschrenkung zeigt sich der Meister'. Is a German proverb. Meaning that within limitation, master ship is born. I would like to argue we need all masters available. One of the initiatives in this field I would like to say is an example that really inspires us at the society for old and new media, is Apple's educational object economy. I'm not oing to how it here because it's just a website with a lot of text. But you should look at it if you're interested in this work. Because it puts a framework down where teachers can put there own developed Java applets in. And it will be evaluated by their fellow teachers, by kids, by educational people, by researchers. So it's actually an open research environment where the people who contribute, also find the added value for their own practise. And I must say, if we talk educational innovation is one of the best things I've seen in ages.
"Now you may rejoin, what men of poor station can do, who hardly can feed their own children, let alone that they can engage such a teacher? Thereupon I know no other answers, except with some words borrowed from comedy: 'if we can not do what we want, we must do what we can'."
Desiderius Erasmus, The treatise :
"De Peuris instituendis/on the education of youth" [1529]
The project that we just showed you, is a project that's now going to 18 schools in Amsterdam. It's developed by the society for old and new media in combination with a lot of teachers, kids and artists around us. It happened at two schools at the same time. And when we decided to make this project it was sort of a reaction on the fact that policy makers do have a lot of concern about getting the schools wired, but there's actually hardly any educational material that people find interesting and that teachers find interesting, available. So this whole programs don't work. In Holland we've had like over five that failed deeply and intensely. Millions of guilders.
So we said we wanted to make something that proved to the teacher that kids can really learn from these tools. That actually multi media can be a tool in a management problem, that happens in most classes. You know, one teacher, thirty children. We have like five, six, seven, eight languages in one classroom. So that the teacher as top manager has to be taken extremely serious. And we said if we want to take that serious, then we have to take the curriculum, the sort of knowledge that every child has to learn at a certain age, also extremely serious.
So what we did is that we build this adventure. It starts with a theatre play in two schools, the kids get different information. They start communicating via the net. They have to work together on all sorts of tasks. And its build up like a game, over the week. It lasts a week, so to go to the next level, to go to the next day, you have to do your curriculum tasks well. You can only do them well, when you work together with the kids in the other classroom, that are not there. And at the end of the week they all come together and meet for the first time. And what was very nice to see at the few first ones, is to see the interest that the kids had at each other when they met each other. After having worked for a week together, they really liked to look at each others drawings and stories, so that was very good.
"When the child makes a mistake by trying to place a too big object in a too small hole, it will try to find the correct opening; when a mistake in the opposite sense is made, one cylinder will be left on the table and one hole will not be filled...() Sometimes cylinders that have been placed already will be moved back and forward, to see if around it is also too much space; sometimes the eye will recognise the mistake. But always it will be the child itself that will repeat the exercise. The educational value of this learning tool, is, for that reason, to be found in these mistakes; when the pupils is so advanced that he will directly spot the right positions, than he has outgrown the learning tool and the exercise becomes useless to him."
Maria Montessori
"the method Montessori, self education of the young child" [1912]
Describing the use of a learning tool of a wooden block
with holes and a set of metal cylinders
that need to be fitted in the correct holes
I think that this is very true for us as designers that we do have to make things again and again to find out what really is at stake. So we go finally to the third level. I think that the "Demi Dubbel" internet game, the moon technology game that we showed you is part of level 2. It takes the ratio ideas, put a little bit of digital things around it, makes communication possible but doesn't really address new values or ways of living together that we cannot imagine.
For designing the third game. I made a sort of inventory of all the words that the people use in the lab at the society for old and new media. And we have so may words. Which is clear you know, when you don't know exactly where you go. You use lots of words. It was my own biology teacher telling me this already.
The clash of discourse of course, can also be enormous between artists, social scientists, designers, software people, teachers or people who work with mental handicapped, etcetera.
But the pleasure of being able to make what you think is great. And of course like you all, we like to make things and ideas that are part of the future. But looking into the future is a complex thing. How deep is the change that we are actually involved in? Does this change to allow us to leave ethics behind we have build in centuries of wars. And the experience and efforts of all our grandmothers and grandfathers, present in this whole. Can we leave behind human rights, social awareness, care, critique, time to spend together. We know about the speed of invention. We know about the exponential growth of population. But how human as we know it will we be? And above all, what business models will allow us to design things and services that do reflect our best practice and experience.
This is the last thing I'm going to show you, which is the Book of Pickle. It's actually made six years ago by Toyi Yamamoto an artist living in Japan and it has been around my house since those six years. And kids from two 'till twelve have been playing it for six years. They didn't get bored. It has qualities of a true digital playground. And I've been talking a lot with friends about it. What is it about pickle, that it becomes really a big piece of art or maybe it's just one stone of the of the whole playground. I could show you now. But the fact that it goes on and on and on and that they love playing it together, and it's so simple and it's so complex at the same time. And here is one of the good old truths of life.
The final quotation
"Oh, ye all, who are devoting thou selves to education, learn, I pray you, learn to play with children! You will, when you train yourself therein, gain three important advantages:
- you will attract the hearts of the children and win their love and confidence;
- you will better understand the art of speaking with them, how to handle them;
- and you will find opportunities to steal a glance at the hearts of the little ones, as they will behave much more frank and unconstrained while playing, show themselves, with their faults, failings, whimses, gifts and inclinations, such as they really are."
Christian Gotthilf Salzmann
"The Ant's book, plan for the education of educators" [1805]
Last but not least let me give you six tips.
1) Get out vastly, I think we've all been way too much eager in this industry to push technology through channels they should not always be.
2) a big concern is: Let not only the marketeers decide what 's good for our children, who are our future.
3) Let the policy makers facilitate instead of seeing every public money spend as a potential investment in the companies
4) And let the artist set the tone.
5) Trust the kids with the tools.
6) And be there with all your senses. And all your real mortality.
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