Children
Pesky beggars. Haven’t thought about them a lot since I left teaching ten years ago.
Anyway, I just wanted to express some appreciation for Channel 4 and Steve Moore from policyunplugged for organising today’s In The Wild event. It was about how Channel 4 Learning might develop interactive content to replace (in the main) its terrestrial broadcast content. The Flying-Blogging-Scotsman Ewan McIntosh has put me to shame - he has been blogging like the wind today, despite also being a speaker, so I’ll leave it to him to give you an insight into the content. Just two thoughts from me.
There was a great comment from a chap from Caspian Learning about this whole digital native / digital tourist idea. The idea that the grown-ups don’t get it and the kids do. The truth is that most kids do get it and are natives; a lot of adults don’t, but probably the sort of people who are likely to be reading and writing blogs are fairly clued-up. Since my fortieth birthday, I’ve become strangely alert to anything that smacks of ageism and this idea of two cultures is frankly ageist. Can we stop using these sorts of generational ideas of a digital divide, please? We don’t talk about media natives and media tourists, do we? We talk about whether people are ‘media savvy’. Same thing goes for new media and social media. However, do feel free to mock me for being the sort of cove who still uses the word ‘chap’.
Second, what is Channel 4 and its like going to do? They have a remit to provide an educational programme. But they also have an internal mantra to be edgy. They know that mainstream television isn’t really reaching ‘the youth’ any more and so they have to do something online, instead. Historically, they’ve made that educational programme about the things that the mainstream curriculum doesn’t really do very well at. Managing Editor of Channel 4 Education Janey Walker showed us a showreel of very impressive programming that tackled topics such as anger-management, homophobia in black culture, sex education and media skills.
How do you re-make or re-invent that sort of content online? I think that it will probably mean a step back from the idea of typical online content for children. You can’t make a Flash game that helps kids address anger-management, for example, unless it was a very boring one. Flat pages of text and graphics are basically the same as a textbook online and won’t appeal. Producing videocasts and podcasts of the existing content would be a step forward, but doesn’t help them come up with new ideas.
But games are not all the same, at the same time. Making games (perhaps like Perplex City Stories) that marry populist narratives with difficult learning was suggested as one answer to bringing the curriculum into education. But that’s not really been Channel 4’s angle on the area - could you make one about black homophobia or sex education? I have played some weird games in my time, but that would stretch the limit.
I guess that the way forward means involving the kids themselves in the programme. Marrying the mass appeal of something like Bebo with a documentary focus. But no, I have no idea what that would look like. And I have no idea how they could communicate about the sort of issues addressed by the ‘Batty Man’ documentary (can’t find a proper link). But I guess that they could initiate a conversation about the issue, and as an educational tool, that might actually prove more powerful than the traditional model of broadcasting information.
New recruit Matt Locke (speaking at the NMK Forum BOOK NOW *cough*), who is taking on the task of commissioning the content for the channel’s interactive content, clearly has an interesting and testing time ahead.
