Tuning up

I was at this conference today, where I enjoyed presenting alongside Lynn Scott, a very talented teacher at Childwall Valley Primary School, Liverpool, on young children's digital literacy practices. Lynn amazed the audience with the high quality of digital animation work produced by the 3 and 4 year-old children in her foundation stage setting. You can see some of the films produced by children in other classes in the school on their website, here. The children in the foundation stage also created their own soundtracks for their films using GarageBand - it took me two sessions today before I got the hang of the software, but of course the children were much quicker than that! (And I have to confess...produced much better tunes than I did!)

Making movies

There is so much film-making by children and young people happening in schools and community spaces currently, it is very exciting. The wide audience offered by the web is a great incentive, although it has been my experience of film-making with children for many years that they have always been excited by the challenges the process offers. Still, the thrill of posting your film on the web to be enjoyed by unknown others is great and so the Web 2.0 spaces for these productions abound. I really like 'theoneminutesjr.' site, which hosts films made by young people that last exactly 60 seconds. Impressive stuff. To see films made by younger children, visit the cinema in Film Street.