Archive of CRN Home Page Topics for Discussion

Apr. 6, 2001 Tokyo Multimedia Snow Theme Playshop Designed for Children's Creativity Steve McCarty, CRN Advisory Board Member

On the outskirts of Tokyo Prefecture where tree-lined streets traverse rolling hills, low-rise condominiums are punctuated by many schools. Yet while still relatively new, some schools are closing their doors. For all the people in the world's largest metropolis, a rapidly declining birthrate is resulting in a growing shortage of children. Indeed, the Child Research Net (CRN) is exploring the reasons and possible solutions for the costs and pressures in such an environment with an increasing number of adult eyes on each child. Similarly, seven children, fewer than anticipated, attended this Playshop with the early grades of elementary school as the target group. This called for even greater sensitivity on the part of the large staff assembled. The Snow Playshop on 29 March 2001 inaugurated longitudinal research on children of working mothers who will be cared for from 3-5 p.m. on schooldays, along with others welcome to freely drop by after school in order to learn. CRN rented part of a school that had closed down, renovating its former audio-visual rooms, including online computers for multimedia studies. The children first entered a central play area and were matched with volunteer facilitators studying at universities in Tokyo. The nearly all white environment to simulate snow was a clean slate, in a sense erasing nature and their urban environment, but crayons and other familiar tools were laid out for the children to reconstruct the environment freely. With sturdy white paper covering the whole floor, one child commented appreciatively that her parents would get mad if she wrote on the floor at home. The purpose of the CRN playshops is basically to liberate such creativity. Veiled in secrecy to increase the excitement of anticipation was a small room made of white sheets that the children entered one at a time with a facilitator? Beyond that was hidden an operating area where computers generated background music, uploaded digital photos to a Website linked from CRN's, and rapidly processed digital video footage of the snow room using the Action function of Adobe's PhotoShop program. This was a collaboration in communication design with Prof. Atsushi Kasao and colleagues at Tokyo University of Industrial Arts (Kougei). The snow in the secret room was simulated by six large Etch-a-Sketch type tiles on the floor, easily erased for a fast pace. Magnetized shoes of the children left footprints much like walking on snowy streets. When children first entered, they tended to fill in the whole floor area evenly. The digital video camera overhead took still shots that were reduced and projected from a computer in the operating area into a corner covering about a third of the erased floor, making a somewhat spotted design there. When children entered a second time there was the added issue of whether or not to step into their previous reduced work, as another still shot would capture the composite of the projected image along with their second round of etchings on the whole floor. There was not much empty space in the reduced projections, and children tended, instead of adding to the previous, to make what appeared to be pathways to and from their previous work. Second etchings tended to focus on white areas opposite the projection and were much more recognizable and imaginative than the first round. Some children also interacted with the medium itself, such as by probing under the large floor tiles. All the while facilitators, in socks instead of magnetized shoes that made impressions, tended to jump around, talking with the children. Although a similar level of intervention was not prearranged, the children's works can be considered a socially interactive form of creativity. Meanwhile, the digital video camera footage of the whole snow area was being displayed on a TV monitor in a reflective theater on the opposite side of the main play area. Parents and observers could thus both watch the play area from a big window and see what was unfolding in the secret room. A two-year-old child fully participated, but unlike the others absorbed in their playthings, she remained connected to her parents by looking up at the window or returning to them in the observation room. Prof. Kasao had said that the children would be communicating with their own past through the projection of their first etching. This was borne out by the pathways children tended to make the second time, sometimes resembling a Game of Life (Suguroku) board. When the two-year-old was in the reflective theater and noticed the snow area on TV, this observer asked her if she remembered going in there. She did ("oboete-ru"), flashing a smile that bespoke pride of accomplishment. The children were then helped to make magnets in the shape of their drawings on the play area floor. They entered the snow area in small groups to make yet more elaborate and recognizable etchings. All the resulting works were printed out and posted for reflection towards the end of the session. The results bode well for CRN's continuing longitudinal research on a media-rich and caregiver-rich environment for creativity. Steve McCarty CRN Advisory Board Member Professor, Kagawa Junior College, Japan President, World Association for Online Education (NPO): http://waoe.org/president/index.html Online Publications (Asian Studies WWW Virtual Library 4-star site): http://www.kagawa-jc.ac.jp/~steve_mc/epublist.html In Japanese: http://www.kagawa-jc.ac.jp/~steve_mc/ E-mail: steve@kagawa-jc.ac.jp

Copyright (c) 2001, Child Research Net, All rights Reserved.