CHILDREN AND COMPUTERS
The current idea is that computers, if they are not the newest, are almost useless!
On the contrary, here we are talking about machines and programs definitely old, to tell simple, little things that children I was working with had been doing in the years with computers. Some of these things, really, were possible at that time and nowadays no more. Maybe something’s wrong!
The first story dates in the early 90's, when we were using an old (for that times!)
8 bit home machine made in 1987, 3.5 MHz, no hard disk, 256 Kbytes of memory (K
not Mega!). Sometimes -
First step: THE DIGITAL MIRROR
Above you see a group of children working together, trying the mouse, giving suggestions one another. The following strange pictures are from video shots real time processed by the computer. Children are seeing themselves like phantoms, so they jump, shout, crowd in front of the video camera. Then the machine “takes pictures” of them, filling the screen with a sequence: “How many of us here!”
Second step: DRAWING
A computer lets and makes us drawing in a different way from the hand usual one. Children try circles, ovals, squares, filling them with patterns and using the spray can; they show each other the colours to pick. They draw and paint with another mind.
Third step: MUSIC
On the computer keyboard, while an accompaniment was running, with random finger movements a child was playing an automatically well tuned melody. And all the others around were dancing! Lead and incidental instruments could be changed, as well as sampled voices from a microphone or a recorder could be added, to be played as other instruments.
This way children of the nursery school had been using a computer to make their music!
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