On August 30, we held a workshop on making moving toys using programmable batteries at the Sinno Children’s Club (Minato-ku, Tokyo). It has been a year since we held our first remote workshop here last summer.
Over the past year, we have gradually improved the equipment and materials used for the workshop, based on the feedback we have received and the activities of the children.
More than anything, I am encouraged by the opportunity to conduct workshops remotely and to work with children, as it has become difficult for me to visit the sites of workshops in person as I used to do. I would like to thank everyone who has given me the opportunity to hold workshops over the past year, and to the children who have participated. Thank you very much.
From this academic year, we have had more opportunities to have students visit workshop sites and conduct workshops together with us. While conducting workshops together, I have rediscovered the joy of talking and thinking about workshops and children’s learning.
The diversity of activities, experiences, and insights for all participants, including children and adults, is what makes workshops interesting to me. At the recent Panasonic Center Tokyo, the after-school daycare service, and now at the school children’s club, I asked the facilitators to wear smart phones around their necks and record video of scenes that caught their attention.
Looking at the videos taken from their own different perspectives, I feel that I can reconfirm the learning environment of the workshop, which differs from one individual to another.
At yesterday’s workshop, a student made a short movie using the video footage she had shot. Since I participated remotely, the scope of what I could see was limited, but I was able to see a different view of the workshop from the one I had seen myself through the students’ short movies. Of course, for the student herself, I believe that making the short movies gave them an opportunity to look back, reconfirm, and rediscover the workshop.
I would like to continue to consider through practice how sharing diverse insights from individual facilitators’ perspectives through the movie will affect the learning of other facilitators.
I would like to consider tools and methods with the aim of having not only facilitators but also children record their own diverse realizations on video and share them with other children.
I will continue to think about workshops as a learning experience for all participants, both children and adults, through practicing workshops
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)