On September 14th, for the first time in three and a half years, we held a face-to-face workshop at the Hamagin Space Science Center in Yokohama. I recall that the last time we held the workshop was with a face shield. This time, we used Octostudio, a programming tool for smartphones released in October 2023 by the Lifelonng Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab, which developed Scratch.
As this was our first workshop for kids with OctoStudio, we had to think a lot about how to design a 90-minute workshop, but we used Octostudio, smartphones, craft materials, dead leaves, and other natural and scrap materials to create our works.As a loose theme, we also used paper bags and tried to create a mysterious paper bag that works with the program.
The beauty of Octostudio is that you can program a smart phone with a smart phone.
By being able to program on your smartphone, you can program anywhere, anytime.In other words, Octostudio is a powerful tool for enjoying creative learning anytime, anywhere in our daily lives.We hope that by combining Octostudio with the creation of artworks using familiar objects, the workshop will provide an opportunity to enjoy programming and creative learning anytime and anywhere in our daily lives.
However, we believe that there are not many opportunities to boldly use expensive smartphones as tools for creating artworks in our daily lives.So this time, instead of using the participants’ own smartphones, we collected old smartphones for the workshop and asked the participants to use them as tools for creating artworks without hesitation, by attaching materials to them, sticking them to something, shaking them as much as possible, and so on.
When we actually started the workshop, we were surprised at how quickly the children became accustomed to the operations.This may be because children in the lower grades of elementary school, who do not yet have their own smartphones, are accustomed to operating tablets and their family members’ smartphones.
By using the smartphone cameras to take pictures of themselves and their crafts and using them as sprites, and by recording their own voices, the children will be able to make creating artwork at Octstudio a familiar activity and create personally meaningful artifacts.The artworks created will also be used to tell the story of the project.Many of the artworks created this time had a sense of storytelling. This may be due to the fact that the smartphone is a personal (ultra-personal) device, in addition to its functionality.
How facilitators can support individual activities on smartphones, which are ultra-personal devices, in workshops is a challenge for the future.The screen is small, and with my advanced presbyopia, it is difficult for me to support the children while looking at the screen with them, and I have to take the smartphone into my own hands once, which interrupts the children’s work.Also, the participants working with their own smartphones (as shown in this picture created by ChatGPT) is different from the usual workshop, and makes me feel uneasy.
On the other hand, the way the children are surrounding the smartphones and sharing their work may be because of the small and personal devices.
The modification of the Japanese block we use in Octstudio was also inspired by the way it was used in the workshop.
Again, through the workshop using Octstudio, we had an opportunity to think about workshops as a place for creative learning and Octstudio as a tool for creative activities and learning.It was also an opportunity for me to think about creative activities with my family (actually, this time I was running the workshop with my family, so it was also an opportunity for me to think about family workshops and creative learning with my family).
You can’t think about thinking without thinking about thinking about something.
Remembering Papert’s words, I would like to continue to think about workshops in the same way that conducting a workshop is a valuable opportunity for me to think about workshops and learning, so that each workshop activity will be an opportunity for participants to think about something.I would like to continue to think about the
I would like to express my gratitude to the Science Museum for giving us this precious opportunity to hold another workshop, and to everyone who participated.
Thank you very much!
The Japanese-language materials used in this workshop are here (click to download PDF).
