Serious Play: Kids and Machinima

Photo courtesy of Beth Kanter.

There is a lot of talk about gaming and education, but it's hard to find examples that are truly compelling. That being said, after reading Hugh's post, I was blown away by was the presence at the European Machinima Festival of a Global Kids project. They have been doing an amazing job in Second Life for almost 2 years now and they have the machinima and blogs to prove it! You can watch the machinima submission for yourself on youtube. Keep in mind this is a student production before you judge too harshly. The video was, above all, a neat exercise in storytelling.

I am sure I am not the only one seeing the implications of training young people to create movies inside games/online platforms. It's a good teaching tool for teaching writing, design/art, and becoming tech savvy. However, it also means that this initiative (and others like it) create a generation much more aware of machinima as a serious technique for self-expression and sharing ideas.

Along those lines, another interesting story emerges from Asia. Kids Movie Creator is a 3D content creation platform targeted at helping students of ages 7 through 12 design sets and produce movies in them. From what I see, the work posted on the site so far is limited to still photos, but I am looking forward to seeing their progress over time.