Winter 2015

NEVER WORK WITH KIDS OR ANIMALS, THEY SAY.
What happens when you do both? Chaos. Creativity.
Fun. Extraordinary digital stories unfolding that you
could never have imagined yourself.
Gazing anew, children experience the world in rich, surprising
ways, taking us on their journeys, if we allow them. The
potential possibilities of any child are the most intriguing and
stimulating in all creation 1 . And with digital devices abounding,
children are fearless, creative digital natives.
So how do we explore and capture young gazes? Currently
there is a movement of digital toddlers hijacking their parents’
mobile phones. Enter any home and look for the small person
app-shuffling on a tablet. Children own technology, devising
and challenging what is now possible. How can we harness
their ideas in rich stories? With devices, creativity and risk. Risk
involves letting go what we think we know for new perspectives.
Digital technology offers exciting collaborative opportunities for
expressing emerging, untold stories. Our cameras, tablets, and
laptops are tools for unleashing extraordinary new views.
For the past number of years I have co-created stories with
children and animals. Wielding cameras, tablets, tripods
and software, I love trying collaborative techniques to evoke
immersive visions of the familiar and new—from kids’ exploding
puffer fish mimicry, cameras roaming Indian, Arabic, and
Vietnamese buffets, to re-imagining Brisbane a millennia ago,
when the tree branches hung heavy with butterflies. Working
with animals, I have been communing with sharks on the
reef, nursing noisy bats, sniffed by polar bears at Sea World,
and camouflaged in mangroves filming shy shorebirds. I love
immersing in other worlds, seeing what unfolds as a story. And
it is the small things that surprise and engage.
My son taught me this when he was smaller. Something big
came to a head on a typical hectic school morning. He had
been thinking about it and thinking about it, and just couldn’t
hold it in any longer. As we jostled for the front door he blurted
out “Mum, I wish I was born a girl!” We stopped. I set his
bag down, gently asking “Ok, why?” Amid sobs he yelled,
“Because sharks are MANeaters!” Looking into his manga
eyes, I encountered a new worldview. Identifying unnecessary
gender reassignment, I assured Sam that sharks eat women
too, so his odds of being munched were halved, and miniscule,
and that far more sharks are killed by people than vice versa.
Then we headed to school—his fear of sharks intact. And that
moment stuck with me. He taught me the unique preciousness
of a child’s worldview. (I later ended up filming sharks in new
ways, hoping to change the stereotypes that justify people
killing so many.)
Digital storytelling is a fun and powerful way to communicate.
Creative stories make a difference. We don’t want more
information. We are drowning in it. We want meaningful
stories that inspire belief or faith. Storm Boy 2 moved me as a
child. The pelican Mr Percival, Fingerbone Bill and windswept
beach humpies inhabit my psyche. What stories or images
have moved you? As educators and leaders we play a central
role in shaping individual and community identities through
collaborative metaphors and story making. Stories help us
to learn from the past, adapt to the present, and create the
future. By co-creating multiple metaphors and perspectives with
children and communities we can open up thinking.
So where to begin? Armed with whatever digital device/s
you have, the key is asking kids the right questions and then
watching what happens.
A vital question, a creative question rivets our
attention. All the creative power of our minds is
focused on the question. Knowledge emerges in
response to these compelling questions. They
open us to new worlds. 3
How kids answer questions digitally is endlessly spectacular.
A rough working guide for the journey is:
1. Show kids your tablet/camera/apps/samples
2. Tap into their interest
3. Ask the questions and
4. Allow what unfolds.
By tailoring project provocations to follow children’s interests,
projects will sustain group focus and exploration. Ask yourself
what is happening in your community and to whom, what
images kids are responding to, and what they are talking
about. For instance, young children may be interested in a pair
of kookaburras that visit your garden. Using open questions,
you could ask them to think about what the birds are doing,
why, and have they seen any in their garden, to generate
discussion. Then you could ask, “what would it be like to be a
kookaburra?” and see what ideas emerge.
By inviting children to draw on their imaginations, you invite
creative thinking and outcomes. Kids could then play with
tablets/cameras/apps/motion to capture kookaburra ideas.
What will their story look like?
On a Brisbane City Council project, I worked with West
End State School students, exploring marine world ideas.
Students ditched traditional question and answer storytelling
for spontaneous impersonations of electric eels and exploding
puffer fish, recorded on digital microphones. Their emergent
free-styling became a key film moment that people wanted to
see again, engaging environmental awareness. On showing
Sea World, their next series of TV commercials featured the
same technique. Co-creating with kids is rich and engaging.
Working with animals (left): Sea World children’s book and sharks on the
Great Barrier Reef
WORKFORCE.ORG.AU 11