Moving Images: Using iPad Movie Making in Early Education to Promote the Social Curriculum

Rachel Ruina, Concord Hill School

When my school bought twenty-two iPads for our Kindergarten classroom, I had a feeling common to many teachers encountering a new technology: this looks great!  But what exactly can we do with it?

My online search for ideas and lesson plans involving iPads quickly confirmed a conclusion that is common to many studies of technological innovation: new technologies are often initially used merely to improve on existing tasks, rather than to serve entirely new functions that were inconceivable before the technology existed. 

So it is with iPads and the other tablet-sized computers that have suddenly appeared in classrooms across the country.  These devices can run an enormous range of applications, yet they are simple and small enough for even pre-school children to use.  As with other new technologies, however, the initial uses of iPads in early childhood education have focused on applications (“apps”) that help accomplish the most mundane tasks of the pre-iPad curriculum: helping children learn reading skills through phonetic and other approaches, providing games for drill in simple arithmetic functions, and so on (some apps for older children have moved beyond drill and practice toward collaborative work).  These are obvious and helpful ways to use iPads, and app designers have already developed many useful and appealing apps for them.  Yet I quickly concluded that these apps only scratch the surface of the potential ways young children can use iPads, and I wanted something more. 

In particular, I felt that iPads have enormous potential for developing the social skills and personal qualities that recent research indicates are just as important to long-term career and life success as reading, writing, and arithmetic.  In summarizing this research, Paul Tough, author of “How Children Succeed,” critiques what he calls “the cognitive hypothesis.” This is the belief that success in post-industrial societies depends primarily on the cognitive skills that are measured on I.Q. tests, such as the ability to interpret texts, solve puzzles, and do calculations.  These are the very skills upon which most existing apps are focused.  Although these skills remain important, Tough emphasizes what might be called the character hypothesis: the idea that non-cognitive skills, among which he includes persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit and self-confidence, are equally important to achieving a successful and well-lived life. ^[1]  

Many schools include personal and interpersonal skills in their curriculums, but often in practice these skills are neglected.  Ironically, even programs that value such skills tend to teach them in top-down “teacher to student” ways.  Teachers often admonish children for violating social norms (“you can’t say you can’t play,” or “say you’re sorry”) rather than eliciting ideas for better behavior (“what is a different way to say that?”).   The active learning approaches that teachers have increasingly applied to traditional academic subjects and the arts need to be applied to personal and interpersonal skills as well, using modes such as motivation, curiosity, discovery, creativity, persistence, and self-reflection.   Might iPads be used to engage these more creative and vital ways of learning, and to promote meaningful and developmentally appropriate interaction?

Equally worrisome, many technologies and web sites — including even those geared toward “social media” — bypass face-to-face interactions in the real world.  It occurred to me that  iPads could help develop real and organic social interactions, instead of encouraging students to spend even more time with their noses buried in a screen.

With these considerations in mind, I hit upon an idea that I think has broad applicability to the social curriculum in early childhood education: having children make movies of themselves and each other in their daily social interactions, and then selecting examples of their social behavior to replay and discuss with individuals, small groups, or the entire class.  I wanted this to be a positive experience for the children, as no one likes to see themselves behaving badly on screen, so I decided to focus only on examples of good or successful social interactions.  Yet even videos of successful social encounters enable discussion of questions like:  “What are the different choices people can make in these situations?”

I decided it was important to get the children’s consent for this process, not so much for any legal reasons, but as a way of teaching them early that they do have a right to control their own image, and a means of getting them to buy in and take some ownership of the exercise.  I created a form for them to sign, giving me permission to show their video.   As it turned out, the children in my class have proved to be uniformly enthusiastic about having their videos shown.

The children came up with the name “Kindergarten Team Time” for our weekly viewing and discussion of the video we made that week.  Each week at the start of our lesson I gave the children t-shirts to wear in a variety of colors.  We discussed how the t-shirts were all the same in some ways and all different in other ways, just as kids are, and how when we wear these t-shirts it symbolizes, like a uniform that we are on the same team or we all work together.  During these lessons we all sat in a circle around the big screen in the classroom – thereby further encouraging participation.  Early in the year I introduced the video clips. Later in the year the children who participated in making the videos did their own brief informal introductions.  The children were keenly interested in seeing themselves and their classmates on the big screen and they were very excited about watching the videos.  The videos focused on topics that are part of the social work of Kindergartners – how to enter play, how to share, how to express feelings effectively and appropriately to name a few. 

I would show the video in very small segments, stopping every minute or so to give children a chance to talk about what they observed – look at Joe’s face, how do you think he is feeling now?  What is it that is Annie might be upset about?  How would you feel about that?  What choices does Joe have about what he will do next?  What choices does Annie have?  What would you do?  By thinking about these questions the children began to understand that social interactions can be something you talk about explicitly.  They also learned that, as in the traditional academic subjects, there is a vocabulary that they can use as a tool to negotiate the social world. 

There were two general ways in which I used the videos.  I filmed children in successful interactions for discussions about what went right, and I also I filmed them in the midst of more challenging social interactions.  I also had children role play different kinds of social interactions.  The discussion process became a lesson in itself.  The children were so eager to participate in the process that I was able to pick certain children to play certain roles.  I chose a little boy who had trouble maintaining play, for example, to be in a video about how to maintain play.  Casting him in this role allowed him to step outside of himself and have a perspective on his own behavior and choices that he was not usually able to have.  During the filming of the story this little boy and his little group of fellow actors had some valuable and heartfelt conversations about why kids walk away from play, how the rest of the group feels when that happens and in what ways each of them could change their behaviors so that they could continue to play together.

All teachers of young children know that the social curriculum is a big part of what we teach yet often the social curriculum is us seeing and correcting specific behaviors.  Using the iPads to make videos of the children, allows for the social curriculum to be raised to the level of so much of the rest of any good early childhood curriculum – one in which the children are motivated by being actively involved and engaged, one that has an accompanying vocabulary and one in which there are skills that can be identified, worked on and learned.  Feelings can be acknowledged and children can begin to understand that we can reflect upon and talk about our feelings at a time and in a setting that is not emotionally charged.  I encourage teachers to look beyond apps and use technology as a powerful tool to support the social curriculum, which is such an important part of what we do as early childhood educators.

Acknowledgments:  I am grateful to the Libow Fund and Concord Hill School Head of School Denise Gershowitz for supporting this curriculum development project. 

Rachel Ruina teaches Kindergarten at Concord Hill School in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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^[1] Paul Tough, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character.  Mariner Books, reprint edition, 2013.