Further to my posts on the lecture by The Rt. Hon. Baroness Estelle Morris and Marc Lewis and my post on The Baltic Presents The Turner Prize 2011 here is a brief summary of the Pecha Kucha session at Creative Exchange.
Again for those who are new to my blog Creative Exchange was a conference organised by a number of partners in the North East to discuss, debate and share information about arts education at the present time.
Pecha Kucha
There were four presentations in total at Creative Exchange. I wasn’t sure what Pacha Kucha was so I googled it and Wikipedia defines Pecha Kucha as”
Pecha Kucha (Japanese: ペチャクチャ, IPA: [pet͡ɕa ku͍̥t͡ɕa],[1]chit-chat) is a presentation methodology in which 20 slides are shown for 20 seconds each, usually seen in a multiple-speaker event called a Pecha Kucha Night (PKN).
Creative Exchange wrote…
| Pecha Kucha is a simple presentation format where 20 images are shown on a screen in a slideshow format while a presenter talks about each one. Topics will include creative learning, website development, progress in creativity and the Reggio Approach. |
I am going to talk about three of these Pecha Kucha’s because the one Pecha Kucha was about an ongoing ideological shift happening in a regional school as part of action research. It’s very hard to summarise and I felt the deputy head and teacher who devised that particular talk tried to give us a lot of information very rapidly and I don’t think I could even begin to summarise their findings or approach. In fact it’s very difficult to summarize any of the talks that were shown in the Pecha Kucha session as they were predominantly visual. A strength that is lost when you get all wordy!
PECHA KUCHA WITH JEREMY WARR
The first Pecha Kucha was the visual recording of a writing project by Jeremy Warr a freelance writer with a group of young learners (possibly Key Stage One). The slides were given the following titles. I think any talk/activity/lesson/workshop could be structured in this way…
- Beginning
- Exploring imaginatively
- Repeating
- Creating
- Refining/selecting
- Looking
- Discovering
- Connecting
- Experiencing
- Experimenting
- Showing
- Concentrating
- Talking
- Laughing
- Collaborating
- Examining
- Applying
- Showing and presenting
- Understanding
- Ending
I think Jeremy was using the Reggio Approach but its not an area I’m that familiar with.
PECHA KUCHA ‘GIVING SAWS TO 8 YEAR OLDS AND OTHER JOYS OF CLASSROOM Construction‘ BY TWO TEACHERS FROM WEST PARK ACADEMY.
Teachers from West Park Academy described how they had observed how children had become increasingly dependent on adults to answer their questions as assurances and that learners were averse to take risks for fear of failing.
West Park Academy sort to change their learners attitudes, helping them to recognize that failure was an important part of learning. In essence if you get everything right you aren’t making progress because you are doing what you know you can do.
West Park Academy said they used their risk assessment to enable their learners to do things that perhaps people might argue was ‘risky’ but that was essentially the point! The risks and rewards were proportionate and reasonable for their age and ability.
The teachers had planned for their to be no defined outcome in their scheme of work and that it was their intention to let children explore how things were put together (toasters and other small electrical appliances), to propose what the different components might do, to use different tools to learn how to disassemble fabricated parts and to experiment with construction tools and techniques.
Initially simply disassembling and re-assembling things was sufficient to keep all learners engaged and on task but as the weeks progress it became clear some needed a finished piece… they developed the idea of creating an Iron Man to link to their literacy lessons. Whilst the Iron Giant became the children’s evidence of their learning the teachers described how the process of learning was the outcome rather than the finished piece. They felt they had shifted from experts to facilitators and that learners had become more confident and able to take risks when necessary without fear of failure.
PECHA KUCHA SPENNYMOOR AND TUDHOE GRANGE SCHOOLS DESIGNING A NEW WEBSITE
Student representatives from the two schools came and presented to the audience in Hall 2 at the Sage which must have been a little bit overwhelming… Im not sure I could do that now!
Spennymmoor and Tudhoe Grange schools are merging to become one and staff felt that learners should play a key role in creating the new website to unify the two schools.
Working with professional website designers as facilitators children were inspired to create a website that wasn’t corporate or stuffy and instead reflected the young people in their schools. They were inspired by Facebook, Myspace and Jim Careys Website.
Two versions of the site one for adults and one for children will be going live in the near future.
Through the project learners had the chance to work on many creative skills including team working, researching, designing, written communication, presenting to different audiences and gained produced some great content for their site using digital photography, Photoshop and website construction software etc. Again I can’t emphasize enough how impressed I was at Spennymoor and Tudhoe Grange Schools for electing to have their students present to the audience.
Their website will be coming online in the near future.
