This time I am in Prep K. The kids were each given some newspaper and were told to make whatever they wanted.

There were faces, cars, fruit and furniture. It was simply a test of their creativity.

What I found most interesting was the total creative freedom of young children to undertake speculative activities. They did, probably because they were told to, or because its fun to play with newspaper but they did so with total willingness, not once questioning the task.

Unlike the children, uni students do question. Which on one level is good. It’s good to want to know why, to know the purpose, to look at a task as having importance. When this isn’t clear, quite often we get scared, we get angry or we get frustrated. We feel lost when things like education are changed or altered. We feel unsure when our scaffolding is taken away. I would know, I’ve written blogs about it.

However, watching these kids made me jealous. Their newspaper creations were not unlike our blogs. There was no clear framework or task, just “make something”. Unlike many Networked Media students, they could simply “do”, without asking why and their results were amazing.