My partners nephews came to visit last weekend, they're aged 9 and 12. I thought it would be a good way to occupy their time to give them some colouring pens, pencils, pastels and paper.
I have a room full of canvass, oil paint and loads of paintings on the go and they seemed pretty interested.
I checked on them after 15 minutes only to find blank sheets of paper. Both boys were texting their friends, and using their phones internet to help them think what to draw.
I just felt a bit sorry for them both that their imagination was so limited and reliant on gadgets and technology.
Don't get me wrong, I love technology and find it inspiring, but I don't need it to tell me what to do.
I...

My partners nephews came to visit last weekend, they're aged 9 and 12. I thought it would be a good way to occupy their time to give them some colouring pens, pencils, pastels and paper.
I have a room full of canvass, oil paint and loads of paintings on the go and they seemed pretty interested.
I checked on them after 15 minutes only to find blank sheets of paper. Both boys were texting their friends, and using their phones internet to help them think what to draw.
I just felt a bit sorry for them both that their imagination was so limited and reliant on gadgets and technology.
Don't get me wrong, I love technology and find it inspiring, but I don't need it to tell me what to do.
I asked them to both design an animal they wished they could be, and the eldest said he'd have to come back to me later with his idea.
It struck me how prepared for office working he'd already become.

I showed them a painting I had where fluorescent water based paint had been poured over oils, I used a UV light torch to show them how the picture changed under different light sources.
Soon they were colouring and making a fantastic creative mess, laughing and shouting out ideas.
Mission accomplished...!

THis started happening longer back than you might realize. Back in '84 or so (I was working in the game industry then) I overheard an argumen between two preteen boys. They were trying to play with action figures, but things broke down because one boy wanted his Captain Magnificent figure to do one thing, and the other said something like, "He can't do that! It says so on his box!"

Instead of having free rein with their imaginations, they were boxed in by the dictates of some monley-suited marketing department boob.

I couldn't escape it either. All of the games I worked on, no matter how abstract, had to have some inane little storyline tacked on to it. My immediate boss sympathi...

THis started happening longer back than you might realize. Back in '84 or so (I was working in the game industry then) I overheard an argumen between two preteen boys. They were trying to play with action figures, but things broke down because one boy wanted his Captain Magnificent figure to do one thing, and the other said something like, "He can't do that! It says so on his box!"

Instead of having free rein with their imaginations, they were boxed in by the dictates of some monley-suited marketing department boob.

I couldn't escape it either. All of the games I worked on, no matter how abstract, had to have some inane little storyline tacked on to it. My immediate boss sympathized. I complained about it, quoting Jenette Goldstein from [b]Aliens{/b]: "Look, man. I only need to know one thing: where they are." The whole concept of unstructured play has gone out the window.