Video art as digital play for young children

Abstract

In the 21st century, along with fine arts, media art has become an important genre for young children. Undoubtedly, early visual arts give children a powerful language with which to express themselves aesthetically, cognitively and creatively through the use of symbolic representations. However, digital play remains a controversial issue in early childhood education, causing many schools to delay implementing digital arts. Recently, a number of international scholars have studied how digital technologies relate to children's learning experiences at school, arguing that open-ended digital devices (eg, tablet computers, cameras and video recorders) may allow children to produce more creative content, such as drawings, photos and films. This study explored the role of video art in early visual arts education by using digital devices in a summer workshop in Hong Kong on video making, applying the digital play framework to the data collected. The findings revealed that the children who participated were able to explore the professional device through epistemic play. Meanwhile, they were able to use film language to share their toy-playing stories and make their own 1-minute video through ludic play. In this study, the children engaged in concurrent exploratory activities, using a digital video recorder and toys to create innovative and imaginative play. The findings of this study increase practitioners' and leaders' awareness of the role of digital play in early childhood education.