‘This Brings Back a Lot of Memories’—a case study in the analysis of digital video production by young learners

Abstract

This paper discusses a three and a half minute video written, shot and edited by two 11‐year‐old children in London in the summer of 2003. Key questions which are used to structure the discussion included the following: When the children work in a school setting in a medium which is culturally closer to their experiences of life outside than is usual within the curriculum, how do they choose to represent themselves? Which aspects of their lives and/or media experiences do they employ and in which modes? How are these choices related to the meanings they wish to convey? Which aspects of the form and function of digital video authoring allow the children to move the locus of control of activities closer to themselves? What does a discussion of these issues tell us about possible future directions in researching young learners’ digital video production? Frameworks for analysing the piece are drawn from emerging theories of multimodal literacy, from studies of information and communications technology in education and from work on media production by young people. Some conclusions are drawn about the position of the work in relation to existing models of curriculum activity in the light of the range of sophisticated and rich representations made by the children in their media text.