Puppets will magic away the mundane conventions of teaching science in an innovative multimedia series starting on NNTV this week, writes David Le Page
A MULTIMEDIA approach to primary science education developed entirely in South Africa, and already acclaimed overseas, is to be launched today with the broadcasting of the first of thirteen half-hour episodes of Spider’s Place on NNTV. The series is a project of the Handspring Trust which has been in development for four years, time which co-founders Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler have spent refining their ideas — and struggling to find funding.
Despite several Vita Award-winning collaborations, including Woyzeck on the Highveld with William Kentridge, the Handspring Company is probably better known overseas than at home. This year they’ll be opening Germany’s mainstream Weimar Festival with a puppet version of Goethe’s Faust. This recognition contrasts embarassingly with their comparatively low profile here, but it’s evidence of the talent from which South African education stands to benefit should the right institutions take full advantage of it.
Working on educational television projects a few years back inspired Jones and Kohler to originate their own, and they deliberately turned to a field most artists avoid: science. They wanted to show how science develops from the process of solving problems, and to awaken children’s own problem-solving abilities through narratives that avoid lab equipment, using instead everyday items and situations. They have developed an approach described at an international education conference in 1991 as “one of the most inspiring, important and imaginative innovations for science
The TV programmes deal with the learning experiences of schoolmates Frankie, Ayanda and Jay who meet Spider, a girl who lives alone in an old warehouse. The series is supported by radio and print material developed in collaboration with the Storyteller Group, after research convinced Jones and Kohler of the futility of running a TV programme in isolation. Ten comic books elaborate the TV themes, showing teachers’ different approaches to science, and children dealing with real world problems such as encountering a drunken adult. Languages are innovatively combined without offering translations, to encourage interaction around the
The Spider’s Place programmes are already in use in schools in Birmingham and London, where British children are now learning their science via Africa. It’s about to go on trial in California, and an array of local and overseas institutions are now helping with
This is impressive testimony to the series’ potential. The question now is whether South Africa will do justice to Spider’s Place, which is due to be broadcast on NNTV and then on TV1. Time has not yet been scheduled for the associated radio series, which Jones believes is essential to the programme’s overall