Floors Walls Ceilings

Onscreen text reads: “Low floors Wide walls High ceilings”. An image of a Temple is shown.

Narration: Creative tools should have low floors, wide walls and high ceilings.

Onscreen text reads: “Low floors”. An image of the bottom of a temple is shown.

Narration: Low floors means that it takes very little learning to be able to start making with it. For a medium, that means that it has to have a grammar that students either are already familiar with or which they can easily learn. For a technology or a tool, “low floors” means it’s easy to get started and to make it do what you want.

An image of a baby with a tablet is shown.

Narration: Most of the changes in computer technology over the last fifty years have been about lowering floors – moving from a text-based, command-line interface to point-and-click and finally to touchscreens, which have such a low floor that toddlers can use them.

An image of a computer lab is shown.

Narration: But the floor is based on more mundane, practical issues as well: do we, and our students, have adequate access to the technology?

Onscreen text reads: “Our ultimate goal is to help all kids develop their thinking, develop their voices, and develop their identities. None of that will happen unless we continually ask: Who are we including? Who are we excluding? And how can we provide everyone—everyone—with opportunities for exploring, experimenting, and expressing themselves.” Mitchel Resnick, “Designing for Wide Walls”

Narration: “Our ultimate goal is to help all kids develop their thinking, develop their voices, and develop their identities. None of that will happen unless we continually ask: Who are we including? Who are we excluding? And how can we provide everyone—everyone—with opportunities for exploring, experimenting, and expressing themselves.” Mitchel Resnick, “Designing for Wide Walls”

Onscreen text reads: “Wide walls”. An image of temple columns is shown.

Narration: A learning tool should also have wide walls, meaning that you can do a lot of different things with it.

Three comic book panels are shown side-by-side.

Narration: Sometimes a medium may have wider walls than we, or our students, think – if you’re only familiar with superhero comics, for example, you might not know how that medium has been used for everything from autobiography to cooking instructions. (This includes both whether we have access to the tech and whether the tools are accessible to all students, including those with special needs.)

Onscreen text reads: “Platforms for creativity typically present an invitation to do something. This can be something very simple, but the fact that a platform has been created for it makes it more meaningful.” David Gauntlett, Platforms for Creativity

Narration: But walls that are too wide present problems of their own. Creativity scholar David Gauntlett describes what he calls “platforms for creativity” as being invitations to make and share something; while some platforms can be used for almost anything, ones that provide a more specific invitation can help avoid the terror of the blank page and implicitly give you permission to make that kind of thing.

Onscreen text reads: “High ceilings”. An image of the roof of a temple is shown.

Narration: High ceilings means that there’s a lot of room to get better at what you’re doing. How much difference is there between the work of a beginner and an expert? How much better will the work be if you put more work into it? How many meaningful choices do you have while making it?

Logos for the Stop Motion Studio and Clapmotion apps are shown.

Narration: If we compare the stop-motion apps Stop Motion Studio and Clapmotion, for example, we’ll see the Clapmotion has a lower floor – because it takes a picture every time you clap, it can be used by children who don’t have the coordination to use a mouse or trackpad – but a lower ceiling as well, because it has fewer tools for adding music and sound effects, titles, special effects, and so on. (Some of these features of Stop Motion Studio are only available as in-app purchases, which shows that in art, as in real estate, you sometimes have to pay for higher ceilings.) A high ceiling isn’t the same as complexity – a tool as simple as a pen can have a very high ceiling – but it does mean that you can make more complex use of the grammar of the medium.

An image of a temple is shown.

Narration: What makes these guidelines more complicated is that the medium, technology and tool you choose all have their own floor, ceiling and walls. Tech and tools generally lower the floor of a medium by automating things that students otherwise wouldn’t have the skills or resources to do.

The Scratch programming language logo is shown.

Narration: The Scratch programming language, for example, makes it easier for students to make video games or digital animations by letting them click and drag blocks of code rather than having to write it, provides a library or graphics, sounds and music so that students don’t have to make their own, and even allows users to remix existing projects so that they can change the content with a minimum of skill.

Narration: sounds and music so that students don’t have to make their own, and even allows users to remix existing projects so that they can change the content with a minimum of skill.

An image of a confusing user interface is shown.

Narration: While tech and tools can make it easier to make media, though, they have their own floor as well – and for some students (and teachers) they may be just as big a barrier. This is a big part of why, while digital technology has meant that young people make media much more often in their personal lives than they did a generation ago, relatively little has changed in the classroom.

Onscreen text reads: “Best practices for using tech”

Narration: What we need to consider, then, is how accessible the technology is; how easy the specific tool is to use and learn; and, considering the three of them together, how low is the floor of the medium?

Onscreen text reads: “[Students] teach me about the digital technology. It’s an empowering side of digital storytelling for teacher and student. My supposed ‘weakness’ becomes a super power: the students are empowered to teach me.” Heather Sinclair, “5 Reasons to Integrate Digital Storytelling into Your Teaching”

Narration: “[Students] teach me about the digital technology. It’s an empowering side of digital storytelling for teacher and student. My supposed ‘weakness’ becomes a super power: the students are empowered to teach me.” Heather Sinclair, “5 Reasons to Integrate Digital Storytelling into Your Teaching”

It’s natural for some students to learn a tool or technology more quickly than others, and some students may already be familiar with the tool you’re using. Once you identify these students, offer them the formal role of “tech ninjas” (in one project they were given badges to mark their status) and make them responsible for solving technology problems. In many cases this will reduce the disruptive use of technology – partly because it’s often students who are bored or frustrated who use tech in disruptive ways, and this program tasks the bored ones with helping the frustrated ones – and also improve students’ self-reliance because they see a peer solving technology problems.