Never mind the technology, where’s the learning?

The death of Oliver Postgate has brought back so many memories for a generation who as children remember his short five minute animated stories before the evening news. Like much around us today it has engendered a good deal of nostalgia for the slower pace of story telling and simplicity of Smallfilms animation techniques. Today stop-frame animation is part and parcel of children’s experience in many schools with so many skills and concepts enabled entirely by ICT.

Here’s a short clip from a 2005 BBC Four documentary that shows Postgate and Firmin reminiscing about their work, together with an interesting piece about Ivor the Engine being re-created using computers. On watching it I can’t help but ponder of whether today the BBC would buy a children’s series from a two person company who made their programmes in a shed at the bottom of the garden. There’s also the irony that now YouTube provides the distribution platform for so many animators to show their talents.