“The use of screens at the heart of child protection”: conference / training by Serge Tisseron and Benoît Labourdette

Training day for 80 social actors of the child protection, to equip the professionals with the good use of the images and the digital in an educational perspective.

Intervention by Serge Tisseron, psychoanalyst

Children’s rights in the digital age: alternation, support and learning to self-regulate

Digital tools are disrupting all areas: the relationship to knowledge and learning, the construction of identity and the forms of social bonding. And we can choose at any moment to use them to increase our possibilities of acting on the world, or on the contrary to flee and ignore it, in practices that quickly become pathological, and this as much for video games as for social networks. Our children will have all the more chance to be on the right side if we introduce screens in their lives at the right time and in the right way. The 3-6-9-12 beacons guide parents and educators to achieve this. They are based on four equally important recommendations: limit screen time, choose with children their programs, talk with them about what they see and do with screens, and encourage their creative activities from an early age, with or without digital tools.

Intervention by Benoît Labourdette, filmmaker and researcher

Creativity with cell phones as a tool for bonding and self-building

Cell phones are now at the heart of human interactions in all their dimensions. How can they be used as tools for creativity? How can creativity, in its mediation devices, nourish links (between peers and with the management) and contribute to the construction of the self? Digital technology is a very powerful and double-edged tool, which we must learn to handle with care. From concrete case studies, anchored in psychosociological concepts, we will discover ways of working, motivating and fun for our audiences.

Pedagogical method

The morning was devoted to a lecture by Serge Tisseron, then a development of questions by tables, which he answered, which registered an exchange in support of their problems.

In the afternoon, which I was in charge of, instead of starting with a lecture and then moving on to a practical workshop, I chose to first let them experience the creation of digital images, so that my words could respond to their experience.
So, here is the course of my intervention, whose images can be found in the mini-site below:

1. Suggesting that they each take their own hand in a photo, staged to say something around the digital, then, via a QR code that I had provided them, publish their photos by themselves in a private contributive digital space that I developed. There was digital appropriation, and creativity (which is far from easy to implement).
2. The images appeared “as if by magic” on the screen, and I suggested that they look at them one by one, doing the exercise of saying what each image (made by someone else) brought to us. This means that the look of the other enriches us, institutes us, allows us to realize, to better understand, what we have created (contrary to the traditional posture where we ask the author “What did you mean?”, which is normative and absolutely not enriching, based on the judgment). They have thus lived the experience of creation, of digital sharing, and of enrichment and link building through the sharing of views. It was a short but very powerful experience for everyone. Everyone learned from this experience.
3. Then I developed my ideas on education, digital technology and especially the pedagogical approach that seems right to me. In particular on the question of the framework. The framework is the listening of the “teacher” to the “students”, which weaves links, induces confidence, and makes a weaving, a web, which is a support that authorizes. The framework must authorize through openings to the possible, not prohibit through constraints. And listening means working on letting go of one’s own criteria, in order to give oneself the possibility of receiving what the other person offers me, which destabilizes me. This is how I will be enriched, if I am disturbed. Neurosciences show it: we must resist our reflexes of thought to be able to learn.
4. And myself, when they put their first photos online, it didn’t happen as I thought, they created a lot of sub-folders, for some of them put cat photos online, etc. And, instead of judging them, of “giving them back the rule”, they saw me destabilized and working to receive, to enrich myself, from what destabilized me. In this case, I learned that when a publication space was opened, it aroused a direct desire for expression, and it is important for me to take this into account in the future. So that was a lived experience for me as well.
5. Then I suggested that they get into small groups and create a photograph together, with the title integrated into the image (there were felt pens and scissors). The goal of these photographs was to be tools to induce discussions and exchanges. It was a collective work. Then they put them online.
   
6. And finally, everyone was invited to write on a sheet of paper, with graphic work, what had enriched them, what they had retained that was important in this day, and then to take a photo to share it. The contributions were significant, I think.
   

I received extremely positive feedback on profound learning about the educational posture and all the possibilities that can be deployed there.