For items relating to popular education for union democracy, including blog entries, etc.
A simple activity: ask each person to think of her/his favorite and least favorite [word, person, place, object, action, body part(?), letter, number...whatever] and share them with a partner, explaining her choice.
The sharing can be with just one person (quick), with several people in a round-robin format, with the whole group.
The sharing could be done in spoken or written form, could be drawn or pantomimed.
Compare two objects, actions, people , or texts that have nothing to do with each other
How do you compare unlike things, how deep can your comparison go, how well do you really know the objects in question?
Mash up two things in any way, or two people, or places, etc
A variation on the "Mad Libs" game.
Joker (or each participant) chooses a short text: a news item, an encyclopedia entry, a passage from a text book, a political speech, a poem, etc. S/he then removes key words or phrases, leaving blanks and a hint as to what type of word or phrase is missing (verb, noun, etc.).
Unlike the original game:
I'm sure this has been done before, but it occurred to me as well. (It's like the Kani Club activity "Words from the Heart" where the players add side commentary, sharing their true feelings out loud as if only the audience could hear them.)
Four people improvisation game.
Two people are the players, the other two are their shadows.
The two people meet each other for the first time. (The audience can choose a place beforehand.) They improvise a conversation, starting with a greeting.
This is an idea for an improvisational variation on the Love, Hate, Need activity.
Once people have identified what they Love, Hate, Need, Have, Want, Fear, and Hope, the joker hands out three cards on which are written one of the categories (love, hate, etc) to random players.
The players think for a moment, then must improvise a short (2minute or so) scene in which they act out the thing they (love, hate, need...), interacting with the others on that basis.
This game, loosely based on "Philipps 66" in Técnicas Participativas Para la Educación Popular, is a way to introduce background information from Wikipedia (and such) through engaged reading and summarizing.
The Flow:
In the old days, silent films were often shown with music and a voice-over provided by live players. In Japan, the narrators were called benshi. (Akira Kurosawa's brother was a benshi, a leader of the benshi union until talkies came in and he committed suicide.)
I learned this technique for "video citizen journalism" from Richard Hering in a workshop he did for our English for Activists class in Tokyo. Seems like a great tool for activists that can also be a great tool for learners. The key factors are immediacy, a clear simple structure, and low technical barriers: you use the video camera on your phone, a simple formula for organizing content, and no editing or effects. (See remoscope for a similarly direct approach.)
In this activity, the joker uses drawings to tell a story without speaking.
The flow:
Joker deals playing cards to participants, two or three cards each. (To equalize participation but maintain some freedom to choose when to participate use playing cards as talking chits.)
Filmmaker Emiko Aono introduced this approach to participants in the media working group of Labor Now, the Tokyo-based labor research and activist group. (www.jca.apc.org/labornow) I have doubts about the theoretical project of overcoming the difference between spectator and performance, especially since reading Ranciere's Emancipated Spectator. But I think this technique is perfect for practicing the attentive seeing and verification that is central to emancipated learning. For more information see http://remoscope.net/
