Heading West - the non-tech way?

I dropped in on Rondinelli's 8th Grade Social Studies to see their mini-plays (melo-dramas) about taming the west. Each group of three or four students had to create a mini-production about life in "pioneer" times. Among the groups were the 49ers, Mountain Men, Pioneer Women, Mormons, you get the idea.


While the productions were decidedly not high-tech I think it made perfect sense to me that they were so. Given that there was no technology like we have back in the day the students faithfully created productions that were educational and engaging. It seemed that one way to bring the audience into the story was to have them be the sound-effects when needed. The audience was queued for the needed sound effect and it made for an enjoyable time and kept us engaged in the story.

While I'm not a historian I vaguely remember that this was one way that melodramas were made - having the audience be active members by creating the sound effects.

Now the students did quite likely use technology - computers, the internet, WWW, printers, etcetera to create their production and acquire the knowledge and background for their story, but their actual production was all non-tech. Sure the students could have used voicethread, photostory or some other digital application, but that would have taken away from the melodramatic effect of being involved in the actual play for the audience.

I guess that the point I am making is that what is important is the content and engagement - how one teacher delivers it may be different than another.