The Story of the Moving Image: Technology and change

This resource offers discovery questions and activities about how technology has changed over time.

Learning is organised around a visit to the ACMI museum and our centrepiece exhibition The Story of the Moving Image.

While at ACMI, students will immerse themselves in technologies ranging from pre-cinema animation to twenty-first century visual effects. They will then look closely at the display of miniature TV dioramas and the wall of video controllers to see how television and videogame technologies have evolved across the decades.

Following their visit, they reflect and expand on what they have discovered and explored.

By engaging in these activities, students will:

• develop an understanding of how screen technology has changed over generations
• identify features of TV sets and video controllers that have changed over time
• draw comparisons between their own lives and those of older generations

Teachers: select and adjust activities to support your students and learning program. You can find curriculum links and learning goals in the document below.

Discover and Explore

1. While learning about how things change over time, brainstorm some key concepts: What is technology? What is design?
2. As a class, make a list of all of the different technologies you use in your life. In groups, choose one of these technologies and focus on features such as:

• What does this technology look like?
• What do we use it for?
• How often do we use it and for how long?
• What difference would it make to our lives if we didn't have this technology?

(Ask groups to check back in after each question and record responses on the whiteboard.)

3. Find out about older versions of this technology and about what it was like before it was invented.

• Report back to the rest of the class about your technology.
• Maybe your group could create a poster or some drawings to help explain your discoveries to the rest of the class.

Get ready to visit ACMI

Your visit to ACMI's The Story of the Moving Image exhibition will give you the opportunity to make further discoveries about how technology changes over time.

1. In preparation for the ACMI visit, share what you might expect to see/think/learn during a visit to ACMI, which is a museum of screen culture:

• What is a museum?
• What might screen culture mean?
• What might you then expect to see at ACMI?
• What might you learn about during your visit?

2. As a class, look at the description of The Story of the Moving Image exhibition on the ACMI website and watch the related video (below).

Discover and explore: TV and videogames over time

1. When you visit ACMI, look closely at the TV miniatures display to think about how this technology has changed over time.
2. Use the TV miniatures and videogame worksheet (below) to draw your favourite object from each decade.
3. The Story of the Moving Image exhibition has an eye-catching wall of videogame controllers, but no dates or information. Find the wall of controllers and discuss with a partner the controllers you recognise.
4. Which do you think is the oldest controller? Why do you think that?
5. Use the TV miniatures and videogame worksheet (below) to draw a controller that you have never seen before.

Your ACMI visit

1. What were some of the things you saw at the museum? What makes these things special?
2. Now what do you think might be meant by screen culture?
3. If you could add one thing to the museum, what would it be?

Respond and reflect: TV miniatures

1. As a class, create six headings for each TV decade shown as part of the TV miniatures display at ACMI. Under each heading, list the special object you drew on your worksheet.
2. Keep using the same headings, share the differences you noticed between the the six miniature TV rooms?
3. How have TV sets changed over time? To help you compare, go to the ACMI website and check out the TV set in each of the miniature rooms:

• 1950s
• 1960s
• 1970s
• 1980s
• 1990s
• 2000s

4. Use the TV Miniature Timeline worksheet (below) to order the TV miniatures along a timeline. This will create a visual display of how TV has changed over time.

Respond and reflect: videogame controllers

1. As a class, share the videogame controller drawings you did when you were at the ACMI museum.
2. Drawing on what you know about videogames, estimate when you think these controllers might have been used: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s. This will be tricky! Use this infographic to see if you can spot your chosen controller.
3. What kind of controllers do you/your friends use when gaming? What do these look like?
4. What kind of controllers did people use in the past? Are they similar or different to the controllers you use today?

How have TV and videogame technologies changed over time?

1. Complete the How technology changes over time worksheet (below).

• As you complete this worksheet, you will reflect on your own viewing and playing.
• You will then ask someone older than you about their experience of TV and videogames when they were young.
• What does this tell you about how has technology and design has changed over time?

Keep exploring

1. ACMI has created online exhibitions about TV in Australia and the history of videogames. Scroll through one or both of these as a class, and choose a topic you'd like to know more about. (Maybe you'd like to find out about the first TV programs or the introduction of colour TV broadcasting. Or, if you're interested in videogames, check out some of the early home consoles.)
2. Write a story describing a day in the life of someone living in the same time period as your parent/grandparent. What kind of activities would you do? What would you watch on TV?

Author acknowledgement

Thank you to pre-service teacher Alex Reynolds who worked with our ACMI Education team to create this resource as part of her Master of Education at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education.