Dreaming Up New Games, Toys, Playgrounds, Projects, and Programs for Play

During the fourth ideation activity, Idea Development, Moderators encouraged participants to start putting their concepts to work. Using sketch pads and markers, group members broke out into smaller teams to brainstorm new ways to address the challenges they identified in earlier segments by integrating new innovations in technology and media into the play experience.

Ideas to Integrate Technology and Media in Children’s Play

The goal of the session was to develop new ideas for Micro and Super Spark projects that bridge the gap between education and technology for children ages birth to eight. Groups approached this task in several ways. Some invented new toys and games that used technology to teach children problem solving and social skills. Others imagined mobile play spaces that could provide a safe and fun environment for creative exploration in neighborhoods that lacked such amenities. And in other discussions, projects took shape that adapted and applied existing technologies to supplement age old forms of play like the treasure hunt or the coloring book.

The Beginning of an Ongoing Conversation

Ultimately, the dozens of designs that bubbled up during Idea Development represented the beginning of a process rather than its end product. For the first time, large numbers of educators, early childhood specialists, technology developers, and media producers were collaborating together, pooling their resources of knowledge and experience to generate new ideas for how to make an impact in the lives of children.