Play is More than Just a Game

Featuring a technology and education integration specialist, a roboticist/musician, an edutainment software executive, and a leader in the early childhood advocacy community, Beyond Video Games provided participants with an introduction to the practical use of technology and new media applications in the learning and development of young children.

Focusing on Interactivity

In opening remarks, several panelists highlighted the important need to focus on creating tools, activities, and resources for children with a deep and abiding commitment to interactivity. Through active engagement, children can develop many positive critical thinking skills. One panelist demonstrated a robotic guitar that used a software program to play a short pre-programmed audio performance as an example of how children approach technology in fundamentally different ways than adults. Children’s curiosity and inquisitiveness leads them to come close, touch, and pluck the robotic guitar string, whereas adults keep a distance. This innate fearlessness and willingness to explore new concepts and materials makes play so essential and powerful in learning and development.

“Play isn’t an add-on; it’s how children learn.”

On the specific subject of games, panelists noted that good games are active, participatory, engage the senses, and provide meaningful feedback. Games in and of themselves are not bad; as with so many aspects of childhood development, it is the application and utilization of the tool that determines its potential to positively or negatively affect children. Panelists were challenged to consider how the play of yesterday compares to the play of today. Referencing board games as an analog type of play experience, panelists noted that games can be a valuable communications tool, helping convert procedural knowledge into active and applicable knowledge.

In response to questions from participants, panelists noted that today’s perceived ever-changing landscape of technology and its use in education and childhood development contexts is only the latest iteration of each generation needing to play catch up to the tools and innovations of the next. What has distinguished the last 20 years of change is the speed with which change has occurred and the disparities these changes have created across the many diverse agencies and groups contributing to the development of young children. Moreover, as a society, media and technology literacy has become as important to a child’s long-term future as faculty with reading, writing, and arithmetic.