Yesterday I looked at the first part of play, that being structured. Today I will tackle the second form of play, unstructured. There are several avenues that children can partake in unstructured play. The conventional method is through recess. That time where teachers usually take their children outside and allow their students to ‘have at it’ so to speak. I’ve heard from administrators that this is a liability nightmare. Typical though, shying away from a productive part of the day for fear of litigation.

So where is the outlet that our children need from the daily grind of learning?  Our students are bombarded by  a HUGE mountain of required learning for standardized testing, one fatal mistake is being made on a daily basis. Our students are not being allowed to be children. They are not being given a chance to learn to ‘play’ together on the playgrounds and playfields. Broken down, this means that students are not being given a chance to learn collaboration on their own. I remember growing up playing ‘war’ in my neighborhood with at least 2 dozen other boys and girls. We gave ourselves objectives for opposing teams to complete to be able to win (usually a capture the flag type deal). This would NEVER happen in today’s society because of the whole guns today looking alot like plastic/toy guns. But it was play like this that taught the power of leadership and working together as a team to accomplish a common goal. I will ask the same question that I asked in my previous post, does this have anything to do with learning what a noun is or how to divide by double digits from double digits? Probably not, but as most of us already know, there is more to education than the proverbial “X’s and O’s”.

What does this all have to do with Technology? Tons. I remember a few months back my daughter came home and said she was able to log onto her Webkinz account from school when she was finished with all her work. My wife was AGHAST. I was pretty ok with it actually. For those that don’t know, Webkinz is a virtual world. The only way to get in there is to buy a Webkinz pet of some sort. You get a code to create an account. You are responsible for feeding the pet, taking care of it, putting it to sleep and bathing/hygiene type things, or the pet will get sick. Haven’t asked my daughter to go so far as to allow that to happen yet, just to see what happens. As it stands now, I’m pretty positive I have well over 30 Webkinz pets strolling around my house (bleh! is all I can say about that!). Not only does my 3rd grade daughter have many pets that she tends to in this virtual world, so does my 6 year old son (just turned 6 less than a month ago, which is important to remember).

As with the real world, money in the Webkinz world is key. The economy is driven by “kinzcash”. You get so much for creating a new pet in the world. You can get kinzcash for selling off gems that you can search for in a cave. You can also earn kinzcash by playing different type of games, or doing jobs. The moral of this is, it is NOT very hard to earn money in this virtual world. It is important though to be able to purchase items for your rooms for your pets, as well as food and other luxury items that you may desire. Back to my son though. Being 6 now, but 5 for the time that this example is taking place, he really has zero formal education in economic issues and concerns. Being 6, his mother and father take care of all of his wants and needs. One thing is for certain though, my son is VERY understanding that when his kinzcash amount reaches 0, he needs to sell off some stuff that he knows he doesn’t need or use, or he simply plays a trivia game to earn money. The humor in that lies in the fact that he knows not a single answer to the trivia questions….he perfectly knows this and has said as much. He merely clicks on an answer and he still is able to earn money, whether the answer is right or wrong. Somewhere in there, there is an argument for getting something for nothing. Now’s not the time or place for that discussion. What I take the MOST out of that example is this: my five year old son was able to ‘learn’ on his own, a way/plan to get money in a virtual world to fulfill his wants/needs. Better yet. By looking at the curio shop (virtual store’s name), he knows how much the item(s) he wants costs. And he plays these games, sells off other items, to allow him to save enough money to get what he wants/needs (***Cough***Math Skills****Cough****)

By explaining this all to my wife, I brought her back to my daughter and her playing this Virtual Game at school. With the in game environment as safe as it is going to get (no chat allowed as of yet, only friends on her list are allowed to gain access to her house map, but unable to move anything) the academic pros well outweigh any cons that might be there. The fact of the matter is this, the face of unstructured play at school has changed, this is what that face looks like. I applaud my daughter for the hard work she does in this virtual world. She works very diligently at making sure all her pets are tended to and that her garden is weeded everyday, lest the weeds get out of control. I would show screen shots of the map of her ‘house’ but I’ve been unable to do so. I keep trying to get her to log onto her account on my macbook or to give me her account user info to which she won’t. I really cannot complain about her not giving me her account info (I know mom has it, but I’m not going to push that), it goes to show that she is listening to the ground rules that I’ve laid out for her to continue using it.

I will finish tonight with this one final thought:

I don’t know about you, but Mr. Fred Rogers is someone I trust and someone whom I feel can’t be stated unequivocally as an expert in this field.

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.