Personal Branding - Research - Importance of Play

6A2 6B2 - Research into play, important when teaching and learning with children.


Play is necessary for creativity.

Play-like activities put us into a psychological state where it’s ok to fail, where it’s ok to wonder “what if?”

Through play we can be anyone or anything.

Play removes limits.

Children are inclined to creative exploration and imagining.

We are designed to be players in the game of life, rather than creators.

Open environments, flexible tools, modifiable rules, and superpowers.

Open-ended play and the continuing need for workplace creativity.

Play is the answer to how anything new comes about.”

A playful mind thrives on ambiguity, complexity, and improvisation.

The resourcefulness of children’s culture has eroded, as children have become less skilled at transforming everyday objects into playthings.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

Letting children be the inventors of play.

Open environments are those in which the child gets to be the author and the medium is open to interpretation.

Designed to encourage child-directed, unstructured free play.

Shidonni, Spore, and Scribblenauts are truly embracing the open and digital potential. With them, the play is so unlimited no one cares that someone else wrote the rules. Kids get to design their own games in real time with Scratch, Kodu, Kerpoof, and Alice. LEGO Mindstorms, Pleo, and the Spy Tracker System from Wild Planet enable authors to write their own software applications for physical products.

A crayon can be used for drawing anything, but it can also be melted and re-sculpted into something completely different.

Allow a child to record his or her own directives would invite invention, ideation, and exploration.

Had an original idea, created a new game on the playground, made up a story, solved a problem for a friend, or invented something uncommon from a common object.

We aren’t born with playful minds, we create them.

To Play or Not to Play: Is It Really a Question?

The resounding feedback was that the children wanted to be the spies themselves, not the character. So the company introduced its spy gear with packaging that depicts real kids being super sleuths.

Superpowers, by my definition, are the physical and mental skills that we develop to adapt and thrive in a complex world while exploring the creative opportunities made possible by global progress. 

What children and young people do when they follow their own ideas and interests, in their own way, and for their own reasons.’

What children and young people do when they are not being told what to do by adults’.