play-learning – PLAYTIME

Play Digest: This Is Your Brain on Play

Posted on March 2, 2018March 4, 2019 by Rebecca Bednarz

Enough time has passed since the bad old days of believing that play was a waste of time. The cognitive benefits of play are too numerous to mention: play can be a tool to socialize, play can help people build focus and increases brain size, and imaginative play can play a huge factor in building language skills.For this week’s link pack, we check out what’s new in play and neuroscience.

PEM’s resident neuroscientist, Tedi Asher, writes in an upcoming PlayTime post: “We are all driven to play. We are motivated to solve the problems that keep us from winning games, completing puzzles, or scoring points. Yet, explaining this is difficult, as play is often characterized as an act without purpose …. Researchers are now harnessing this robust and universal motivation to play to treat patients suffering from psychiatric disorders.”

What if part of a surgeon’s credentials had to include his or her high score in Sonic Mania?

Research scientist Janelle Shane trained a neural network to create names for Dungeons & Dragons spells.

Can games extend your life span? Gamer and video game advocate Jane McGonigal thinks so.

Should video games replace textbooks? This former gaming company executive wants to “bring a more modern experience into the classroom.” You decide.

Turning Alzheimer’s research into a crowdsourced game. It’s “hardly Candy Crush,” but there is optimism.

Check in next week for a new roundup of the latest play news and stories.

(Image credit: Photo courtesy Dirk Schaefer via Flickr.)

Play Digest: Play to Learn

Posted on January 13, 2018March 4, 2019 by Eugenia Bell

PlayTime opens in one month and we couldn’t be more excited. For this week’s link pack, we’re thinking about play as an important means of learning and developing—not just for children but all of us.

While PlayTime can’t help but be based on the tenets of having some fun, we also recognize that the very nature of play possesses the potential to teach, transform, and thrill (tell us your thoughts on our play manifesto!). Play comes naturally. Learning through play is an especially rich vein and not one we should abandon in adulthood.

Peter Gray of Boston College has seen a decline in children’s and teen’s mental health that he attributes to a decline in play and adult (over) supervision of play time. But he and other psychologists think that moving away from a culture that values play and becoming one that views “play as a luxury”—for children and adults—is ignoring an important part of being human.

Playworks founder Jill Vialet is just one of the growing community of people who believe that a better play experience at school leads to better learners. (And by the way, Global School Play Day is February 7.)

Museums are paying attention to play and visitors’ needs, too (and not just PEM).

And it’s not only kids who are playing to learn . . . .

Stay tuned, too, for more on our upcoming PEM Partnership. We’re putting play into action with Horizons for Homeless Children and commissioned artist Marisa Morán Jahn.

Check in next week for a new roundup of the latest play news and stories.

(Image credit: Courtesy aAlok Khemka via Flickr.)