A few years back, I was at a technology conference about 1-to-1 computers in schools. At the end of the conference, there was a student panel.
One particular student response has stuck with me ever since.
I’d been in schools that employed 1-to-1 for years, but the struggle was always the same: How do you make sure students are engaged and not distracted by their computers?
I asked one student this, and he said he “played” around on his computer all the time in class, mostly when he was bored.
I was surprised by his candor. And I followed up by asking what games he would play.
None, he said. Instead, he played around with a new coding technique.
Turns out, as a senior in high school, he was teaching instructors at a local university how to use this technique so they could teach their college-aged students.
No formal instruction. Just play.
And this student figured out a new coding technique that not even professors at a local university knew.
Recently, there’s been a trend to bring play back to kindergarten classrooms across the country.
Author Jackie Mader writes: “An older, more extensive body of research suggests children should be playing both within lessons and between lessons, because that’s the best way for a 5-year-old to grasp difficult concepts, whether it’s working with a classmate or counting to 100.”
The research for this actually exists outside of education already.
Check out this study about deliberate play in basketball.
To summarize, one group of players went through what we’d consider “traditional” basketball practices. Another group, after learning the rules — well, they just played. The results?
“Analysis showed significant training improvement only for the deliberate-play group. In addition, this outperformance of the placebo group was not only observed for tactical creativity but also for tactical intelligence.”
In essence, the group that just played basketball got better at basketball. The group that went through drills and lessons? Not so much.
(BTW, if you’re looking for a great listen on this exact topic, I encourage you to check out this Freakonomics episode where this study is cited.)
It seems so simple when put like that. So why don’t we make play a bigger part of the classroom?
My guess is, we don’t really know how outside of the early childhood classroom. We’ve never been taught what “play” might look like in an algebra or vocabulary lesson. And we certainly didn’t experience it ourselves.
But that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.
What might play look like in some of your lessons?