Ready, set, play

"When we're doing our lessons, the teacher doesn't say, 'Ready, set, work,'
"They say, 'Ready, set, play,' and I always took that word seriously."

Bobby McFerren on NPR

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Let your kid play with your iPad. It'll be fun.

Tod Lappin shared a brief video of his 2-1/2 year-old daughter playing with an iPad with Laughing Squid readers. And now, I'm sharing it with you.

That's his daughter, of course, the same one who gets to play with his iPhone.

At the end of the clip you can hear her say "I did it! I did it!" Which, of course, is what this is all about, this iPad - an invitation to delight, a gateway to accomplishment.

No, I don't think anyone's recommending that you buy one for your precocious preschooler. But I do think that the clip gives us a very clear insight into what makes the iPad such a noteworthy technology. It's what Apple has been about since its inception. The accessibility of it all.



from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Animals, play and morality

I have long been a happy follower of Marc Bekoff's explorations of animals at play. His compassionate, disciplined investigations of animal society have helped me understand the profundity of play and its power to transcend culture and species. Having an opportunity to meet him again at the TASP/IPUSA conference, I at last found a good excuse to resume our correspondence. He told me of an article he wrote with Jessica Pierce, "Moral in Truth and Claw," where he was able to make some clear and undeniable connections between play and morality. Here are a few:

"Although play is fun, it's also serious business. When animals play, they are constantly working to understand and follow the rules and to communicate their intentions to play fairly. They fine-tune their behavior on the run, carefully monitoring the behavior of their play partners and paying close attention to infractions of the agreed-upon rules. Four basic aspects of fair play in animals are: Ask first, be honest, follow the rules, and admit you're wrong. When the rules of play are violated, and when fairness breaks down, so does play....

"The social dynamics of play require that players agree to play and not to eat one another or fight or try to mate. When there's a violation of those expectations, others react to the lack of fairness. For example, young coyotes and wolves react negatively to unfair play by ending the encounter or avoiding those who ask them to play and then don't follow the rules. Cheaters have a harder time finding play partners....

"When children agree, often after considerable negotiation, on the rules of a game, they implicitly consent not to arbitrarily change the rules during the heat of the game. During play, children learn the give and take of successful reciprocal exchanges (you go first this time; I get to go first next time), the importance of verbal contracts (no one can cross the white line), and the social consequences of failing to play by the rules (you're a cheater). As adults we are also constantly negotiating with others about matters of give and take, we rely daily on verbal contracts with others, and most of us, most of the time, follow myriad socially constructed rules of fairness during our daily lives."

Deep, like I said. Fun, like I implied.




from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Of play and games

by The Abcedarian



from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Play, playfully rendered

This says play to me, no yes? Play, and love also too. What a lovely connection!




from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Paper Art

Last Monday, I wrote about fun of the less-than-funny kind. So, when I learned about this collection of lovely, ever-so-painstakingly created works of Paper Art, I was delighted to have found another expression of that not-funny-fun that is so profoundly fun, anyway.

The image that accompanies this post is from Peter Callesen. Seeing the sculpture emerge from the sheet of paper helps us appreciate the mastery that he has achieved in producing his art. Such amazing detail. Such fidelity. And yet, in some way, such a deep sense of play.

The same can be said about all 100 examples of paper art in this delightfully astounding collection. The art. The mastery. The sheer fun of it all.

via Boing Boing

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Play and Nostalgia

In his review of a recent BBC series called Hop, Skip and Jump: The Story of Children’s Play: Moving Indoors, Patrick West notes that "...we should regard childhoods of yesterday with ambivalence – and sometimes even appreciate the often paradoxical nature of society's nostalgia. A frequent lament by those who grew up in the 1940s and 1950s is that back then there were so many wonderful bombsites and ruined houses to explore, which is tantamount to thanking the Luftwaffe – who possibly killed these children's parents – for a happy childhood."

"...times have changed," he goes on to say, "and...when it comes to how we let our children play, some things are wrong today, but other things were wrong yesterday."

I suppose nostalgia is an inevitable component of any attempts at understanding the nature of children's play. In attempting to understand how children are playing, we naturally refer to our own childhood. It is challenging, to say the least, to get any accurate picture of how children are playing with what and whom, let alone a clear understanding of how we can support and nourish those play experiences. Realizing that we can't get there by comparing our childhood to theirs is at least a first step.


from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

So, what is a grownup to do to promote play?

Here's an excerpt from a Reclaiming Play for Children, an article Wendy Rowan published in a recent issue the Times-Standard. It's a good reminder for us all about the kinds of gifts we can give our kids, and the kinds of gifts kids have to give to each other:

"So what is a grownup to do to promote play? Fortunately, as every young child wants and needs to play, a little guidance and simple toys should suffice. Reflect upon your positive early childhood play experiences to remember toys that stimulated your imagination, engaged you physically or involved others. I have vivid memories of my younger brother playing endlessly with his trucks in a patch of dirt my family referred to as the 'diggins.' He made a complex network of roads, tunnels, and hills. My cousin Linda and I claimed a patch of small acacia trees outside our classroom, naming them the bunny bushes. We were captivated by the story of Peter Rabbit and his nemesis Mr. McGregor. We repeatedly enacted dramas about entering Mr. McGregor's garden, running away from Mr. McGregor, and returning safely home to our bunny family."

For those of us who are out and about traveling the laneways to love - may we all return safely home to our bunny families.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Surrealist Games

Two of Ten Surrealist Games from the post: Ten Surrealist Games

CERTAIN POSSIBILITIES RELATING TO THE IRRATIONAL EMBELLISHMENT OF A CITY

How would you conserve, displace, modify, transform, or suppress certain aspects of your city?

Example:

Paris: The Eiffel Tower
Conserve it as is but change its name to 'The Glass of Milk'.

CREATING NEW SUPERSTITIONS

Come up with a new superstition.

Example:

When passing a police station, sneeze loudly to avoid misfortune.

See also:

A Book of Surrealist Games by Alastair Brotchie and Mel Gooding

Time Travelers Potlatch - and more Exquisite Corpse

Redondo

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

All we are saying is "give kids a chance"

In her article, The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting, in the Nov 20 issue of Time magazine, Nancy Gibbs gives "helicopter parents" a lot to think about, and, hopefully, even more to question.

"The insanity crept up on us slowly," she begins; "we just wanted what was best for our kids. We bought macrobiotic cupcakes and hypoallergenic socks, hired tutors to correct a 5-year-old's 'pencil-holding deficiency,' hooked up broadband connections in the treehouse but took down the swing set after the second skinned knee. We hovered over every school, playground and practice field - 'helicopter parents,' teachers christened us, a phenomenon that spread to parents of all ages, races and regions."

The thing is, according to Gibbs, change, at last, is a-brewin':

"Since the onset of the Great Recession, according to a CBS News poll, a third of parents have cut their kids' extracurricular activities. They downsized, downshifted and simplified because they had to — and often found, much to their surprise, that they liked it. When a TIME poll last spring asked how the recession had affected people's relationships with their kids, nearly four times as many people said relationships had gotten better as said they'd gotten worse."

So we're learning. All over again. The hard way.

Gibbs' article is as compassionate as it is wise.

"Fear is a kind of parenting fungus: invisible, insidious, perfectly designed to decompose your peace of mind. Fear of physical danger is at least subject to rational argument; fear of failure is harder to hose down. What could be more natural than worrying that your child might be trampled by the great, scary, globally competitive world into which she will one day be launched? It is this fear that inspires parents to demand homework in preschool, produce the snazzy bilingual campaign video for the third-grader's race for class rep, continue to provide the morning wake-up call long after he's headed off to college."

One of my favorite insights in the article is a "pro-boredom" statement from Carl Honoré, author of Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting. "Children," he says, "need that space not to be entertained or distracted. What boredom does is take away the noise ... and leave them with space to think deeply, invent their own game, create their own distraction."

via Jed Hartman


from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Four freedoms of play

The Playful Learning Wiki, four theoretical models of play, includes Ralph Koster's Theory of Fun for Game Design, Brian Sutton-Smith's Ambiguity of Play, something from the National Institute for Play (a.k.a. Stuart Brown) and Scot Osterweil's brilliant Four Freedoms of Play.

Scot Osterweil: The Four Freedoms of Play

Scot Osterweil (MIT Comparative Media Studies, Education Arcade Project) has observed this truth: play has no agenda. Freedom is central to the experience of play. To understand the anatomy of play, Scot has identified four components that he calls the "four freedoms of play." If these freedoms are not respected, the play experience is severely compromised or even ruined.

1. Freedom to Experiment

   The player's motivations are entirely intrinsic and personal. The process is open-ended.

2. Freedom to Fail

   Losing is part of the process.

3. Freedom to Try on Different Identities

   Players aren't necessarily limited by their bodies or surrounding physical context.

4. Freedom of Effort

   As described in Peter and Iona Opie's classic ethnography of playground culture, children may scramble around in a game of tag, avoiding being caught for twenty minutes, and then suddenly stop and allow themselves to be tagged once they have reached a certain degree of effort or perhaps want to move on to another activity.

I deeply appreciate this perspective, this idea of exploring the "freedoms" of play. In many ways, it's what play is all about.

Watch his talk on YouTube



from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

"Playing ball with no adult around"

"I would argue," says Mike Lanza in his remarkably insightful Playborhood blog, "that pickup ball is both more fun and better for children’s social and intellectual development. It’s also more inclusive, or egalitarian." He goes on to list some of the social tasks facing kids engaged in playing a "pick-up" game. These are his words, not mine, though they feel like they are:

• Decide What to Play: There’s no "schedule" of pickup games - they’re ad hoc by definition. So, children have to decide on the game, and that’s unavoidably a social process.
• Recruit Players: Organized baseball takes a minimum of 18 players. It’s never the case that 18 kids just show up in a neighborhood looking for something to play. Depending on what game is played, two to six kids might be the minimum. In fact, most of the time, kids need to get creative to find enough kids to play to make a real game.
• Decide Where to Play: When and who’s playing can affect where the kids decide to play. "Should we play in _____'s backyard? The street? The nearby school field that has a backstop?" More negotiations are in order here.
• Improvise Rules: Which field the kids decide on and how many kids are playing usually necessitates improvised rules. "What’s a home run?" If each team has only three players in the field, perhaps the foul line should be moved. "How many bases can a runner advance on an overthrow?" "Can runners steal bases?" Kids need to decide on these and other rules each game, depending on circumstances.
• Implement the Rules: "Was that a fair ball?" "Is s/he safe or out?" In pickup games, kids have to work out these issues on their own.

There's more in his wonderful post "Playing ball with no adults around." Followed by some painfully incisive explanations why, "notwithstanding all these great benefits, pickup games have largely vanished from our culture. In fact, most kids have never gotten together with other kids to organize a sports game on their own."

Read it. Think about it. Find a place in your neighborhood where your kids can play without you.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

The game doesn't matter as much as the fun

In that interview I mentioned yeseterday, the one included in Parlour Games for Modern Families, I noticed myself saying something that might actually be useful to us as we continue to explore ways to make ourselves in particular and the world in general more fun. So, here's me quoting someone quoting me:

"When you're playing a game with other peple, you're creating fun together, you are empowering that experience, and that experience is empowering you, so the fun you're having reaches deeper, the laughter is more profound, you laugh with your entire body. You experience a sense of exhilaration and timeless, of perfect focus.

"It's important always to remember that the game does not matter as much as the fun you're experiencing with each other. It's not the game itself but the playful contact between people that matters.

"I think the world is as fun as it always has been. I think what's changed is that there's less acceptance of peple having fun in any kind of public environment. If you're laughing, people start looking at you as if you are crazy or definitely not doing what you're supposed to be doing. Playfulness is suspect. I don't think it was that way 100 years ago. Those people who do those bizarre things where they get into a train station and start dancing....people like that are helping us all to become the kind of free people we're supposed to be."

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Hand shadows soon on a wall near you

The brief, but complete manuscript of Henry Bursill's Hand Shadows to Be Thrown on a Wall is available, online, for free, for you, personally, thanks to the gute Völker at the Gutenberg Project.

Youtube has some great clips of hand shadow performances. The Richard Balzer collection features an inspiring hand shadow webpage as well as other playworthy illusions.

So much fun to fool the eye and tickle the mind.


from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Pat Kane defines his "Play Ethic"

Pat Kane, author of The Play Ethic: A Manifesto for a Different Way of Living, is a musician/philosopher. His insights into play, society and the Internet are often as intricate as a dance score or a Bach fugue. In a recent interview appearing on the Creative Maverick site, he gives us a more, shall we say, melodic insight into his vision. He explains:

The play ethic is what comes after the obsolescence of the work ethic. The work ethic is an ideology or belief-system which asserts that any job has dignity and worth, despite how alienated it makes you feel or how disjunct it is from your desires and aspirations, because society recognises this submission to the job as the basis of social order.

The play ethic is an alternative belief-system, which asserts that in an age of mass higher education, continuing advances in personal and social autonomy, and ubiquitous digital networks (and their associated devices), we have a surplus of human potential and energy, which will not be satisfied by the old workplace routines of duty and submission.

The identity of a 'player' - optimistic, willing to try and experiment, open to participating with peers in a multitude of projects - fits this new landscape, this new social order, much better. But we need to forge a convincing 'play ethic', particularly for organisations and government, which will help them to change their structures (or make way for new ones) to accommodate the expanding constituency of networked players.

Every time I read his words, I grow more appreciative of the many gifts he brings to our conversation about the increasing importance of play to the evolution of the human spirit. This latest is especially accessible. Enjoy.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Play and Transhumanism

The connections between play and culture are wonderfully profound. Whether they are actual or not, they've led to centuries of sometimes remarkably penetrating thought. Most notably, a book called Homo Ludens in which the author, Johan Huizinga, famously attributes the source of all human culture to play. And far less notably to my book, The Well-Played Game, wherein I draw the connections between play and games to community and the pursuit of personal excellence.

Recently, our favorite musician/play theorist Pat Kane published another densely thought-provoking article, this time on the topic of Play and Transhumansim. Whether you think of the idea of transhumanism of imminent concern or as an intriguing fantasy, Pat's article helps us understand why our explorations of the evolving meaning and significance of play become increasingly relevant to personal, social and technological co-evolution.

Here's a taste:

"Yet transhumanism, it seems to me, almost transcends these familiar political uses of evolved human nature - in the sense that it asks us to squarely face our increasing ability to transform that very nature itself, intentionally and by design. And if play operates as dynamically and unpredictably in our unamended nature as I suggest, we are in a moment where we will have to begin to imagine what kinds of 'politics' or 'ethics' are possible, when play's energies are given the most powerful of chariots to drive.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

The true object of all human life...

"The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground."

G. K. Chesterton

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Ground of Play

The profoundly playful Pat Kane has a three simple measures for the conditions governing a successful "ground of play" (as in "play ground")

1 It must have loose but robust governance
2 It must ensure a surplus of time, space and stuff
3 It must treat failure, risk and mess as necessary for development

He applies this to three different environments: Lion cubs at play on the savannah, a play park, and the Internet. Of the three, the last bears slightly more direct relevance to our being here together. I quote liberally, as I am wont to do:

1 Have loose but robust governance? Surely that's the very definition of the Internet. It has a variety of non-governmental institutions which manage domain names, and the improvement of codes and protocols that enable the web. And these codes themselves have come from a variety of actors that are neither public authorities or private enterprises, but exist somewhere in the 'commons' of open source software production...

2 Ensure a surplus of time, space and stuff? Again, that's the very definition of the Net. It ensures the infinite copyability of digital information, it exists in a state of total plenitude of content. Time mulitplies on the net: the way that social networking eats into organizational time is evidence of the way the Net busts the boundaries of our schedules, enables us to break time into bundles that suit us.

3 Treats failure, risk and mess as necessary for development? The mantra for web development is not 'ready, aim, fire' - get it right, hope you hit the mark - but 'ready, fire, aim' - keep shooting, try many trajectories and options, and out of the many iterations a few things will hit beautifully....

So, that's why I love the web. (Listen also to my Funcast called: "Learning by Dying".)

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Play it Forward - a guest post by the Eccentric Scholar

Does the march of progress allow space for somersaults? In other words, can we PLAY toward a better condition? In each of the following quotations, the word WORK has been playfully changed to PLAY.

"We need to PLAY toward developing peace in all of our thoughts, words, and actions."

—William B. Gudykunst, Bridging Differences, 2003

"We need to PLAY toward a world where healthy anger is the norm and destructive anger the exception."

—Jane Middelton-Moz, Boiling Point: The High Cost of Unhealthy Anger to Individuals and Society?, 1999

"In order to have clarity, we need to PLAY toward seeing the world as accurately as possible."

—Judith V. Jordan, Linda M. Hartling, & Maureen Walker, The Complexity of Connection, 2004

"We need to PLAY toward prevention of overwhelming stress situations that all too frequently result in mental hospitalization."

—Robert Lefferts, Getting a Grant, 1978

"We need to PLAY toward ... a collective sense of meaning and significance."

—Chris Hackler, Health Care for an Aging Population, 1994

"We need to PLAY toward trusting that whatever happens is 'good.'"

—Dzigar Kongtrul, Light Comes Through, 2008

"By accepting the fact that all will not be pleasant at work and that we need to PLAY toward satisfaction and fun in our job, we can more readily dismiss unpleasant happenings."

—Jennie Wilting, People, Patients, and Nurses, 1980

"We need to PLAY toward a society that has social policies that reflect humanitarian values."

—Emelicia Mizio & Anita J. Delaney, Training for Service Delivery to Minority Clients, 1981

"We need organizational makeovers and we need to PLAY toward the change more rapidly than we have thought in the past."

—Lloyd C. Williams, Business Decisions, Human Choices, 1996

"We need to PLAY toward protecting Mother Earth and all living beings."

—Jane Middelton-Moz, Welcoming Our Children to a New Millennium, 1999

"We need to PLAY toward our survival as a species."

—Bill G. Gooch, Lois Carrier, & John Huck, Strategies for Success, 1983

"PLAY is intrinsically satisfying, ie fulfilling; PLAY means survival; and PLAY provides a level of social connectedness to the larger community."

—Samuel M. Natale & Brian M. Rothschild, Values, Work, Education, 1995

Are the altered quotations above still true? Law professor Mary Brandt Jensen reminds us that in the language of copyright law, to "perform" a work is to "recite, render, play, dance, or act it." Perhaps more of our work can be performed with a playful spirit, so as to transform our sense of duty into genuine enthusiasm.

from Craig Conley, www.OneLetterWords.com/weblog


via Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Why is Play Important - Social Competence, Emotional Maturity

From Why is Play Important

During play, children also increase their social competence and emotional maturity. Smilansky and Shefatya (1990) contend that school success largely depends on children’s ability to interact positively with their peers and adults. Play is vital to children’s social development. It enables children to do the following:

• Practice both verbal and nonverbal communication skills by negotiating roles, trying to gain access to ongoing play, and appreciating the feelings of others (Spodek & Saracho, 1998).
• Respond to their peers’ feelings while waiting for their turn and sharing materials and experiences (Sapon-Shevin, Dobbelgere, Carrigan, Goodman, & Mastin, 1998; Wheeler, 2004).
• Experiment with roles of the people in their home, school, and community by coming into contact with the needs and wishes of others (Creasey, Jarvis, & Berk, 1998; Wheeler, 2004).
• Experience others’ points of view by working through conflicts about space, materials, or rules positively (Smilansky & Shefatya, 1990; Spodek & Saracho, 1998).

Unfortunately, all this wonderful documentation is about children before the age of 5. I guess we have to speculate about what the importance of play for adults. See, for example, Patricia von Papstein's detailed discussion of Integral Play.


from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith