My most recent job at Project New Media Literacies has been a revamp of the NML website. As you can see, it isn't done yet - but it's got me thinking a lot about the concept of play.

Until I came to Project NML, I had never thought about the way I approached computers as "playful." To be honest, I had never thought about the way I approached computers at all. I had simply mucked my way through. In high school, I passed out of having to take a computer class - even though I had never had to use Microsoft Office before! - simply by mucking around and guessing. Turns out I was able to figure out how to use the programs I needed with a little logic and a little luck. I tried something that seemed right, and if it failed, I tried the next thing. After all, the worst that could happen to me was that I'd have to take a boring computer class - right?

Since then, I've taken the same approach to computers, and I've built up many skills. I'm conversant with how to build and publish a website of nearly any kind. I feel confident that I could learn any programming language that I needed to; some of them might take longer than others, but I'd get it in the end. I don't think it's a stretch to say that I'm a computer-savvy kinda person.

The thing is, I didn't learn to do any of these things in school. I think I know why. Play is a really hard thing to get across in school! Teachers have to ensure that their lessons get done by the end of the day, and they have to ensure that they can grade their students somehow. There isn't a culture of encouraging play, at least in the United States - just listen to the way that people excoriate any kind of game that isn't a competitive sport (Only dorks play board games and card games! Only nerds play role-playing games! And everyone knows that video games will make you violent and maladjusted!). 

But sometimes, when I was first learning how to install blogging platforms (back when GreyMatter was the gold standard in the early 2000s), it really did feel like I was playing a game - a game with my friends, all of whom were also interested in blogging, as opponents. We were all seeking to have the most technologically advanced blog. Perl was complex and HTML was difficult for me to figure out, but ultimately I knew that there was a ruleset - I just needed to apply myself and, sooner or later, I would figure out all the rules, and then I'd have mastered the game.

The key thing, for me, was that I wasn't ever afraid of breaking anything. As far as I was concerned, I was playing around in a sandbox. Nothing I could do would really destroy anything - the worst thing that could possibly happen would be that I'd have to erase my blog and start over. Not a big deal. 

Now compare this to the way that things typically go in schools. Students are warned NOT to touch anything on their computers that they aren't directly told to (this is intended to prevent them from messing things up, and believe me, they get the picture). They are asked to produce very specific projects. If your spreadsheet doesn't work, you've failed. And the penalty here for failing is a bad grade and the disappointment of your teacher and, presumably, your parents. Even if your parents don't care, the world tells you that if you fail in school, you're going to be a failure in life. So, pretty much, there's no room for play there. The negative consequences are simply too high.

More than that, kids aren't encouraged to think of what they're doing in computer classes as playful. They're encouraged to think of it as work. Students are introduced to the concept of reading for pleasure, but when do we talk about programming for pleasure? And yet I, and many other people, have spent many pleasant and engrossing hours creating websites and figuring out programming and markup languages, simply as a hobby. That might not be everyone's cup of tea any more than reading is everyone's cup of tea, but...

This blog entry may be somewhat formless and confused, but I hope it might help us think about and discuss: is what we do in a classroom always "work"? Can it be "leisurely"? Can it be "playful"? Do we classify some activities as "work" and some as "leisure" automatically, no matter how much or little enjoyment we get out of them? Are these things endemic to the system, or are there workarounds? Does it make sense to try to find workarounds, or is that an attempt to fix something that ain't broken?

(And, by the way: The new site design will launch by the end of January. It will be much more accessible and up-to-date as far as code is concerned, and it will feature a new NML logo and much more information about all our various projects.)