Digital Child x ACMI Seminar: The Social Worlds of Children’s Digital Play

Play is at the very heart of childhood – an essential part of children’s learning and development. Children’s play now involves the use of both non-digital resources and digital technologies, where children create, explore, and actively engage in meaningful activities.

We know that digital play is a major part of the diverse social worlds that children experience. These worlds include home, education settings, and within contexts of informal learning such as museums, galleries, and theme parks.

But what is ‘digital play’ and what constitutes ‘good’ digital play? And what does digital play look like in practice in different contexts?

Families, teachers, educators, EdTech developers, and designers of community digital displays and exhibitions all face this challenge of understanding the role of ‘the digital’ in children’s play. Additionally, early childhood frameworks and curriculum guidelines now mandate that teachers support young children to explore, use, design and produce digital technologies – for children’s both personal and social needs, all with the aim to encourage confidence, problem solving, creativity, and new ways of thinking. This means that this challenge of understanding ‘the digital’ when it comes to children’s play in their various social worlds is an urgent one for all.

In this next Digital Child x ACMI seminar, teachers, researchers, and leading experts in digital play will come together to talk about digital play from four different perspectives:

· Children’s digital play in the home

· Children’s digital play in the early years of schooling

· Children’s digital play in informal learning contexts

· The business of digital play

This event will bring together a range of audiences to address these questions and to broaden our understandings of digital play through open conversation and informal networking.