The Gilded Cage of our own make.

As I've been instructing people over the years I find  that there has been an evolution of "play" for children that may be cause for concern. From early history play for children often mimicked what their fathers and mothers did for their respective jobs. From early faming,

 to the building blocks of the assembly line.

 

I recall the trucker CB radio craze,

 the Radio Shack walkie talkies,

And all the action figures from My Little Pony to Gi Joe. 

The one characteristic all these things had in common was the world of imagination and make-believe.  As a teacher I've noticed that today's student has little point of reference in the space of creative thinking. Today, we have many imaginative worlds that are available to us on our cell phones. Some would argue that we have more reference material than ever on our devices. I've enjoyed playing many computer games where it seemed like the sky was the limit, but when you examine in greater detail how the software was made in almost all cases the same scenario appears. You play a character that has a limited number of objects or opportunities to choose from.

Depending on your choices your character does well or not. Random number generation helps, but still you have only few options that can be picked. 

Its like always playing a multiple choice test vs free writing. There is also little or no collaborative opportunities in these mini games on our phones. In the past children would play together and bounce ideas off each other and see how to act under imaginative experiences. Children would explore the concepts of gender roles playing "house." Boys would have unlimited outside play thinking of strategy as army men doing battle. Today's children often have a favorite hero with a set of abilities and some kind of limit is place on them, however, when you turn off the screen the world that hero lives in goes away. 

In my line of work children grown to adulthood are asked to do troubleshooting and work together in teams.  This is almost a new concept for many of them. They lack some of the basic abilities to imagine the solution. There is no point of reference to something that can be tried even if information is given to them. The logical steps and seeing how the objects work together is often troublesome. This is alarming because that is exactly what cell phone games do, give people some foundation to make the choices on. 

In discussions on this topic with my fellow coaches, I find that I'm looking for answers to how we can help people break out of the pre-defined world and think outside a framework. The issue with coming up with a solution is that I'm so fixed on the "fun" I'm having in those predefined worlds. To say, Just put down the phone, is so easy to say, but how quickly do those same people grab for their phone after they put it down. That is when an idea came to mind. Rather than always diving into a world on the phone, can we have the phone join us in our world? Many know that there are augmented reality type games that have variables that are hard to predict because of the interaction in the real world. You may recall the use of GPS in a treasure hunt game called Geocaching? Well, What if that same concept was applied to phones, We saw it work with "Ingress" a game that was developed to play on your phone in the real world, it got people out and moving. Later, with Pokémon Go it was a similar concept. However, the only issue I saw there was that the real world was still just a backdrop for the game that was again limited to what was done on your phone. However, an interesting thing happened to me as I went for my daily walk. I found that the places where I had played popped back into my mind as I passed those locations again. So that there was some mental imagination that was sparked. That is when I knew there is something to this. I hope that in the future we get augmented reality games that allow us to "play" outside again with our technology giving us more to think about vs choices to be made. How would it be to have a spark of thought and then ask your virtual assistant a question that unlocks other options in a game. I recall a similar situation when playing an old computer game "Where in the World is Carmon Sandiego?" You could go to an Atlas book or a dictionary and get real world info to help you play the game and the fun thing was it worked. 

I think the future of leaning is very bright with augmented reality. VR has a place, but again, that is not quite the direction I'm thinking will be the best benefit. We need to get into the real world again, and spark imagination to inspire invention, innovation and our ability to problem solve. I have no illusion that we will not take our phones with us. They shosuld be a tool to assist us not a limit we place on ourselves.