ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how makerspace-style workshops can provide opportunities for children to play and make in relation to emerging virtual reality (VR) technologies and software. It describes what is known about children’s use of VR for entertainment and begins a unique exploration of how they use this technology for making and creativity, which is an entirely new field of enquiry. The chapter discusses that showcase the ways in which the workshops allowed children to understand the affordances of VR and how creating with physical materials proved to be as immersive, if not more so, than VR. Due to the open-ended nature of the workshop design, the data showed very clearly that children were equally invested in the process of building with physical materials as they were in the opportunity to use VR. Although academic research on children’s VR use for entertainment remains unpublished, there is a growing body of literature that shows it is a beneficial technology for child health.
