Educational Implications of Play with Computers

Any examination of the implications of play with computers requires specifying the meaning of the term play and describing what children typically do with computers. Those who have studied and theorized about play have conceived of it as being anything from dark, messy, and barbaric (SuttonSmith, 1981) to a beneficial, voluntary match between challenge and skills unrelated to real-life consequences (Csikszentmihalyi, 1979).