ABSTRACT
Traditionally, children outside school hours are thought of as being out of education, unless they are doing homework, but new information technology may demand that we reassess the relationship between learning and playing. Homes contain radios, television sets, telephones, audiocassette players and pocket calculators as standard items, these days. Children have relatively free access to such items for hours every day, and use that access for considerable informal learning, particularly from television. Teletext, microcomputers, videotext, videocassette records and players, and videodisc players are still fairly unusual in homes, but where they exist children are gaining access to them, again for informal learning. Preschoolers vary in age in different Western countries, some being as old as six, but usually they are aged three, four and five. The Sesame Place example takes us on to consider informal learning by older children, up to adolescence.
