Learning Ecosystems

Children have wild imaginations. Take Max from Maurice Sendak’s illustrated classic Where the Wild Things Are, whose mischievous tantrums cause his room to sprout into a lush, inhabited forest. In a similar experience of my own, I can recall a particular elementary school gym class, in which the gym was transformed into the perilous domain of a sword-wielding ‘gorilla’—played by my gym teacher. The masked predator hid behind colossal trees of rolled blue gymnastic mats and tangled cargo net vines before springing out to prey on us hysterical, spritely youth.

[All photos © Kim Wendt and Rosan Bosch]

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Addendum on 1/12/12:

• The Pedagogy of Play and the Role of Technology in Learning — from pbs.org/mediashift by Aran Levasseur