An interdisciplinary group of researchers at the MIT Media Laboratory proposes to envision and conceive playground activities for the 21st century. The playground fulfills a central role in children's lives because it represents an island of freedom within their everyday experience. In these special places, children of different ages play, interact, challenge themselves, and progress at their own pace. Given the importance of playgrounds in the past, what will be their role in the future? In recent decades, technology has entered almost every field of our lives and our children's lives. Can technology enhance children’s play experiences in the playground, or should playgrounds stay technology-free?

We are exploring if certain careful interventions in playgrounds could enhance current activities and also prepare environments for new kinds of play and potentially also learning. This summer, we aim to develop one idea for a "reactive and active" playground activity from concept to working prototype through an open-ended and participatory process. Working closely with the children, education professionals and facilities managers at the Technology Children's Center at MIT's Stata Center (see image to the right), we will lead a participatory design development process and learn from the field as we study a domain which could greatly benefit from a dual approach of education and technology research.