APD Week 4 - Play and Place

Theme

My first thought of this week's theme "play and place" is playgrounds or theme parks, which are places designed with the purpose of play. However, I remembered when I was a kid, I was obsessed with the idea of being a bus cashier to the point where I made props and imagined myself driving the bus and doing tours around the whole house. As a child, we had this ability of imaginative play where we made up our own rules, worlds and narratives, regardless of the location. A child is able to use a digital drawing program to create an imaginative play scenario on the screen (Bird, 2018). For the theme this week, I want to focus on the area under the bed, which is a place that often triggers fear in most people, and turn it into somethings that sparks curiosity.

Context

My main inspiration comes from the mythical creature bogeyman and the scary monsters under the bed, which are often used by adults as negative reinforcements to terrify children into good behaviour. I don't want kids to be scared of their own rooms and grow up just to find out it's all fictional and they let the negative feeling occupied their minds for nothing. So, with the modern day technology being so accessible to everyone, I wanted to explore the ability of recontextualizing places in a digital context, and created a web game called Spotting Monsters.

Method

I made a browser game with HTML coding where you use the mouse as a torch and move it around to spot different monsters under the bed in the dark. The monsters are all over the place, every time you find one, click on it and a message will pop up saying 'You found me!'. I think this is a good way to let children get used to the space under the bed by exploring and interacting with the environment, and hopefully become less afraid of their own bed and sleep better at night.

Reflection

The biggest challenge this week was that the web coding took most of the time. If possible, I would like to include more characters in the game. Alternatively, this game also has the potential to be more educational, teaching kids about personal hygiene, or it can be a funny simulator that showcase a variety of silly monsters.

Reference

Bird, J., 2018. “This is pretend. We are just playing.” Exploring young children’s imaginative play with, and educators’ provision of, digital technologies in play-based settings.. Doctor. UNIVERSITY OF NEW ENGLAND.

Youtube Link: https://youtu.be/OxoauaVd548