Creative Technologies: Play, Purpose, and Learning in the Digital Classroom

In this episode, we explore how creative technologies can transform learning experiences across early childhood, primary and secondary classrooms. Discover how tools like digital cameras, tablets, digital storytelling apps and more can support playful, experimental, and purposeful learning — and why play-based approaches remain vital in the digital age. Learn how to balance tech with face-to-face interaction and foster creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking in your learners. 

Music by amado zapana from Pixabay

Transcript

Hi everyone — welcome back to Digital Pedagogy in Practice.

Today’s episode is going to dive into something that is really at the heart of future-focused teaching: Creative Technologies — and how we can use them to support not just technical skills, but creativity, collaboration and purposeful learning across all year levels.

Now, you’ve probably heard lots of terms thrown around — ICT, digital technology, creative technologies — so let’s start by unpacking what these mean.

Digital technology usually refers to anything electronic — apps, software, devices. ICT focuses on tools that help us communicate and manage information. 

But creative technologies? That’s where things get exciting — because here we’re talking about using technology in ways that enhance creativity, support human expression and encourage innovation.

Creative technologies can help learners design, create, collaborate, and imagine. They develop both critical and creative thinking, empathy, and even activism — helping students see how their ideas can actually lead to positive change in their world.

But for learners to think creatively — they need to be provided with opportunities to create. It’s not just about consuming content or clicking through screens. As educators, we need to give our students the space to imagine, experiment, and make.

And that’s where play comes in. Play isn’t just for young children — it’s essential across all ages. Whether it’s playful experimentation with digital tools, collaborative storytelling, or tinkering with design — creative play drives curiosity and engagement.

You might think of play as spontaneous, but within education, it’s actually quite sophisticated — supporting meaning-making, enriched communication, and social interaction.

There’s a fantastic framework I want to share — called the Technology and Play Framework. It helps us as educators plan learning experiences that blend creative, experimental, and purposeful activities using technology.

Creative activities are hands-on, using imagination and interactions. Our educator goal is to provide materials, tools and technologies that can be used in multiple ways and encourage broader participation so that learners’ imaginations have plenty of room – for example, providing the students with clay and imotion software to make an animation.

 Experimental activities are also concerned with creativity, but in conjunction with the exploration of processes, with how things work, and with how something might change if you move or manipulate this or change that— for example, learning coding through programming robots, or how to design a prototype using TinkerCad software.

 Purposeful activities are linked to specific learning outcomes. For the educator, the focus might be associated with the curriculum and helping learners meet intended learning outcomes or to show their application and understanding of specific content knowledge. For the learner, purposeful activity could be working with particular technologies to present knowledge and understandings  - for example using a green screen to record a news report about what they have learned about local coastal erosion in Science.

Other great examples of technology used to demonstrate learning include:

• Creating a digital story with apps like Book Creator
• Demonstrating maths number understanding by programming a Bee Bot to stop on a specific number
• Using Makey Makey and Scratch software to create interactive posters about the Solar system
• Creating Virtual Reality (VR) content using a 360 deg camera and Merge EDU to create a virtual tour of the school for new students

These tools are flexible and adaptable — and most importantly, they let students be active creators rather than passive users.

And here’s something really important — technology should never replace the joy of face-to-face learning or time spent in nature, active play, or hands-on making. It should complement, enhance — but not take over.

In fact, sometimes unplugged play — like acting out an algorithm with friends pretending to be robots — can build stronger understanding of a concept than engaging with coding software.

I love Mitchel Resnick’s ‘kindergarten-style spiral’ — imagine, create, play, share, reflect, imagine again. And that’s exactly the mindset we want to encourage — not just for 5-year-olds, but for learners of all ages, including adults. Creativity is a life-long process.

As you think about using creative technologies in your own teaching — remember to ask:

• How is this helping learners create meaning?
• How is it enriching communication or collaboration?
• How is it encouraging curiosity, experimentation, and expression?

And most of all — how can we keep it playful, purposeful, and balanced with hands-on experiences off devices?

That’s it for today’s episode — thanks for listening, and I hope this inspires you to bring more creativity and joyful learning into your classrooms.