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It is a biological mechanism for making learning enjoyable.

Play helps meld emotion into the experience of learning.

If a child is denied the opportunity to play, the body and mind fight back.

Play allows children to let off steam

positive emotions broaden the scope of attention and increase cognitive flexibility.  Why not embrace the tool in the curriculum?  

When school becomes a stressful place for a child, it is no longer a supportive, positive learning environment

teachers at traditional schools can adapt their classrooms to include more choices, more creativity, and more open play

Play has become a luxury – available in private schools that espouse progressive learning principles, but crowded out of public schools by a teach-to-the-test mentality.

Despite increasing research on play and emotion, relatively few studies of play within the school environment exist.

Increasingly, educators are calling for a return (link is external) to the greater integration of play into elementary education.

Fredrickson

extensive research showing that the production and maintenance of an online course can be even more expensive than its offline counterpart.

the potential of new technology is not in maintaining the status quo but in upending it.

New and emerging technologies can instead be used to tweak or enhance existing structures and systems in ways that leverage their particular educational affordances.

we can view this as an opportunity to applaud the enormous effort to flexibly adapt to new educational modes under unprecedented circumstances — and, as the dust settles, invite these professionals (rather than corporations or venture capitalists) to be the ones to chart the course forward.