Assembling virtual play in the classroom

This chapter explores what happens as machines (computers, laptops or iPads) that display virtual worlds (imaginative/semiotic environments) arrive in classrooms (rooms populated by young and not-so-young humans and things). Documenting how such worlds have become more commonplace in educational contexts, the chapter explores the complex ways in which children make meaning as their on and off screen play entangles with a web of practices. It considers the multiple ways in how we, as educators and researchers participate in the assembling and re-assembling of specific episodes or instances of virtual play, and proposes that a ‘mood of enchantment’ can alert us to important questions and possibilities for pedagogy and practice when working in on/offscreen sites in educational contexts.