I spoke at a session of the ESRC Seminar Series – Play, Creativity and Digital Cultures. I explored how the notion of informal learning is mobilised in discussion about learning, play and educational policy especially in relation to the ways we talk about new technologies and learning outside the school – in the home and in peer culture. I surveyed some of the ways that the notion of Informal Learning has been defined and used in research about children and media culture as well as discussing problems in defining the term. I ended up by describing how Informal Learning is used in debate about changing sites of learning in educational policy, in the consumer marketplace and in learning theory and concluded by drawing parallels in the way Informal Learning is used to how the idea of the new literacies were developed with similar strategic and political aspirations.