Learning Playground 🏀 The Playful Path: Harnessing play for effective learning
For this fireside chat, we are bringing together three renowned researchers and practitioners to shed light on the art of play and playfulness as powerful tools for enhancing learning outcomes. 🔥
Join us and discover how play can ignite curiosity, foster creativity, and deepen understanding across various educational settings. Whether you're an educator, learning designer, or lifelong learner, this event offers a unique opportunity to unlock the secrets of play and embark on a playful journey toward more effective and joyful learning experiences.
In this fireside chat, we'll explore:
🧩 The potential of play and playfulness in learning design to ignite curiosity, foster creativity, and enhance engagement.
💪 Actionable approaches to incorporate play and playfulness into learning design, promoting active participation, problem-solving, critical thinking, and social-emotional development.
🥳 How playfulness can deepen understanding and facilitate lifelong learning, leveraging cognitive and psychological mechanisms to create more effective and enjoyable learning experiences.
Bring your most wicked questions related to play and learning, as you'll have the opportunity to contribute to the conversation! 💡
About the hosts:
David Gagnon is the Director of Field Day, an education research laboratory at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research. Composed of a diverse team of educational researchers, software engineers, artists and storytellers, his lab is focused on the intersection of situated and sociocultural learning theories with digital media, specifically video games, mobile technology and mixed reality. Field Day’s games have won numerous awards and are used by hundreds of thousands of learners yearly.
Jennifer Kumer is an award-winning applied game designer, play-based toolkit maker, and the passionate founder of Play Tools Design. She's on a mission to guide thought leaders and change makers in developing and launching captivating play-based tools. Through a co-creative approach, she combines her knowledge of game mechanics, design thinking, and strategic consulting to craft unique and immersive learning solutions. Jennifer's passion lies in helping thought leaders unlock their creative potential, amplify their message, and revolutionize the way they connect with their communities. With her guidance, you'll embark on a transformative journey, harnessing the power of play to captivate, inspire, and create meaningful change. When Jennifer isn't designing games, she's creating intuitive textile artworks, playing games with friends, and seeking out new perspectives through travel.
David Newman, PhD is a Creativity Alchemist, Facilitator, Educator and Coach inspiring and unleashing creativity through his teaching, workshop facilitation, and coaching. He uses game-based learning to teach media history, and also teaches creativity at the University of British Columbia. David is also a co-founder of Creatific Culture Labs, whose mission is to help organisations unleash creativity, empower innovation, and develop organisational cultures enabling transformative change for good in the world.
The Butter Learning Playground is a series of seven sessions exploring practical applications of play, playfulness, and creativity to learning experience design, employee experience design, collaboration, workshop design, and facilitation.
For the smoothest experience, do join using Google Chrome on a laptop or PC or download our desktop app. Since we're usually using MURAL or Miro in our workshops, we recommend joining in with your ad blockers turned off (temporarily) and not in incognito mode.