With the Easter holiday just around the corner, we urge you to delve into this month’s newsletter with a cuppa and a chocolate or two.
Playful Learning Association News
The programme for our summer Conference Playful Learning 2024, is now out! Everyone who submitted a session should now have had feedback – and we’re sorry we couldn’t fit everyone in as they were such an imaginative and playful set of submission! This year we had a record number of submissions and only 50% were able to be accepted. If you didn’t make it, do please share your work through this round-up or our in-person events. If you are planning to attend the conference, note that early bird booking is available until March 31st.
There are still a few spaces left at our next in-person event at the University of York, 23-24th May 2024. This will be exploring the theme of “Playfulness and Hope”.
For those on our mailing list, this month’s email, and all future mails from the PLA, will be sent using JISCmail. You can subscribe (and unsubscribe)via JiscMail directly. This is new for us, so do get in touch, or resubscribe if you didn’t get the email!
Member news
All members are welcome to send in news to share with the PLA. Contact Katie Piatt or connect with #PlayLearn on Instagram, LinkedIn or X/Twitter.
Alison James would like to let you know about the latest phase of her study on The Value of Play in HE. It came out two months before the launch of ChatGPT and the subsequent explosion of interest and activity concerning generative AI in HE. As a result, Alison would like to fill the gap in her study by carrying out a follow up exploration of how academics and others in universities are engaging in play-based and playful learning using generative AI. She is calling the exploration PLAYI and information about it, and how to contribute, can be found on her website.
Roger Saunders is running a “Create your own card game” workshop for anyone who is interested in having Roger visit their institution (distance permitting) in June/July. Roger also hosts the L&T Chat Show podcast which includes episodes on sheepdog teaching, productive failure and using rocks in teaching. Roger is on the lookout for anyone who would like to talk about their own experiences with playful learning. Get in touch with Roger directly about these opportunities.
Andy Walsh is running an “Introduction to Playful Leadership” session on Monday 3rd June. This session will introduce some key principles of Playful Leadership, which aims to develop a culture of playfulness within teams. Playful Leadership is NOT about constantly playing yourself as a leader, but creating an environment that is psychologically safe for team members to take a playful approach to work, in the situations that it makes sense for them to do so, boosting creativity, problem solving, job satisfaction, and productivity. Andy has defined Playful Leadership not as someone who has to constantly play themselves, but enabling playfulness to grow in others and have 12 principles for Playful Leadership that you will cover in the workshop