A Spring update from the PLA for you all! The daffodils are out, the hares are racing about the fields near me, and we’ve lots to share with you.
Our next in person meet up is coming up soon and there aren’t many places left before we’re full, so get your place booked quickly now if you want to come – we’re in Glasgow at the University of Strathclyde on 22nd and 23rd May. The theme for this event is “Permission to Play”. This might relate to ways of engaging learners, exploring attitudes to play or challenges you have faced – feel free to interpret the theme as you wish. Take a look at what we did at our last (online) meet up on the Padlet.
On a bigger scale than the Glasgow event, the Playful Learning Conference is now open for bookings! It will take place on 2nd – 4th July 2025 at the University of Sussex in Brighton and our theme is Surprise and Disguise. It sold out quickly last year, so again, get those tickets now if you want to come along and play! There are also 3 full scholarships available this year for anyone who would struggle to attend due to socio-economic, equality or diversity reasons. Please email playlearnconf@gmail.com before 31st March 2025, with the title “Scholarship Enquiry” to tell us how we might help you attend.
Roger Saunders’ latest podcast was out this week on virtual escape rooms with Emily Harper and Lauren Traczykowski which we’re sure will interest many of you. He’s also interested in visiting colleagues at their institutions if anyone would like a workshop on creating card games for teaching – drop him a line at roger.saunders@dmu.ac.uk
On the same theme, Emma Gillaspy flagged up that she wrote an open book chapter with colleagues at UCLAN around designing online escape rooms https://openpress.sussex.ac.uk/fromlabtolaptop/chapter/chapter-10-playful-practicals-breaking-free-from-educational-norms-with-online-escape-rooms/ and she also flags up Rachelle Rawlinson’s work https://doi.org/10.34190/ejel.21.7.3182. She also points towards a big collection of resources around playful learning that includes some escape room examples and facilitator guides here: https://uclan.padlet.org/EGillaspy/playful
Some sneaky advance news too, Liz Cable has now finalised details with https://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/ (29th-31st May, the weekend after the last May bank holiday) about the inaugural academic track this year. Watch out for details very soon from Liz!
Lots of lovely things you might be able to get involved with in this update, but there’s more… we’re also pondering the location of the next (November) meet-up after having an offer recently, in addition to another online one after the success of the February online meeting. News on these will follow at a later date.