On Friday November 27th we held our second online event, focussed on the successes and failures of moving your activities online (see agenda and event details).

Trial and Tribulations: The day started with Alex Moseley giving members an opportunity to share the successes and failures they have had in moving their playful courses/teaching into an online delivery format, with lots of case studies from Daisy Abbott.

Links and comments from this session:

• Miro – used by Daisy to lead us through her examples
• Escape Team – for making escape games. One of Daisy’s Maths week activities using the Escape Team app: escape-team.com/play/MI-BCC3-39A8
• Link to Playingcards.io – online game platform: Example research game from Diasy playingcards.io/qhvqmv
• Book: Playful Learning: Events and Activities to Engage Adults
• Here’s a great “Spin the Wheel” you can customise and use for free: wheeldecide.com
• Book: Unlocking the Potential of Puzzle-based Learning
• Flippity – making online flash cards
• “Keeping sane is essential – Some sucesses = I attended meetings dressed as different characters during first lockdown. I was told that it helped teammates too as it brought a smile to their faces. 😎”
• “Another success for me was when I had to teach staff how to use Quizzes I chose a non-academic subject that I was passionate about as the example topic. So my Professors had a quiz session revolving around Comicbook Superheros and their movie adaptations. And everything I taught was littered with Lego characters to illustrate points. Just to introduce playfulness at a very stressful time for our academic staff.”
• “I have been using some of the tasks from task master – guessing what costume I had – making anatomical items out of random objects….some good ideas!”
• “We are running our online sepsis escape room (built using thinglink and flippity) for the first time with medical and nursing students”
• “We’ve also discovered Zoom filters, and spent most of our team meeting yesterday giving ourselves beards, or turning into reindeer.”

Game 1: Catastrophic: Pen Holland introduces her card game, and explained how she had converted from physical cards to online: catastrophic.york.ac.uk

Links and comments from this session:

• HTML learning tool – html-online.com/editor
• Tabletopia – online boardgame design/play platform
• Catastrophic tabletopia.com/playground/catastrophic-dj7px6/play-now – multiplayer mode
• Catastrophic. tabletopia.com/playground/catastrophic-efjwiu/play-now – solo mode
• Educational games to buy: genius-games.eu
• “The game that really inspired me in terms of constructing a thing and then having events destroy it was Galaxy Truckers. My all-time favourite tabletop game”
• “That’s quite an interesting idea – having a standard game platform that you help students to pick up first, then have different games/activities running on it over several courses”

Game 2 and A Challenge: Jane Secker and Chris Morrison introduced their online version of the Copyright Card Game and then challenged the group to come up with creative ways to convert their Publishing Trap game online.

Links and comments from this session:

• “To film a board game from above, some options: – Add a “boom arm” to your tripod – Add a clamp flexible desk mount”
• Copyright the Card Game online
• Here’s a related game to explore, if you haven’t seen it: boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3547/survival-witless
• Instant Dice: eslkidsgames.com/classroom-dice
• I’ve just published a paper about dialogic learning and game mechanics which support it: radar.gsa.ac.uk/7343
• “The problem with big things in the board like that is that while they are attractive and eye catching, they block view of the board and get in the way. Everdell has a great big tree that is great to see, but gets in the way.”
• Flipity Badge Tracker
• “Miro or Jamboard might work to track simple decisions in a way that’s closer to your original board”
• “Don’t get stuck in the trap of not being able to let things go in game design. I use the analogy of the monkey with his paw trapped in the walnut jar because he wouldn’t let go of the nut – you can get stuck in game design hanging on to something because you don’t want to let it go, even if it is hampering you.”

We ended the day with Katie Piatt’s Friday afternoon puzzle challenge – thinking about how we can create education puzzles to use in escape rooms and teaching. But no spoilers here about what happened, as Katie will be sharing the best puzzles on Twitter as we approach the holiday break.

Links and comments from this session:

• We failed to have a goat join this session – but we tried! cronkshawfoldfarm.co.uk/goatsonzoom
• Spot the difference with Goats: thingsesque.com/goat-difference-spot (it’s hard!)
• MI5 puzzles: mi5.gov.uk/careers/quizzes
• “It’s like the technology overhead though -you don’t want the puzzle solving process to be too frustrating and take away from the satisfaction of getting the answer”
• Create convincing newspaper clippings: fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp

Downtime

In the gaps between sessions, as always, we played! This time we had a wordsearch, a design-your-own-bingo board and a describe-your-week in 3 emojis challenge:

Thanks to everyone who presented, attended or just dropped in to see what we are up to! We’d love to hear what you thought of the event and how we can provide more opportunities for you to get involved with the PLA.

An online PLA event focussed on the successes and failures of moving your activities online, will be held on Friday November 27th.

This will be a day-long online event where you can dip in and out of sessions as you wish. Rather than presentations, there will be facilitated sessions on topics where you can bring along your own examples for sharing and discuss and test ideas. There will also be games and challenges to get involved with.

No booking required – the session will take place on Blackboard Collaborate.

Programme – drop in and out of sessions as you wish

9:30 – 10:30 Trial and Tribulations – Alex Moseley and Daisy Abbott

An opportunity to share the successes and failures you’ve all had in moving your playful courses/teaching into an online delivery format. Daisy will start us off with a tale of highs and woes.

Please bring along your own examples of what has gone well and what has gone wrong for sharing (eg a screenshot, screen-sharing or just a good story) or just listen and discuss other’s examples.

10:45 – 12:15 Game 1: Catastrophic – Pen Holland

Pen will introduce the game, then we’ll break up in groups to play it. We’ll then finish with an open discussion where we can share our thoughts, and think about other opportunities for online games of this type.

12:15 – 12:45 LUNCH BREAK

12:45 – 2:00 Game 2 and A Challenge – Jane Secker, Chris Morrison

We’ll play an online version of the Copyright Card Game get us warmed up. Then we have a design challenge for you: we have another board game we’d like to run online, and want you to help us think of the most creative way to do it!

2:15 – 3:30 Friday afternoon puzzle challenge – Katie Piatt

See you all there – no booking required, just drop in!

PLAy Date: We had such a good response to our first online event we have decided to do it again! Put Friday November 27th in your diary now and we’ll update you on plans nearer the time. If you would like to offer a session/demo/playtest then drop us a line and we’ll share the programme in next month’s round-up.

Meet Andrew Walsh – a most unusual profile for you this month. I am assured it is all completely true…

Meet Maarten Koeners… again. We featured Maarten last month but failed to notice all the bonus links he had provided in his bio, so do try his profile again, this time with extra links!

Playful News

The Centre for HE Futures (CHEF) at Aarhus University is running their annual Philosophy and Play lecture series online this year, with free events coming up later this month and through November. Information and sign up available on their web site.

Daisy Abbott alerted us to Escape Team : a phone-and-paper immersive puzzle game framework. There are a couple of free games to download and play on their website, but Daisy also shared her work with primary maths students at her local primary school in Glasgow, where she has created seven free mathematical puzzles for you to test your skills on (and see whether you could apply the approach to your own adult context).

All that’s left is to wish you all good luck with the first few weeks of term, prepare your favourite gifs and jokes for when the technology fails you and see you next month!

Katie & Alex

xx

Each month we will introduce a PLA member through 5 photos telling their Playful Learning journey. This month, we introduce you to…

Andrew Walsh

Andrew Walsh was born on the blighted, desolate planet of Berm in the system of Ham. He spent his youth in Berm-in-Ham, a handsome chap with his single eye and generous fangs, until he was kidnapped by a troupe of library pirates and taken to Earth. Forced to take part in their shenanigans, while disguised as a Human, he eventually escaped and went into hiding as a librarian, blending in as effectively as he could with the knowledge gained from these wicked pirates.

Working quietly in Yorkshire, he slowly realised that he wasn’t meant to be sending his students to sleep during his library teaching, and that there were other options than reciting PowerPoint bullet points at them until they were bored into submission.

He introduced games, then increasing amounts of play into his teaching, and at this time he even went so far as making a couple of mini-assistants to help him muck about more effectively. One of these mini-assistants told her school friends that Andrew was a librarian who taught grownups how to play, or a Play-Brarian. The other just seems obsessed about bottom related jokes.

He has been puzzled about why the humans need permission to play, and feel they cannot play in a lot of settings. He’s researched and written on this idea of permission to play, runs training sessions on several playful aspects of learning and teaching (to try and lead more pirate librarians away from their evil ways), has written a few books, journal articles, and other serious sounding nonsense, and is currently trying to work out what it really means to be a playful leader or manager (so that he has further excuses to muck about).

As a reward for pretending to play for serious reasons, he was made a National Teaching Fellow a few years ago, is editor of the Journal of Play in Adulthood, and is keen on using the phrase Adult Play as much as possible until people stop sniggering that it sounds vaguely rude.

Since a tragic accident involving a Smurf, a moist towelette, and a hedgetrimmer in 2007, Andrew has been unable to tell lies, proving the complete truth of this short bio.

Hello Playful Colleagues and welcome to our September round-up!

This month’s featured member profile is Maarten Koeners

Member News:

Andrew Walsh: Come and join the Adult Play Network! I’m trying to raise the first year platform fees for a network that aims to bring more play to all aspects of people’s lives. Members can get tips, ideas, discussion, challenges, etc around playing as a “grown-up”. Importantly, it also includes the ability to host (free or paid for) online courses, so that a range of us can offer training through the platform, hopefully allowing members to discover training / trainers they wouldn’t otherwise come across. The crowdfunder runs to 18^th September: share it around your networks too please! Thanks.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lancsfairytales/adult-play-network-bringing-more-play-into-adult-lives

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lancsfairytales/adult-play-network-bringing-more-play-into-adult-lives?ref=j8vrsf

Martyn Ruks: We publicly launched our new online team activity, described as “remote teamworking skills with added goblins” – Knightmare Live – The Online Quest Trailer

ECGBL in Brighton – online 23-25th Sept

The long-running European conference on games based learning (ECGBL) is being held online this year, originally planned to be in Brighton. Katie is hosting on behalf of the University of Brighton, with PLA members Nic and Alex keynoting. Online registration is £50, and available from the ECGBL site.

That’s it for this month. Good luck to everyone preparing/delivering teaching/training/learning for the coming Autumn. We’ll be hosting another PLAy live event mid-Autumn to find out how play has been helping you in these strange times.

Each month we will introduce a PLA member through 5 photos telling their Playful Learning journey. This month, we introduce you to…

Maarten Koeners studies and teaches integrative physiology at the University of Exeter. He integrates insights in the physiology of play and playful learning with his academic practice. Recently he established the Playful University Club, an exciting initiative to form global connections on the creation of holistic pedagogic practices for both students and educators. He aims to enable individual and institutional play and playfulness to foster a culture that supports joyous, authentic transition to the co creation of knowledge and skills, while counteracting a number of barriers to creativity and wellbeing.

As a postdoctoral researcher I experienced a steady decline of my mental resilience and creativity until I re connected with my own playfulness. See this blog for my personal story of becoming a Playful Academic. My family, and my own inner child continue to inspire me.

Inspired by Stuart Brown’s book Play I am studying the physiology of play – which so far has resulted in this publication and an interactive workshop, both on the relevance of the biology of play for higher education.

“Everybody can be extraordinary, you just need to find your inner Hero. Find your superpowers and draw yourself as a Superhero. Share a photo of your drawing or a description of your superpowers” This Scavenger Hunt prompt was part of a workshop on “Supporting a compassionate community in higher education using play” that I facilitated for the First and Further Year Experience Forum at UTS (Sydney). See this blog from a participant giving a wonderful overview of the activities we did.

Together with Joe Francis and Steph Comley we have started The Playful University Club to promote a culture that can foster play within the University by creating capacity for awareness, uptake, and exposure of play and playful learning. This includes monthly club meetings, game nights, game development, and hosting workshops, playful activities, fieldtrips, a fellowship and a festival. See this video for more information.

Me in action to playfully promote movement during one of the present-day ubiquitous virtual meetings.

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Thanks for sharing your story and your photos Maarten.

If you are unlucky, you might be selected as next month’s sacrifice chosen member – we will be in touch!

Happy Birthday to the PLA – we are 1! From small beginnings last August, we’ve grown to 262 members.

August Featured Member – Mathias Poulsen

Would you like to be featured? Send through 5 photos with captions to tell your playful journey and we’ll include you to appear, one a month!

News from the PLA members:

• Nia Wearn and Emma Bearman are co-hosting an open virtual unconference/meeting on August 10th talking amongst other things about playful experiences on virtual platforms. ‘Learning online: what we have learned in the last 4 months’ Zoom event link
• New podcast featuring PLA member Andrew Walsh Who Gives You Permission to Play?
• New article, also from Andrew Walsh Playful Learning for Information Literacy Development

New book out this week – Bernie DeKoven’s posthumous yet fittingly titled The Infinite Playground

• “Bernie “Blue” DeKoven was a designer and advocate of play who influenced generations of players and designers. He deeply informed my own understanding of how games and play provide ways of understanding ourselves, each other, and the world. As he battled cancer in his final days, game designer Holly Gramazio worked closely with Bernie on the manuscript, which Celia Pearce and I helped edit into final form. The result is a profound and delightful work that sings with Bernie’s wit and wisdom on every page.” Eric Zimmerman

That’s all for now – keep us updated with your news over the summer and see you in September!

Katie and Alex x

Each month we will introduce a PLA member through 5 photos telling their Playful Learning journey. This month, we introduce you to…

Mathias Poulsen: After years of futile search for a meaningful job title, Mathias decided to embrace his inner activist, labelling himself as a play activist (making up titles was a clear advantage of being self-employed). He believes that we, the people of the play community, can change the world for the better by improving the conditions for play to thrive everywhere. He works at Design for Play, Design School Kolding, and has founded the play festival CounterPlay and the Danish Play Think Tank.

This is where my play journey started. Or a little over a year earlier, of course. When I look at this photo, a few things come to mind:

1: Dogs are great. I want a dog again.

2: My memories of childhood are a blurry, fortunate mess of school, video games and randomly roaming the countryside with my friends.

3: Childhood may be where play begins, but it is certainly not where it ends – or it shouldn’t be, at least. I don’t think play is so much about preparing us for life or adulthood or anything, really, but rather that play simply is life, right here, right now. If play does prepare us for something, it’s to become better players who lead more playful lives.

While a simple high-five may not exactly be the most playful thing you can think of, sometimes, that’s everything you need to retain the connection to your playful self. This photo is from one of the harder situations I have experienced, yet what stands out is our desire to approach the challenges playfully.

Play can’t, shouldn’t, be limited to the easier periods of life when everything is “smooth sailing”, and play is not escapism from hardships either. On the contrary, it roots us, reminds us to be present and insists that there is hope and joy to be found – always. This is also why I think of play more as an approach to (all of) life than concrete activities.

When I founded the CounterPlay festival, I knew that it could only ever be sustained if I managed to cultivate a play community around the festival. In fact, the community itself would probably be the most valuable outcome I could hope for. To achieve this, or to achieve anything meaningful, really, I was and is convinced that trust is essential: trust in people and trust in play.

I have tried to live up to this over the years, failing many times in the process, yet every single event at every festival represents to me the trust we have in each other and in play. The book we made a few years back, “The Power of Play: Voices from the Play Community”, is probably the most tangible piece of evidence, because it grew out of a mutual trust that if we all made an effort, something meaningful would emerge (you can download it here: http://counterplay.org/files/PowerOfPlay_CounterPlay.pdf)

Play is quite often about touching the world around us – and each other, both in a literal and metaphorical sense. If play is a way of making sense of the world in which we live, we do so through our senses and through exploring the physical context and materials available. This shifts our focus from our heads and cognition to our hands and bodies, which seems to allow a more immediate experience and a deeper presence.

I’ve been conducting several workshops recently to explore how the matter of tactility influence play experiences, and what happens when we allow the flow of our hands through different materials to guide the experience. One thing I can say is that we almost always end places we probably wouldn’t have arrived at through thinking and talking alone.

I tend to assume that play is at least somewhat important for all of us and I mostly move in circles where this assumption is more or less implicitly agreed upon. I have made an effort to cultivate such communities and I cherish being part of them, but it also makes it easy to forget that many people remain skeptical of the value of play, at least outside of development and learning for children.

This photo is from a workshop in a project that was decidedly not about play, and where play was not immediately deemed relevant or even legitimate. In fact, I was a little intimidated to ask the participants to build a scenario out of my random selection of materials.  Luckily, in this and so many similar situations, people often end up embracing their playfulness, setting it free and exploring all the new, creative possibilities that is afforded by play. That is where I wish to go more often: to the places where play is less welcome.

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Thanks for sharing your story and your photos Mathias.

If you are unlucky, you might be selected as next month’s sacrifice chosen member – we will be in touch!

Hello Playful Pals – and welcome to your July round-up.

On Friday 26th July we held our first #PLA online event ‘Playful Approaches to Remote Teaching and Working’.

One of the playful ideas shared, was to ask students to share their interests or living arrangements through an emoji challenge. We tested this out in the session, and your challenge this month is to describe your own household in emojis… eg

To find out more about the event read our summary and explore the resources contributed in the event Padlet. And yes, feedback was really positive, so we plan on running a similar online event in September – watch this space and we’ll post details nearer the time.

Meet Rachelle. Our featured member for July is Rachelle O’Brien who tells us about growing up in a family of storytellers and hunting for dragon eggs in the forest.

Breaking out of lockdown

A number of established, and some new, escape room companies and teams have rapidly developed online versions of their games, and we’ve been hearing from PLA members who’ve tried these out as a way to ‘escape’ from lockdown and work meaningfully as an online community. Some of the games we and our members have tried and can recommend include:

• Online (digital) equivalent, where the team navigate a room together. For example, the Sapphire Project, The Panic Room, ClueHQ and even The Cyphstress, an epic beer-linked game from a brewer (actual beer optional).
• Physical (print-at-home) games for you to play with family or friends, or a group over live chat. We’ve particularly enjoyed ClueQuest’s developing list.
• Novel approaches, such as Escape One Algarve‘s games where a remote host actually moved around a real room, being the hands, eyes and ears of the remote team.

Until August, stay safe, playful folks!

Katie & Alex x

Each month we will introduce a PLA member through 5 photos telling their Playful Learning journey. This month, we introduce you to…

Rachelle O’Brien: A very serious Educational Developer at the University of Liverpool. That’s not quite true, I’m somewhat serious, but mostly not. I’m also trying to get my colleagues to refer to me as the ‘game master’ with mixed results – I have no idea why they’re resistant! I try to sprinkle playfulness everywhere I go, like glitter. Follow me on twitter for ponderings and the occasional blog post @rachelleeobrien

Level 1: Once upon a time…

I’m going to start by talking about my childhood. I’m from a family of storytellers. Not just in the book sense, there is no possibility of having a conversation without it involving a story of some description. This is just how we are as a family. I was always the lucky one as well, my mum was chief story reader because she always has the best character voices. I’ll never forget going camping and sitting around with all of my cousins (there are many) while mum read the BFG and various other Roald Dahl books to us.

The power of imagination is something I have always known. My first memories involve worlds of fantasy with castles and dragons, trials and tribulations and villains and heroes. Imaginary games shaped my childhood with climbing trees to escape lava fields and running around the school playground with my friends pretending to breathe fire.

Level 2: Becoming a dreamer

This imagination and curiosity was fuelled by my family. My mum always encouraged me to be curious and dream big while enabling me to dance to my own beat. Between her and my brother, they helped me to believe that anything was possible, if you worked hard enough. This is something that has stuck with me my whole life.

Then came Disney World. Where could be better to visit as a child with a wild imagination and an insatiable curiosity? It didn’t take long for me to fall in love. Castles, adventures and a place for my dreams and imagination to come alive. Disney World remains one of my favourite places in the world.

Level 3: Video games

It was as I moved into high school that life got a bit serious. Growing up is hard, especially when you realise the dream world you have been living in doesn’t reflect reality. Becoming a moody teenager, I wasn’t quite ready to let those stories go. It was at this point that I also discovered computers and the internet. I stumbled upon a game called Runescape, which I now know to be an MMORPG, but it had a killer story with quests and armour (and those all important dragons!).

I spent many hours of my teenage years in the fantasy lands of Falador and the Goblin Village, fishing, fighting and smelting. If I was really lucky, my brother would play on Runescape with me and help me. I was never particularly good at the game, I played for the social aspect and the immersion and escapism it provided. My brother will never let me forget the day I hacked his account (guessed his password) and stole his Dragon armour. We still discuss it today, even though it’s nearly 20 years ago!

And then one day, I stopped. I stopped playing. I stopped dreaming and having such an overactive imagination. I very suddenly became very serious and this lasted quite a while. We will call this ‘The Dark Times’.

Level 4: Finding what I’d lost

The Dark Times are sponsored by the mantra that ‘adults are serious and there is no time for play’.

This is how I thought, for a long time. I have no idea where it came from or why, but moody teenager turned into serious adult… and then it all changed, again.

My nephew and niece came along. I was honoured to be named their godmother and I remember at the time thinking that I needed to be serious because being a godparent is a big responsibility. For a long time, in The Dark Times, I was boring aunty, I didn’t do fun things because adults are serious. Spoiler, I was completely and utterly wrong. The most wrong I have ever been.

But then one day, I got bored of being boring. I decided that if I wanted to be the best aunty and godparent I could be, I needed to remember how to be fun. I needed to get out of The Dark Times and chill out, and figure out how to just go with it…. So I did.

My mum lives right near a forest, which became the magical forest and one of my key aunty duties became taking the children to the magical forest so the grownups could have a break. Before long, we started going on quests in the forest looking for ruins of buildings or treasure.

This is a picture of one of our most epic adventures. We all donned dragon glasses (swimming goggles) to go and search for dragon eggs. As you can see here, my niece found a real life dragon egg which we took home and hatched. We made sure to take our dragon finding backpacks filled with snacks (of course) to lure dragons and my nephew recorded and voiced over our adventure on his iPad. For the first time in my adult life, I lost track of time, we got completely lost and didn’t care and we just… went with it. I think this is what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi refers to when he talks about finding flow.

I vowed after experiencing the sheer joy of this experience to leave my boring aunty times behind and be the best aunty I can be by re-finding my curiosity and imagination. I’m proud to say, I haven’t disappointed… and I may have gone in the other direction completely! What can I say, I was always encouraged to be a dreamer!

Level 5: End game

Once I re-found that imagination, curiosity and gave myself permission to be playful, it was like a hole inside of me was being filled. Like I’d been missing something for a while and it was suddenly back again. It didn’t take long until this started shining out of my face like sunbeams (10 points if you got the Roald Dahl reference!) and I started looking at the world differently.

When I look at the world now I see it as a giant obstacle course – think floor is lava but on a life scale. I spend my days trying to traverse obstacles and figure out new paths and routes, sometimes dancing or singing on the way. I do make sure to remember to keep looking back to check out where I’ve come from and look forward to plot where I’m going. It can be messy, unpredictable and terrifyingly organised – but it’s me. Playfulness to me now is like Lego, it just fits.

So let’s bring my playful learning journey (so far) to a close by going full circle, back to a world of stories, of imagination, curiosity and dreaming – to Disney and in this pictures case, Disneyland. But this time as an adult.

Disney looks different from this angle. Is it because I’m not looking up quite so much now that I’ve grown a little bit taller? Or is it because I’m hyper-aware of detail, I want to learn everything, I have my eyes wide open and I’m looking for the obstacles? I’m not sure. It’s not a bad different, it’s a more appreciative one for me. The intricacies and attention to detail. The daring to dream and make the impossible a reality. Do you know that if Disney think up a ride and the ride system doesn’t exist, they just make it?! I find this incredible. This level of innovation and Imagineering where you can literally make your dreams reality is surely playful utopia?

Although, if you could make your dreams real, would this be utopia or would this just make your dreams less vibrant? I’m going to finish on a couple of things I’ve pondered for a while. Are some people always playful or never playful? Does playfulness stay with people their whole life? Do we play as children, forget for a bit and the lucky ones remember to be playful as adults? If this is my experience, how is it for others? What happens if we make playfulness a priority so people don’t forget and playfulness becomes an essential part of learning? That is exactly the kind of playful learning journey I’d love to be a part of.

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Thanks for sharing your story and your photos Rachelle.

If you are unlucky, you might be selected as next month’s sacrifice chosen member – we will be in touch!