Remixplay 5: Conference-in-a-pod

In January, I had the privilege of attending the GameChangers Remixplay 5: Secret agents of change conference in Coventry, a space for those who use playful practice to engage and build communities, and to then set that community loose on projects of monumental societal change.

I had a blast at the conference, and came away with new ideas around the place of community in change efforts and projects, some fabulously creative approaches to making STEM engaging, and about over five hours of recorded audio. As with my post on the Playful Learning conference last year, I’ve pulled my experience of the day in the form of audio snippets together with my subsequent reflections to form a conference-in-a-pod, a flavour of the day, my lessons learned – and some bonus discussions with the conference organisers. You can listen using the player below, or via the Pedagodzilla Podcast website.

There’s a few links mentioned in the interviews with Alex Masters and Sylvester Arnab at the end. I’d encourage you to go check out the ACES and GameChangers stuff, it’s unsurprisingly ace.

Reflections on the Digital Ways of Working Project (DWEEP) evaluation

Mike Collins ~ Learning Designer

In the past couple of weeks, our colleagues over in the Learning Innovation team published the report of the Digital Working Environment Exploratory Project (DWEEP), an in-practice exploration of the use of virtual environments to support collaboration and hybrid working. The Learning Design team took a lead on the evaluation and reporting, and I had the pleasure of coordinating the effort.

The report itself is great, I heartily encourage you to go and read it. Andrew McDermott’s summary that accompanies it is also a nice accessible hopping-on point, bringing together the key points and narrative of the report into the wider context.

In this post, I’ll take a step back, and reflect on a few of the things that stuck with me from our findings.

  Continue reading “Reflections on the Digital Ways of Working Project (DWEEP) evaluation”

Playful Learning 2022: Reflections and conference-in-a-pod

It’s a few weeks after the Playful Learning conference, and even after a bit of time to decompress I’m still a buzzing, overstimulated mess. And you know what? I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.

In this article and accompanying podcast, I’d like to share my take on the conference: my impressions, my takeaways, my general experience. It’s been a highlight of both my professional and podcasting career to date, and I’m hoping that through the process of reflecting on it I’ll identify some of the reasons why it resonated with me, and how I can translate the experience into my practice.

Continue reading “Playful Learning 2022: Reflections and conference-in-a-pod”

Conference to practice: reflecting on a week at ALT-C

I’ve been a Learning Designer for three years now, and ALT-C (The Association for Learning Technology Conference – September 2021) was my first conference within the role. While I’d never expected my first experience with this to be online, I must say I thought it was fabulous. Continue reading “Conference to practice: reflecting on a week at ALT-C”