Blog Archive
Summer Playcaction
Remember the sound of the school bell on the last day of class before summer vacation? That bell combined the thrill of freedom with a sense of accomplishment and spiced with the excitement of summer vacation plans. Things have changed and summer might look more like...
Embracing life, loneliness, introversion and games
By Nanditha Krishna As I approach my 25th birthday this June, I find myself reflecting on my journey through my turbulent teenage years to the even more tumultuous twenties, with an evolving sense of self-awareness. Over the years, as I have started living my...
When Play Fails
In my university library you will find a checkerboard table in a comfortable seating section, right next to a kiosk that sells teriyaki and sushi. During the academic year this area is busy with students grabbing cups of coffee, sharing lunch with friends, taking...
Visuals, Themes, and Bitmojis, Oh My!
by Peggy Holzweiss, PhD I have a confession to make. I love teaching fully asynchronous, online courses. You may wonder how anyone could love teaching online courses. After all, it can be difficult to engage students through a computer screen. Learning...
Big Message / Small Package
A Big ideas don’t always need a fancy package. While higher education loves to present complex concepts in equally complex and detailed packages, sometimes getting the point across requires a bit of simplification to get to the heart of the matter. Think about...
The School for Unlearning
Lisa K. Forbes One day, I was reading the book The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, and The Horse. If you haven’t read it, please do. I found it to be super inspiring and thought-provoking. Anyway, as I was reading, one of the characters said “What if there was a school for...
2023 Reflections
You know those lists that people use to try and sum up something as big and unmanageable as an entire year? Yup! This is one of those. For us, we think of this as a playful exercise in reflection. After another year diving deeper into playful pedagogy, we reflected on...
What is Play? An Answer
What is play? It’s an easy question without an easy answer. To try and get to the bottom of that question, and to provide a rationale why it’s an important question to ask, Professors at Play co-founder Lisa Forbes empaneled a group of experts to try and find some...
Using a Story Shell to Achieve Whole Course Play
by Peggy Holzweiss, PhD My journey into whole course play began when I heard Roberto Corrada discuss his Jurassic Park simulation during the 2021 Playposium. I loved the idea of students joining a fictitious world, tapping into their creativity, and learning...
Playing with Cards
I’m sure like many people my first introduction to card games was playing Snap as a child (or if youwere posher Happy Families) and progressing from their into more sophisticated games suchCribbage or (Gin) Rummy. Finally, I found myself learning the rules of Bridge,...