The statement “Play is the highest form of research” has been attributed to Albert Einstein although it appears that it should really be attributed to N. V. Scarfe from his 1962 article “Play is Education” where he quoted Einstein as saying “The desire to arrive finally at logically connected concepts is the emotional basis of a vague play with basic ideas. This combinatory or associative play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought”. Professor Scarfe prefaced this quote by saying “The highest form of research is essentially play.” I am sure you are enthralled by this fact but I am just as sure that you will be even more enthralled by our keynote speaker at Conferece Logo 2016 Dr Bronwyn Stuckey, specialist in Gamification, Community of Practice and Open Badges.

Bronwyn has been engaged in educational community and gameful practices in learning development for the past 15 years. She has worked to explore virtual worlds, games in learning and how we can cultivate identity, agency, citizenship, leadership, and community. She is a postdoctoral research fellow of the Arizona State University Center for Games & Impact and is global leader in the gamification for community and identity cultivation. Bronwyn currently consults to groups such as Intel’s Engage and the Microsoft Minecraft team in areas of gamification and community cultivation. Bronwyn has consulted in K-12, adult and workplace learning contexts in relation to communities of practice, games based learning and aspects of gamification. She is a co-facilitator of the Open Badges Australia and New Zealand (OBANZ) community and has for the past 2 years researched the efficacy of open badges in re-imagining and re-framing academic learning programs and contexts.

Bronwyn’s keynote: Growing Gameful will inspire you to find your own gameful space to ignite learning. Bronwyn will examine with us the place of game inspired learning in today’s classroom and help us explore and differentiate the ways we can begin to bring a gameful approach to learning in our classrooms. The session will have a game inspired approach, making room to share the gameful expertise and examples of the room using #getgameon. Keep an eye out for information about the workshop, it is sure to be amazing.

It doesn’t really matter if it was Einstein or N.V. Scarfe who reminded us of the importance of play to learning, what matters is that we need to offer our students opportunities to utilise play in their learning and research and Dr. Bronwyn Stuckey is just the person to help us do it.

 

 

BlogDr Bronwyn Stuckey: Keynote and presenter at EdTechSA conference, Digital Learning: Now