Play Make Learn Conference

 This is a fairly new conference - it started in 2017 and I heard about it because they were actually so desperate for presenters they invited me lol. I've never actually attended until this year though. It's run primarily through UW-Madison's school of education, but it's a blend of education, gaming/design/tech, and maker space. I'm actually glad I waited until now to attend, because I think this year had a really nice mix of different perspectives. When you've been in a profession for a while, everything tends to cycle around and you hear the same stuff over and over again - at least, that's my experience in libraries/education - so this was nice because it brought different perspectives together.

Personality leakage, as Ms. Yingling would say, is that I got there (and back and there and back) without getting lost! I was quite impressed with myself (also sick of driving, as it was an accumulation of 8+ hours). Due to my poor eyesight and the way road signs are constructed, I usually am driving past the exit I need by the time I can read the sign. Then I get lost. But this time, although I missed many exits of various types (seriously Wisconsin what is with the crazy roundabouts??) I always figured out a way forward. I only had two brief detour/turn arounds on the first leg of the journey. Could my directional abilities be improving? Only time will tell...

These are my own opinions, not sanctioned by my employer, so you can't blame them if I'm not diplomatic (see, reason no. 3,572 why I am not a director).

Keynote - virtual address from Jesse Schell

• The transformative power of gaming. I knitted. Not that I disagreed, it just wasn't really anything relevant to me.

Concurrent sessions - This was people presenting their research together, in a moderated format (the best) or loosely connected by subject (not the best).

This one was moderated and very good.

• Starting young: How to launch family making experiences at the library
• This was from a library. Unfortunately, the room acoustics weren't good and I couldn't really hear most of it. I did like the remarks re. 3-D printers and things one can do with them (mostly take them out back and beat them with baseball bats).
• Real tools, real research: exploration and engagement in low-tech makerspaces
• This is a specific makerspace in a museum, Real Tools, and I got some cool ideas. I'm not sure what I'd be able to adapt to my space, but one thing I really liked as a take away was the idea of "closing the door" at the "stress point" for staff. I'm not sure how I'd adapt this to a library setting, but for our own sanity we need it! The one thing I did come up with was having a separate, drop-in activity during some Pokemon Club sessions to take off the pressure and focusing on redirecting and encouraging kids doing maker activities to take breaks when they're getting frustrated.
• So you have a makerspace, now what?
• This was a museum/aquarium that opened a makerspace. Some interesting ideas about flow, mostly specific to a dedicated space.

This one wasn't really moderated and the presentations weren't very related, but the individual presenters were good.

• Playfully sustainable!
• This was the Madison Children's Museum. Some great resources on doing more sustainable activities. One thing I'd really like to improve is the packaging for our take home activities. I enjoyed hearing about their WonderGround play space too.
• Curiosity Klatches: A working group model for museum educators
• This was a student presenting research on connecting museums. I did notice there's rather a dearth of museums in WI in our area - probably because Chicago and its museums are so close. It also inspired me to think about rebuilding the youth services connections in our library consortium, which really disintegrated during the first two years of the pandemic.
• GeoMuseUM: Experiencing art in situ and virtually
• "This presentation will share use cases, considerations, and process for creating a community geolocative art guide." This was from a university in Florida. The only thing I thought of was that maybe adult services would want to create some interactive maps of local history areas? The presenter mentioned a free geography tool (which I promptly forgot the name of) but I could probably find it again if it's of interest.

What’s YOUR story? Story-based tinkering to advance engineering learning

• This was presented by the Tinkering Lab from the Chicago Children's Museum. Some really great resources and ideas on connecting engineering and stories and how using stories enriches the "tinkering" process. I'll definitely be incorporating this into programming ideas.
• Explore, experiment, process, fail. The testing process. Story and tinkering together - story start cards, combine with making?
  

Creative collaborations with cardboard: Developing community informed maker events

• This was from a museum in Minnesota and focused not just on their cardboard building events, but on how they connected with cultural community groups, specifically BIPOC populations and the results of those collaborations. Some great ideas for working with special communities and it makes me wonder if there's a way I could target our population of families with kids with special needs and our Head Start families in new ways. One of the most successful events I did with Head Start was a cardboard building afternoon and I'd love to repeat and expand that.

Day 2

Keynote: Cassidy Puckett

• The knitting continues. This was more relevant and I was listening more closely. It was aimed more at educators, but focused on her research especially around marginalized communities in tech and the general idea that they lack not the skills and abilities, but the recognition of the skills and abilities they have. I also thought of a correlation between her remarks of how educators sometimes use tech as a "reward" for the "good" kids and the way we incentivize (or penalize) reading. Some of the skills she mentioned are good ones to incorporate into making - the ability to fail, logic and tinkering or playing around with things, a willingness to experiment, and recognizing the learning process.

Maker Space Table: Learning to Sew with Young Learners

• I stopped here for a few minutes, talked to a 1st grade teacher about the resources he uses and looked at some of the different supplies he was displaying.

Libraries and Museums making it work: lessons learned through COVID-19 and insights for the future

• This was a very mixed bag of ideas and suggestions. I thought some of the presenters did not actually have concrete ideas or suggestions and were expecting the audience to actually do the work of the presentation. A toolkit was presented, and I liked some of the ideas from that and another presenter (5 Reasons Why program rubric) on assessing programs and patron responses, but frankly all of this information is already out there in various formats. I did not think the toolkit did a good job of meeting the needs of small and rural libraries and the examples of elevator speeches would be detrimental to a library trying to connect in a small community. However, this was a very small part of the entire project that we saw and the actual implementation may have been more useful.

Concurrent session

• Meeting the needs of all: Improving the accessibility and equity of makerspaces
• Quite frankly, this was the worst presentation of the whole conference. I was very disappointed. The presenter used outdated and derogatory language, a very limited definition of certain disabilities, and did not seem to understand how basic research/surveying processes work, blaming the respondents for data that did not fit with the researcher's preconceived ideas. They directly contradicted their own research in the presentation and offered no practical or concrete ideas. It's frustrating to think that grant money goes to things like this when so many other organizations could make better use of it.
• Heads, Hearts, and Hands: SEL in Maker Ed
• This was much better - from a teacher, a presentation on connecting SEL to maker activities. SEL is a big topic for a lot of schools right now (those that aren't banning everything in sight that is) and she laid out very concise ways to communicate to teachers and parents how maker education connects. Very useful, even if you're not an educator.
• Learning Circles for Makerspace Learning
• I was vaguely familiar with this idea previously - basically it has adults working together for free virtual education, like LinkedIn Learning - but I didn't know there was a whole website of free facilitator guides. I've passed it on to our adult services librarian, but I think it will also be of interest to our middle school, which does something along these lines and might find it very useful.

Playlab: Setting the stage for child led learning, exploration, and experimentation

• This last session was put together by the Betty Brinn museum, a local-ish museum in Milwaukee, and was really good - lots of ideas sparked for me in how we present and organize our play area and activity tables. I'm saving all my notes and making this a project for 2023/2024, as I want to blend it with, hopefully, a new youth desk setup that we might potentially be fundraising for. Also, they had cute boxes. You can get them from Uline and they're not expensive (asides from shipping, but our DPW has offered to pick stuff up for us before....)

More pictures of tools and posters