Adult Play Network

 

After pondering this idea for a while, I've just set up a Kickstarter to see if anyone else would genuinely be interested!  

The aim is to fund a network (on MightyNetworks, a commercial platform) of people wanting to bring more play into all aspects of their lives. It will be a social network (so lots of chances to share), as well as regular playful tips and ideas from play experts. 

It will also be a training platform, with play experts able to host courses and events through the network. 

The hope is that the training will provide funding for the platform - but instead of taking a large cut of course fees, a membership fee will be bundled into the course for non-members. So once you've taken one course, or subscribed to the platform seperately, all courses will be discounted by the membership fee.

I'll launch the Kickstarter either 21st or 28th August, but to be informed when it goes live, just click on the "Notify me" button on the upcoming project page.

Unlock Learning: Mobile Escape Rooms Kickstarter

Just launched my "Unlock Learning" Kickstarter!
Escape rooms are exploding in popularity at the moment, with new ones seeming to pop up every week. But what if we used the same ideas in education?
The play inherent in escape rooms, especially playing as a team, is fantastic at all levels of education, and it can allow students to be creative, active learners, think critically, learn how to learn in a more independent way, and more... all in a safe learning environment.
To really make sense in education though, we can’t really have static rooms. We can't leave a room set up for long periods for people to use, we need to be able to set things up wherever we are for one lesson at a time!
One way around this is to have a self contained box that can be taken to any classroom. It may have some extra materials within it to be placed elsewhere in the room, but is essentially self-contained for teachers and lecturers to run wherever they wish. If we raise enough, I'll create a truly mobile one in a converted van which I'll use to take out to educational institutions for learners to create their own educational escape room experiences.
This is the idea behind the Kickstarter that is now live and running through September, to produce escape room type materials for teachers and lecturers to use.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1875601273/unlock-learning-mobile-escape-rooms-for-education

Plotting and pondering…a games 4 libraries book.

Less than 24 hours after finishing work until the New Year I started pondering a possible project for 2013…

I’ve written a couple of books now via traditional Library and Information Science type publishers and get a bit depressed at how expensive they are – especially my first book which is essentially lots of practical active learning tips that can get dropped into a session when we’re teaching information skills.

I’d like to do a similar practical book for games that can help support information literacy, but I don’t want it to be expensive, plus I’d quite like it to have photo-copiable / printable resources in it.

So, was pondering creating quite a short book and self-publishing it through a service such as LULU.com…

There could be a free eBook version, plus a fairly cheap print on demand version in a format that is easy to copy. It would include an outline (in a standard format) of some games to enable people to adapt them to their own needs and create something themselves. In addition, it could include the print and play versions of any generic games I’ve already got ready to go (such as SEEK!) or could create in the next 6 months– so librarians could photocopy those pages onto card (or paper & laminate the card), cut out the individual cards / tokens / boards  / etc and be ready to go…

I could also include the prototypes from events like the workshop in Leeds, if I spent some time working through them and finishing them off – as long as people are happy their games being shared this way.

If I wrote the text, it’d cost a relatively small amount of money to get someone to titivate it enough to look prettier (i.e. proof read, typeset, design a cover, etc.) that would normally be done by a publisher, plus the cost of sending out a handful of copies to legal deposit libraries.

So, should I try and do this? Perhaps via a Kickstartercampaign to fund it?