I (Angela) recently had the opportunity to attend PLAY MAKE LEARN on the UW-Madison campus. It is an excellent annual conference that represents the intersection of a lot of what I do here at Lawrence University- with library instruction, teaching in the makerspace, and teaching game studies. This prompted me to submit a poster to visualize how all of these intersect and share some common themes that are crucial skills for today’s learners. The idea of seemingly different areas of study coming together reminded me of the goal of liberal arts education- so I named my poster “Making and Gaming in the Liberal Arts.” It was wonderful to talk with so many technologists, librarians, K-12 educators, professors, game designers, and graduate students during the poster session (and throughout the conference). While looking at this poster, one librarian pointed out that the library often plays a large role in technology literacy. While those are not connected on the diagram in the poster, I certainly agreed with her. Another librarian commented that perhaps the library on the top could be seen as an umbrella- which I decided was intentional. 🙂

PLAY MAKE LEARN was a rewarding and engaging conference, and I look forward to returning next year!