Digital Schoolhouse launches inaugural Playful Computing Conference

Every summer, the Digital Schoolhouse team host the Summer Boot Up Camp, a three-day event bringing together our network of Schoolhouses, both old and new, to network, learn and reflect on the past academic year. The event never fails to highlight the incredible work undertaken by our Lead Teachers, while regularly providing opportunities to engage with our industry partners and friends too through workshops and talks.

This year, we wanted to open this unique opportunity up to the wider education sector and so the Playful Computing Conference was born!

Taking place on the second day of our Summer Boot Up Camp, the Playful Computing Conference is an experience designed to bring together educators in STEM and Computer Science subjects with video games and edtech industry exhibitors to explore the future of digital and creative learning.

The vision was to create a dynamic, varied and, most importantly, fun way to engage our attendees with the most up-to-date insight into topics at the forefront of teacher’s minds in computer science. These topic-led talks were organised into streams focusing on artificial intelligence, esports, play-based learning and careers education.

These streams saw us bring together a range of speakers who are experts in their fields to share their insight and experience with our attendees and Lead Teacher network. Conversations in Artificial Intelligence were led by Professor Miles Berry (University of Roehampton), Paul Curzon (CSF4N), Dale Lane (Machine Learning for Kids) and our very own Estelle Ashman, shifting perspectives on what and how AI can be used as an educational tool. We were joined by Lewis Kay (Esports Youth Club) to learn more about the growing esports industry and grassroots impact of esports at a community level, followed by talks from our own Lead Teacher network about their experience running esports tournaments in their own schools in both a primary and secondary setting.

Our play-based learning stream focused on more interactive workshops, including an introduction to micro:bits and Construct 3 from Laura Donaghy (Scirra Ltd), our popular Mario Kart micro:bits workshop from Chris Lovell and a first look at Beyond Xbox: Field Trips, a new series of interactive learning experiences to help young people learn through play, available on Spotify, in partnership with our latest industry partners at Xbox. Neil Rickus (Kings College London) also joined us to share his research on how video games can be used to promote programming concepts in education.

Representatives from across the industry also joined us for the careers education talks, including Declan Cassidy (Into Games), Michal Doniec (nDreams), Jaime Stewart (Sports Interactive) and Stefan McGarry (Ubisoft), providing a unique insight into what steps are needed to make those first steps into industry and how students can apply their skills to a diverse and creative industry. Our Programme Director, Shahneila Saeed, also led a valuable discussion on the development of a new proposal for a Digital Creativity GCSE and how updates to options available to young people could best support their development and skills.

Alongside all of this activity, we were excited to be joined by exhibitors representing the best of creative and digital education initiatives from across the country, including Brainspark Games, Apps for Good, Digit<all>, Blunt and Brave and Scirra Ltd.

Needless to say, the conference brought together some of the brightest minds, influential speakers, engaged educators and innovative industry leaders from across the digital and creative sectors and we are excited to see how it grows over the coming years! A huge thank you to all of our speakers, exhibitors and attendees, as well as our supportive hosts at University of Westminster.

Tickets are now available for next year at the super early bird price of just £20 per person! Sign up now to guarantee your space at next year’s Playful Computing Conference.

Don’t miss out on the chance to be involved in this unique opportunity to explore new ideas to continue to drive educational innovation in STEM, Computer Science and beyond!