Last week I had the honour of speaking about frugal education as a keynote at the 4th annual Creative Culture Gamification seminar in Malaysia. Virtually of course. This year’s theme was ‘Transdisciplinary Trends in Playful Learning’ and how stakeholders can collaborate and create playful and impactful learning experiences for learners at various levels of education.
I was fortunate enough to be part of the inaugural Gamification Seminar back in 2018 – in person that time – where I co-designed and delivered a rapid game design workshop for educators with colleagues from the GameChangers team.
This 2018 trip to Malaysia and the work we did as part of the CreativeCulture project in rural Borneo was an inspiration to me and set in motion my journey towards developing Frugal Education as a concept for designing and developing creative, practical, and sustainable education.
Since 2018, I have spent time reflecting on our past work, inspirations, and lessons learnt, whilst continuing to apply and encourage frugal education practice in the projects and initiatives I’m involved in. As my research experience grows, so does the concept, and it gives me great pleasure to share these insights with educators around the world and learning from others to better refine things in the process.
There were brilliant speakers throughout the day, including the uber-talented Professor Margarida Romero and Dr. Cedric Tan who also both keynoted at the event. I highly recommend checking out recordings from the event, which I’ll link to in an update to this post once the videos are live on the CreativeCulture TV channel.
Myself and the GameChangers team were pleasantly surprised to join the seminar’s closing remarks, during which the CC team had prepared a lovely congratulations for our recent QS Reimagine Education award, as well as proudly announcing their own awards success with a silver medal at the Seoul International Invention Fair for their PLAY Toolkit and mat. Congratulations everyone!
I want to take a moment to show my appreciation to the incredibly talented CreativeCulture team that put this event together. They never cease to amaze me with their quality of work, positive attitude, and creative ideas. If it wasn’t for COVID, the GC team would definitely have been there in person, and I hope one day we’ll get to visit the Gamification lab again. Maybe next year, who knows!