The Play Make Learn (PML) Annual Conference is a place for collaboration and discovery in the design, research and practice of playful learning, games for learning and positive social impact, making and makerspaces, STEAM education, research/practitioner partnerships, and arts in education (formal and informal spaces). PML creates an inspirational space for preK-12 educators, designers, developers, innovators, librarians, museum professionals, makers, and researchers to tinker together, share knowledge, and celebrate one another’s work.
The PML 2026 Conference will be held on at the Memorial Union (800 Langdon St.) in Madison, WI, on July 9th and July 10th. You can check out more information at the Play Make Learn website. We believe that everyone has unique contributions to bring to the conference. PML aspires to foster a learning community that has a diversity of perspectives and practices. Are you a first time presenter, young person, or practitioner considering submitting for Play Make Learn and need additional support? Reach out to our planning team at: conferences@education.wisc.edu!
2026 Play Make Learn Conference Theme: Scrappiness!
Description: Setting out to create something involves both big dreams and many obstacles. We quickly run into time constraints, limited materials, difficulties getting access, administrative rules, and the inertia of how things have always been done. We struggle against that resistance, we fight to get in and get on with it. We are scrappy. We pull from the bottom of our own buckets of energy. We are outsiders, leftovers, left outs. We are educators who deserve more but have to make due. We are makers who want to do it ourselves with the materials at hand. We are inventors who cobble together rules to turn our surroundings into a game.
Scrappiness means using whatever is around us--the trash, the leftovers, the scraps. We cut out construction paper and leave tiny bits and pieces. We make a meal and compost the scraps of egg shell and orange peel. Those leftovers are opportunities to make something once again, to play, and to learn. A cardboard box becomes a make-believe rocketship. The compost becomes the soil for a community garden. We make beautiful art, experiences, and community from the scraps.
This year, Play Make Learn invites talks and workshops that engage with the attitude of scrappiness, with projects that get scrapped, and with literal scraps. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- Scrappy educator mindset, passion, and burnout
- New approaches to failure in play and education
- Quilting, scrapbooking, and other feminized arts of collage
- Recycling, composting, and other ecological approaches to waste
- Using and contributing to open access resources
- Failed community projects and what it means to end them
- Cardboard
- Junk, treasure, and other things that have lost their use
- The institutional consequences of making ends meet
- Media in fragments (Tweets, Wikis, TikTok)
- Little free libraries, tool exchanges, and other community sharing
- Rethinking tinkering and hacking today
- The lost-and-found, scrapyards, scrapbins, and other dislocations
- Archiving and preserving the remnants
- Game jams and other art projects that don’t go anywhere
See below for information about our currently open Call for Proposals! Consider submitting your presentation proposal today! If you have any questions about DPI (or libraries) as related to Play Make Learn, please reach out to Chris Baker (Games & Learning Consultant, Public Library Consultant, Bureau of Libraries) at: Chris.Baker@dpi.wi.gov.
News
2026 Play Make Learn Conference: Call for Proposals OPEN NOW! (Deadline: 3/9/26)
Deadline for submissions: March 9, 2026 at 11:59PM Central
Notifications sent out: April 2026
Submit Your Proposal Here: go.wisc.edu/PMLsubmit
You are invited to submit a proposal to present at the 2026 Play Make Learn Conference (PML). The conference is a place for collaboration and discovery in the design, research and practice of playful learning, games for learning and positive social impact, making and makerspaces, STEAM education, and arts in education. PML creates an inspirational space for educators, designers, developers, innovators, librarians, museum professionals, makers, and researchers of all kinds to tinker together, share knowledge, and celebrate one another’s work.
Session Strands:
Submissions are encouraged in and across the following themes, but new ideas are also welcome and encouraged. You will be asked to select all themes that apply to your work:
- Playful learning
- Games for learning and positive social impact
- Making and makerspaces
- STEAM education
- Arts in education
Session Formats:
You will be asked to select the session format. Please note time and maximum presenters for each type.
- Hands-on Workshops (75 minutes, 1-6 presenters)
Workshops should actively engage participants, showcasing your work, or methods you use inside or outside the classroom. They may include physical making, playing a game or something else. Session Organizers will be asked for 2-3 learning goals or takeaways they have for participants in the session.
- Organized Panel Presentation (75 minutes, 3-4 presentations)
Panel presentations should have two or more presenters from different projects or organizations. Panels should explore a “big question” relevant to the conference theme or of interest to the larger PML community. Session Organizers will be asked for 2-3 learning goals or takeaways they have for participants in the session, a short description of the full session, as well as descriptions of the 3-4 presentations which will make up the full session.
- Individual Presentation (15 minutes, 1-2 presenters)
Presentations will be 15 minutes in length to highlight noteworthy initiatives, ideas, or recent research. Session Organizers will be asked for 1 learning goal or takeaways they have for participants from their presentation. The planning committee will group individual presentations into themed 75 minute sessions with a moderator, who will reach out to coordinate the final format with presenters.
- Poster
Posters provide the opportunity to present innovative ideas, initiatives, and prototypes in both formal and informal learning contexts. Presenters will have space to hang their poster and engage with attendees during the interactive poster & playful demo session.
- Playful Demo
This interactive, open-ended session is a chance to show off or playtest a game, ed tech tool, or other innovation. Presenters will have a table for their activity or tool during the interactive poster & playful demo session.
- Break the Mold Session
Have an idea that doesn’t quite fit into the formats listed above? Samples include sessions lasting days or weeks asynchronously, sessions within games and so on. What if a session took place in Minecraft? What if participants met outside to explore? What if participants worked collaboratively over the conference to produce a play? Be as creative as you dare for these sessions. If you have questions about an idea before submitting, send an email to conferences@education.wisc.edu.
Notes:
- In the interest of providing diverse perspectives any individual will be limited to participating in a maximum of two sessions. Posters and Arcade Demos do not count towards this maximum.
- Sessions should focus on new insights, learnings and innovations of broad interest to the PML community and should not be promotional in nature. If you are a for-profit company interested in showcasing your product to the PML audience, please reach out to conferences@education.wisc.edu for sponsorship opportunities.
Wisconsin Connections
Wisconsin is fortunate to be a growing hub for these topics and resources. Here is a short list of some free example resources. Find or share more in WISELearn Resources.
Field Day
Our design and research lab at UW-Madison creates and studies games. All of the games we create are free to play.
- Our collection of games covers a range of subject areas and grade levels. Play them here.
- Join a Field Day Fellowship to help co-design a new game or work with other educators to develop strategies for using our current games with students.
- Learn about the research Field Day is doing to better understand how games can be used for teaching and learning.
- Read about Headlines and High Water, which won two awards as part of the Games For Change Festival.
- More at fielddaylab.org!
Filament Games
Filament's mission is to "create playful experiences that improve people's lives." Although most of their content has a cost, free resources include::
- Explore iCivics - a suite of games for inspiring and learning about civics.
- Play Robot Champions on Roblox, a game that teaches engineering and robotics concepts.
- Check out the Hero Elementary games made in collaboration with Twin Cities Public Television, featuring STEM-based learning adventures.
- Check out the Smithsonian Science Education Center Game Collection, featuring select games from Filament.
- Find resource roundups - like this one on game-based learning and STEM - on their blog.