Why – playing with Knowledge​?

Much is written about knowledge in academic environments. But not much is written about how to ‘play with’ it. This site aims to change that.

Play is one of the oldest and most powerful aspects of human society. We play to learn as children in varied and informal ways, then gradually shift into more formal modes of learning, and slowly lose touch with the sense of playfulness that has shaped our learning in those early years.

Knowledge is about data, information, facts and knowing.  Academic contexts are often less concerned with the skills that are the companions of these knowledge tools. However, without the skills to apply knowledge, knowing alone, may prove useless.

Playing with knowledge is a powerful way to unite knowledge and skills.  But that gradual loss of the capacity to play makes it difficult to employ it in academic contexts which privilege propositional knowledge – abstraction and concepts – over practical abilities.

However, the workplaces intending to employ graduates from those environments inextricably link knowing and doing, and are thus environments within which learners encounter the complexity of theory infused tasks and are challenged by the siloed nature of their capabilities.  The missing link in this story is the absence of means for learners to  rehearse ways to  integrate their skills and knowledge in environments that are reasonably ‘safe to fail.’

Playing with knowledge is a way to provide such environments, and the goal of this work is to assist educators to acquire the skills, knowledge – and most of all – the courage to combine their expertise in propositional knowledge with ways of developing associated skills.