Serious Play Conference 2025

Ever since the first time I discovered the Serious Play Conference, I was eager to attend.  However, for several years it was at the University of Toronto and therefore didn't seem to be an affordable option for a work trip.  This year, however, it was at St. John Fisher University in Rochester, New York.  I was thankful to have the conference approved by OVEC as my annual out-of-town professional learning, and doubly grateful when I was asked (along with my TTRPG educator colleague Kalli Colley) to speak on a panel!  On a side note, I've been curious about the Erie Canal ever since I sang a folk tune in pre-school, so I was also glad for the chance to see it in person, as it ran just outside of our hotel.  (On a side note to my side note, the Del Monte Lodge was a beautiful place to stay, run by an incredibly friendly staff.)  While in Rochester, I even ate a version of their local delicacy: a "garbage plate" (it was delicious).

Canals and garbage plates aside, how was the three day conference?  In a word: illuminating.   Like the Play Make Learn conference in Wisconsin I attended last year, it was energizing to be around hundreds of educators and game designers who enthusiastically believe in the power of play- and game-based learning.  While I created an extensive Wakelet covering the depth and breadth of the sessions I attended and the resources I gained (also embedded at the end of this blog entry), here I will share a dozen highlights:

• Michelle King, our keynote for the first day of conference, inspired us with the notion that "words create worlds," and told us a paraphrase of Brian Eno's difference between the solitary genius (an "egosystem") and the collective innovation from a scenius (a vibrant and healthy "ecosystem").  What kind of playful and positive world will we create together?
• Stephen Reid, our second day keynote, implored us to not forget that "play matters."  We are often limited by anti-play policies and taught to be suspicious of adults who engage in what is perceived as frivolous activity; as a particularly evocative example, he showed us the difference between what you find when you google "man in a tree" and "child in a tree."  Reid also shared anecdotes of using Command and Conquer and Minecraft in his classrooms.
• Deb Fuller and Luigi Guarniccio discussed the need for accessibility in games.  As Fuller reminded us, things like curb cuts are not just niceties for those permanently in wheelchairs, as "we are just temporarily abled" and, with age or an accident, will eventually need such supports.  How can we design better for those that are (among many other examples Fuller and Guarniccio provided) left-handed, or have vision challenges?
• Meghan Gardner discussed what makes a game truly "transformative" versus merely "remarkable."  Additionally, Gardner is the founder of Guardian Adventures, a treasure trove of educational gaming resources and examples.
• Kelly McNeil, a Learning Experience Designer with Digital Promise, shared her journey in bringing play into professional development.  She reminded us that while fun can help in engagement, we still need to construct adult learning around evidence-based practices, such as Darling-Hammond, Hyler and (Madelyn) Gardner's "Seven Models of Effective Professional Development."
• I first read about Dr. Megan Connell's work using Dungeons & Dragons as a part of her therapeutic pedagogy in Shelly Mazzanoble and Greg Tito's book Welcome to Dragon Talk.  So I was particularly excited to hear her speak, alongside learning what teacher Greg Gordon has done in his own classroom.
• MagiKids is a charitable foundation that donates Magic: The Gathering kits to learning spaces.  From that session, I was also blessed to meet Lyla Ross, the head of the Washington State-based 501(c)(3) Gamers Engaged, one of the many "backbone organizations" that help fund MagiKids.
• Sharon Peck demonstrated multiple examples of how games can improve literacy.  (Also, check out Professors at Play!) 
• Speaking of professors...University of Toronto professors Leslie Stewart Rose (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education) and Quinn Jacobs (Department of Arts, Culture, and Media) shared "How Play Solves Problems of Practice in Classrooms."  One of the examples indicated was the use of Dungeons & Dragons!  I appreciated their ample research references throughout their presentation, and how we better appreciated play in a learning setting by actually playing a game.
• Lt. Col. James "Pigeon" Fielder (ret.) uses a semester-long simulation game for one of his political science courses at Colorado State University.  He was candid about what worked, and what he would do differently in the future.
• I picked up two books while at the conference:  Becky Keene's AI Optimism and Tracy Fullerton and Matthew Farber's The Well-Read Game: On Playing Thoughtfully.  I can't wait to dive into both!
• Last but not least, I visited The Strong National Museum of Play twice for after-hours conference events.  It was a charming and delightful institution, and it alone would make planning a trip to Rochester worthwhile.  (For a plethora of pictures, check out my Facebook post from my KyEdRPG Page.)

As I mentioned at the beginning, Kalli Colley and I were asked to speak on a session panel: "Adventures in TTRPG: Building Learning Worlds with Dice, Devices, and Dialogue."  It was wonderfully moderated by Sana Alimohamed, and we were joined by an impressive group of educators: Sharon Lee De La Cruz, Phill Cameron, and Huaidian (Daniel) Hou.  Thank you to the 50+ attendees of the session, who leaned in with great interest and questions!  A special thanks to Sana, who in addition to her moderation duties took the time to curate and share several resources discussed in the panel in a LinkedIn post.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Kentucky Educators for Role Playing Games (@kyedrpg)

From left to right: Sana, Phill, Kalli, me, and Huaidian.

Besides the learning gained at the Serious Play Conference, I am grateful for the chance to have met so many admirable people in person.   A final shoutout needs to be given to Paul Darvasi and Elisa Navarro for putting together the event (and for Dr. Darvasi's personal reach out that led to Kalli and I submitting proposals).  If you have a chance to attend a future Serious Play Conference, I highly recommend it.

Speaking of Kalli Colley, our "Dungeons & Desks" FREE regional PD series returns this fall to two Kentucky locations:  London (October 20) and Hazard (November 3).  Come play and learn with us!

 

Google Vids (and other Google updates for Summer 2025)

Google has had a busy summer with plenty of updates, including a new product that I've finally had some time to play with: Google Vids.  But before we get to Vids, let's briefly cover some other territory that educators will find important to know.

If you're a teacher who has logged into Google Classroom lately, you've probably noticed that your workspace now includes Gemini baked in, and more specifically, has multiple tools at your fingertips to help you more effectively complete tasks.  It's clear that the popularity of the "custom bot dashboards" prevalent in several other AI learning platforms has encouraged Google Classroom to do the same. 

While the built-in capability of Gemini is currently only available for the teacher side of Google Classroom, Gemini itself is now available for students of all ages.  Additionally, Google NotebookLM (perhaps the most pragmatic AI tool I currently use) will also be available for "all ages in the coming months" (per a Google Workplace Team email sent June 17, 2025).  You can read more in Google's June 2025 blog announcement.  Of course, your Google Admin may choose to keep this toggled off for certain age groups (or for all of your students!) and/or for one or both tools; it's worth asking what your district's plan might be.  Remember that for educational accounts only, Google has made assurances that AI data and usage will remain private to the domain itself, usage will not train Google's AI machine, and inputs/outputs will not be human reviewed, as they first announced back in May 2024. 

Speaking of NotebookLM, it's perhaps no surprise that it continues to upgrade.  The output language can now be changed, and that can include the (in)famous "Audio Overviews."  You've likely been wowed by the Audio Overviews feature (and if you're like me, also a bit disturbed by its capacity for human mimicry); customization can now allow you to make them shorter or longer in length, or give the Overview specific topics to focus upon.  But perhaps the most dramatic leap for NotebookLM is the beginning of Video Overviews:

I was able to try this out on a personal free gmail account (upgraded features usually tend to chronologically lag behind for educational domains, so be patient if you don't see the feature yet).  I picked a Notebook with two sources that were focused on the topic of flexible learning spaces: a Google Slide conference presentation I did back in 2021 about the then just opened K-8 school Marnel C. Moorman in Shelby County, and a 2018 article in Edutopia. Despite only having those relatively short sources, the generation for what turned out to be a seven minute Video Overview took at least ten minutes on a Friday night.  While it's likely this will get better, or possibly be another incentive to go Pro (for faster generations?), I would caution you from expecting a Video Overview to load in the same short time it currently takes to generate an Audio Overview.  Yes, yes, you might be asking, but what was the quality?  Well...I was blown away, just like I was about Audio Overviews only a year ago.  As I'm still impressed and mulling over the possibilities of what an Audio Overview can bring to the table for learners, the Video Overview comes along. It basically creates your very own short documentary of your uploaded sources.  And like Audio Overviews, you can share or download the videos.  (In order to watch the video via a shared hyperlink, you have to share viewing rights to the entire Notebook.)  As always, the AI was not perfect, but I'll take some of the blame too. For example, my presentation had a quote from a different Edutopia article spoken by a teacher in a California school (attributed by the article name and hyperlink on the slide), but the video narrator mistakenly stated "as one of the MCM teachers Stacey Lamb said..," which, given the slide scanned superficially as is, seems a fair misunderstanding.  Watching the whole seven minutes, I found very little else to nitpick, especially considering if my goal was to create a sophisticated summarization of my sources.  Here's the Video Overview it generated for me, also downloaded and saved to my Google Drive:

Staying on the topic of videos: one of Google's tools getting some considerable press recently is Veo 3. This is another example of the continual evolution of text-to-video genAI in the marketplace; the outputs are longer, more sophisticated, and can now include AI-generated sound and dialogue.  It's impressive, and brings more ethical concerns, but I mainly passed it by for practical reasons -- it's not cheap, and therefore not likely to be in a typical K-12 teacher's classroom anytime soon.  (However, Google is offering a free year of their AI Pro plan to college students, if they redeem the offer by October 6.)

But if you are looking for a practical Google video tool for teachers and students, it's now finally time to discuss Google Vids.  In a nice flip, this is currently available for all educational users at no charge, but is not available for free/personal Google accounts.  Here's a quick elevator pitch to describe the tool: "An online video editor that's as easy to use as Google Slides."

Creating a new Google Vid is like creating most products in the Google Suite: it's an option for the New button in your Drive, or a choice on your waffle, or simply typing vids.new in your address bar.  There are templates you can choose from if you want to create your project more quickly.  

You can import media (such as Google Slide decks, audio files, and screencasts), make everything from scratch, or do a bit of both.  A tip: I think it's easier to "compose" the skeleton of your video by starting in Google Slides, then importing it into Vids. However, note that anything animated, or clickable, will simply "flatten" once it gets into Vids (after all, you can't hyperlink inside a video), much in the same way that Slides downloaded as a PDF may lose the same features.

Once in editor mode, you can easily add transitions between "scenes," or lengthen/shorten a scene by dragging it by the end.  You can also record a video or audio file to insert into your project, making choices like doing a voiceover a breeze.  One of my favorite features of Vids is Script, located in the sidebar.  You can type what you want to say and it will scroll like a teleprompter while you record your audio or video.  If recording a video, this also means you can look directly into the webcam while you speak.

This screenshot of creating a Script is courtesy of a Google for Learning course.

This screenshot of using a Script as a teleprompter while recording video is courtesy of a Google for Learning course.

Collaboration in Vids happens like a typical Google doc -- you can share viewing, commenting or editing rights to your project. If it's viewing only, the viewer will actually only be able to play the video from your project.  This deserves a bit of emphasis, because in a practical sense it means your Vid becomes a real-time living artifact just like a Doc or a Sheet; you could share a link just once and the viewer will always see the most recent updates, as opposed to having to delete an old video and resharing a new link to the latest uploaded version.  This alone can save significant time and increase workflow.  That capability aside, you can also download the final video as a MP4.

You can create Vids as an assignment in Google Classroom for your students!  First, create a template that you want students to customize and add their own text and materials. (One of the fun Inserts to consider is a "Video Placeholder," available in various cutout frames; when an editor comes across one of these icons, they can click on it to record their own video that will be automatically matted to the chosen shape.)  You can then assign it in Classroom, making sure it "force copies" for each student.  Students can open the assignment, edit it and turn in the Vid like any other Google doc.  Here's a short video about creating Vids assignments in Classroom, from a free Google for Learning course:

There is admittedly a cookie-cutter aspect that could occur when students are creating videos within the templated perimeters of Vids.  However, the intuitive ease of editing in Vids "in the cloud," as well as the ability to quickly share and collaborate, means that students should be able to spend more time on the content than on the clicking.  The bottom line: you can make polished videos in a fraction of the time it took before, and for free.  

This screenshot is courtesy of a Google for Learning course.

It's worth noting that if you pay for an upgraded AI license, you can also use Gemini inside of Vids to create genAI video content or voiceovers.  Here's a video (7:59) showing how Gemini integration with Vids works:

It used to be that improvements or new tools in Google were incremental -- you might be lucky to see something new every few years.  As with all edtech nowadays, that speed of change has rapidly increased.  By the time we hit spring 2026, I will expect new Google features that will likely make even the amazing ones in this blog entry seem quaint and "sooooo 2025."