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The 2026 Play Make Learn Conference kicks off on July 8th with an exciting pre-conference experience designed to spark curiosity, collaboration, and creativity.
Join us early to dive into interactive workshops and hands-on sessions that explore this year’s theme: Scrappiness. From scrappy ingenuity to creative transformation, the pre-conference is where our community gathers to make, adapt, and reimagine what’s possible with what we have.
Whether you're an educator, designer, developer, librarian, maker, or researcher—this is your space to begin making meaningful connections and bold ideas come to life.
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Brenda
Baker is Co-CEO at Madison Children’s Museum, where she has worked for 35 years in various capacities, most recently as Vice President of Exhibits, Facilities & Strategic Initiatives. Brenda oversees all exhibit design, fabrication, evaluation, facility expansions, and fund development activities. She received a BA from DePauw University and an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is a nationally recognized leader in sustainable exhibit design, early childhood education and climate-forward museum leadership. Brenda served on the board of the Association of Children’s Museums for nine years, co-founded Badger Rock Middle School, an environmental, project-learning-based middle school in Madison, and the Women Artists Forward Fund, an endowment fund created to advance gender parity in the visual arts. Most recently, Brenda led the national climate leadership project at
Madison Children's Museum, Caretakers of Wonder. She currently serves on the board for Madison Lakeway Partners and chairs the Mayor’s Ad Hoc Public Art Selection Committee, working to transform and revitalize Monona Bay’s shoreline.
A professional artist in her own right, Brenda oversees the museum’s public art and its built environment, working closely with community artists. Her sculpture, drawings, paintings, and installations have been shown throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, and South America. She is the recipient of numerous awards for her work, including a Noyce Leadership Fellowship, an NEA Individual Artists Grant, a Sustainability Visionary of the Year award, and others from the Wisconsin Arts Board and Arts Midwest.
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Camilla
Zamboni (she/her) is Associate Professor of the Practice in Italian and Education Studies at Wesleyan University, where she creates and manages the Italian language and culture program and teaches courses in Italian language and culture as well as Educational Game Design. She is also affiliated with the College of Design and Engineering Studies, where she oversees the Interactive Media and Game Design minor, and the Center for Global Studies. Her teaching and research are focused on innovative, reflective, and radical pedagogy – particularly at the nexus of language learning, open educational resources (OERs), analog game-based learning, and tabletop game design. At Wesleyan, Camilla has created an OER-based Intermediate Italian curriculum at Wesleyan, Assaggi, and is now working on an Elementary curriculum, Passi. She regularly offers workshops or webinars and presents at
conferences in North America and Europe; she has also published articles on L2 pedagogy and its interplay with game-based learning and game design. She is the editor of the volume Roll for Learning (Play Story Press, 2024), featuring a collection of original micro tabletop role-playing games to be used in the classroom. Camilla is also a game designer, translator, and podcaster: her latest projects are a language-learning tabletop role-playing game (Planétes), a tabletop game to discuss workplace bias (Bias Breaker), and a forthcoming podcast called RPG Roots.
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Ready to be inspired? Spaces for the pre-conference are limited, so secure your spot today and be part of the momentum shaping the future of playful, human-centered learning.
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*PLACE is committed to creating inclusive and accessible events. If you need accommodations, please make sure to include this information when you register for this event. If accommodation needs arise after registration, please contact us at place@education.wisc.edu at least two weeks before the event. While we will do our best to fulfill late requests, we may not always be able to guarantee them.
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