About - 2026 Play Make Learn Conference

The Play Make Learn 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 preK-12 educators, designers, developers, innovators, librarians, museum professionals, makers, and researchers to tinker together, share knowledge, and celebrate one another’s work.

Continue to check this website and follow us on our social media for updates about the 2026 conference!

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.

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.

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.