{"id":2,"date":"2007-09-25T08:50:29","date_gmt":"2007-09-25T08:50:29","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2015-12-08T10:47:54","modified_gmt":"2015-12-08T10:47:54","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/about\/","title":{"rendered":"About me"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" style=\"border: 0px none;\" src=\"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/09\/nic-bw-small.jpg\" alt=\"Nicola Whitton\" width=\"168\" height=\"126\" border=\"0\" \/>I&#8217;m a Professor\u00a0at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.esri.mmu.ac.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\">Education and Social Research Institute<\/a> at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mmu.ac.uk\" target=\"_blank\">Manchester Metropolitan University<\/a>. I&#8217;m passionate about the the potential of games and playfulness to create for active and engaging learning, teaching and assessment experiences. My main focus has been Higher Education but I&#8217;m also interested in other adult learning contexts, and work with children and young people.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>My current research very much focuses on play. In particular:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Ways in which adult learning can be made more playful.<\/li>\n<li>Measuring adult playfulness and the relationship between playfulness, learning and well-being.<\/li>\n<li>Understanding why and how adults play.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m a Chair of the Association for Learning Technology <a title=\"ALT Games and Learning SIG\" href=\"http:\/\/gamesandlearningsig.ning.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Games and Learning Special Interest Group<\/a>. This is my <a title=\"Nicola Whitton at MMU\" href=\"https:\/\/www2.mmu.ac.uk\/education\/staff\/profile\/index.php?profile_id=1310\" target=\"_blank\">academic web site<\/a>, and my profiles on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/nicolawhitton\" target=\"_blank\">LinkedIn<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mmu.academia.edu\/NicolaWhitton\" target=\"_blank\">Academia.edu<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/scholar.google.co.uk\/citations?user=Qckdct8AAAAJ&amp;hl=en\" target=\"_blank\">Google Scholar<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The aim of my blog is to be a single place to collect:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>my general musings around games, play and learning, particularly with adults, particularly involving technology;<\/li>\n<li>links to interesting sites, games and other online resources;<\/li>\n<li>notes and thoughts on books and papers that I&#8217;ve read;<\/li>\n<li>research ideas, mainly game-related, but also possibly wandering into the world of technology and learning, and pedagogy and innovation in general.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Comments<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I really appreciate and welcome any constructive feedback and comments on this site, and would encourage readers to share their thoughts and opinions. I will always try to respond to comments as soon as possible (although, because I am only human, this is sometimes longer than I&#8217;d like).<\/p>\n<p>I moderate all comments, and while I am very happy to engage in discussion with people who&#8217;s opinions differ from my own, comments that are nonconstructive, irrelevant to the post, or are clearly just advertising another site will be deleted.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Contact me<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I would love to hear from anyone else with similar interests &#8211; in games, learning, play, and general silliness &#8211; to find out what you are doing and what you are thinking about, and see if there is any way we can work together.<\/p>\n<p>Email: n.whitton at mmu.ac.uk<\/p>\n<p>Sykpe: nickie66<\/p>\n<p>Twitter: <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/nicwhitton\" target=\"_blank\">@nicwhitton<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m a Professor\u00a0at the Education and Social Research Institute at Manchester Metropolitan University. I&#8217;m passionate about the the potential of games and playfulness to create for active and engaging learning, teaching and assessment experiences. My main focus has been Higher&#8230;<br \/><a class=\"read-more-button\" href=\"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/about\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P71sY0-2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":383,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2\/revisions\/383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}