Play Station: our gaming experience in Belgium

“Creative, educative and very interesting project Play Station took place from 26.10-04.11 in Brussels, Belgium. This was really amazing experience in all possible ways – we got very deep into gamification theme, played a lot of exciting games and learned new techniques of non-formal education by these creative activities. There was also enough theory that actually was given in so interesting way that it was very easy and enjoyable to perceive all that useful information. Furthermore, during first half of our project we even made a short trip to one nice organisation that deals with creation of educational games and tested on our own different possible strategies and variations learning by playing. It was really inspiring to take part in all these diverse activities.

After that we had enough time and freedom to share our ideas, form certain groups, use all received knowledge and experience with the aim to create our own new educational games. This was so cool and difficult at the same time. At one moment we had a lot of fun and at another active thinking process took place and it was necessary really to spend time on thinking how one or another part of our game would function. But in the end it was such a great pleasure to test all games that were created during our meeting and especially our own game because one thing is to put everything together and create it, and absolutely another is to see that it is used in real life and that your thoughts have turned into reality that involves other people who are playing it and give you their feedback right after that. It is so precious and wonderful feeling!

In my opinion this project developed me on different levels. It was so interesting to share my thoughts with representatives of other cultures, to learn something new from each participating person. They are so great people and all are somehow connected with youth work, so we really had themes to discuss and intercultural experience to share between each other. Then of course knowledge about gamification – I left back home not only with my own game, but also with a huge luggage of new energisers, icebreaker games and of course educational games on so many different topics. As I am active in the youth work field then I will definitely use some of them in my youth center and also further in my work with children and youngsters. Also one important thing to mention is motivation and inspiration that I got during the project. Some time has already passed since we got back home, but all I need to do is just to think about this days in Brussels and my brain gets on this creative wave and starts to think out new great things and activities.

I am so grateful for possibility to take part in Play Station project as I feel that it has a positive impact on me and will help me in future to create new amazing things. Also I love people whom I met there, the location where we lived, activities that we did. There is always something interesting that happens almost every day but it will be true to say that the time I spent in this project was the best time of this year. With my whole heart I would like to thank Shokkin Group, Droni, all the participants and everybody who was somehow connected with this project for such wonderful possibility of self-development and reaching new professional levels. It was an amazing experience!”