Dec 13, 2021
Paul Darvasi, Ph.D., is an educator, game designer, speaker, and writer who works at the intersection of games, culture, and learning. His efforts directly or indirectly aim to envision and implement better ways to teach and learn. He is a passionate advocate of media and digital literacy, design thinking, experiential learning, virtual simulations and digital games for learning, and locative experiences. He has designed pervasive games that include The Ward Game; Blind Protocol, a cyber warfare simulation that instructs on online security, privacy and surveillance, and a series of archival and library orientation games for McGill University. He lectures at the University of Toronto, where he is a founding member of the Play Lab. Paul writes for a variety of publications about progressive and innovative education models, and his research explores how commercial video games can be leveraged for instruction. He wrote a widely circulated white paper for UNESCO about how digital games can support peace education and conflict resolution and helped global youth develop games to prevent violent extremism in the Digital Games for Peace initiative run by UNCCT, UNESCO, and UNAOC. Paul is a frequently invited keynote speaker and panelist, who has lectured and presented at conferences and universities around the world. He has shared his expertise with the US Department of Education, UNESCO, the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP), Epic Games, US presidential libraries, foundry10, Consumers International, iThrive, and Connected Camps, among others. His work has been featured on PBS, NPR, CBC, the Huffington Post, Polygon, Killscreen, Gamasutra, Sterne, Endgadget, Edsurge, Edutopia, and MindShift.