About Us

Founder and Director: Mike Farley

Mike Farley has been teaching middle and high school Geography and Social Studies for 15 years in the Toronto District School Board and currently at University of Toronto Schools.  He has been using digital games with his students for over 10 years and founded ChangeGamer to bring together teachers and academics who are excited about the use of games in education, and in sharing their experience and resources.  Mike is a frequent presenter at conferences in Canada and the U.S. on the topic of using digital games in Geography, Social Studies, and Science classes.  In 2014, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society (RCGS) presented Mike Farley with the 'Innovation in Geography Teaching' award, the highest honour for Geography teaching in Canada.  In 2014, the RCGS also inducted Mike as a member of its College of Fellows.  

Contributor: Jack Allin

Jack Allin has been an active proponent of cognitively stimulating video games for 10 years as the Editor of Adventure Gamers. After switching careers to teaching, Jack joined the ChangeGamer collective in May 2014 as a University of Toronto intern and it proved to be a perfect melding of interests. In developing environmentally relevant resources for serious simulations such as “Plan It Green: The Big Switch” and “Citizen Science”, Jack was able to begin implementing video games into the classroom in a way that promoted both hands-on learning and increased social consciousness, a practice he intends to expand further with his own students in future.

Contributor: Nandita Bajaj

Nandita Bajaj is a teacher of physics and math at Northview Heights Secondary School, where she has taught for the past five years.  She is also the coordinator of the school's Honours Math, Science, and Technology program, a specialty program that offers an accelerated curriculum to students in these subject areas. With a strong background and work experience in engineering, she is passionate about inspiring students to pursue careers in science, technology, and engineering.  She has been using games and simulations in her classrooms for the past few years to supplement the science curriculum to bring ideas alive for the students.  She is excited to be part of the Changegamer Collective and looks forward to exploring this field further.

Contributor: Gordon Grisé

From an early age, Gordon Grisé has taken an interest in learning through serious games. As an OISE intern in 2013 and a member of the Changegamer Collective, Gordon has researched and constructed tools for teachers to use serious games on a variety of curriculum topics. A co-presenter at the OAGEE conference for the game "Spent", he is currently teaching at Havergal College in Toronto as part of the Social Science department. Gordon is eager to enhance the Geography, History, and Social Studies curriculum through integration of serious games in his classroom.

Contributor: Drew Halfnight

A true believer in the power of play to transform learning, Drew Halfnight has been a member of ChangeGamer since the spring of 2013. A graduate of the Inner City Option at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), Drew developed original resources for games for social change including "Inside the Haiti Earthquake" and "Orange Revolution" while completing a Curriculum Development Internship at University of Toronto Schools (UTS) in 2013. He has taught at Salisbury Summer School for Reading and English in Salisbury, Conn., Village Community School in New York City, and Royal St. George's College in Toronto, where he currently teaches English and French, and where role-playing and simulation feature prominently in his curriculum. 

Contributor: Sean Hayto

A graduate of the Junior/Intermediate program at OISE and an employee at the University of Toronto Schools, Sean Hayto has been playing digital games since he was a child; and he strongly believes that games in general are just starting to move out of their infancy as an artistic medium.  Sean hopes that contributing at Change Gamer and encouraging other educators to integrate video games into their classroom communities will result in vibrant lessons and greater student engagement.  During his time at Change Gamer, he focused on the social sciences and developed activities for “Ayiti: The Cost of Life” and “Urbanology Online”.

Contributor: Luka Ilić

Luka Ilić is always looking for new methods of teaching in order to enrich the curriculum, keep the lessons interesting, and the students engaged. As a result, he was very excited to have an opportunity to work with ChangeGamer as part of his internship. Having majored in International Development Studies, Luka is particularly fond of political games such as “Quandry” and “On the Ground Reporter (Darfur).” In addition, Luka is keen on working towards developing resources for serious simulations such as “Peacemaker” and “For Crown or Colony” He believes that these video game simulations are very valuable and looks forward to implementing them in his own classroom. 

Contributor: Kamil Klos

A future Secondary School teacher and avid gamer, Kamil hopes to continue combining his passion for education and love for video gaming as he continues on his path as an educator. From an early age playing games like Super Mario on the SNES to saving the galaxy from the Reapers in Mass Effect, Kamil brings his love for video games into the classroom in many forms. During his time as an OISE intern at Change Gamer, Kamil developed lesson plans and activities for two stellar games (SimCityEDU and Argument Wars). In the future you can find him in a classroom near you playing PORTAL, teaching senior Physics and creating and sharing new materials to enrich the curriculum and student learning. 

Contributor: Roy Li

Ever since he was introduced to the world of video games, Roy Li has been a passionate gamer. He has always been interested in the use of video games in the world of teaching. It is through his internship at ChangeGamer that he was able to realize his dream of combining his two true passions, gaming and teaching. As an OISE intern, he helped develop curriculum-rich activities such as “iBiome Wetland” and “Mission US: City of Immigrants”. With the implementation of video games in his classroom, he hopes it will enhance his students' learning and interests.

Contributor: June Park

An avid player of JRPG's, June Park was delighted with the opportunity to develop curricular resources based on educational games. Throughout her schooling years, June noticed an effective, pedagogical correlation between gaming and learning and had sought to help bridge the two through her internship with ChangeGamer. She hopes to not only contribute to the pedagogy of gaming in education, but apply her experiences in constructing such curricular content to her desired work in policy and program delivery at the Ministry of Education. She has, thus far, created an original resource for the game, "Mission U.S.: A Cheyenne Odyssey."

Contributor: Blaise Patterson

​Enjoying video games since childhood, Blaise considers them to be one of the largest influences throughout his life. Once Blaise began pursuing a Degree in Early Childhood Leadership, he sought to research video games and their effects on development. Blaise hopes to highlight the positive effects of video games, and demonstrate how to effectively use them as a teaching instrument. Throughout his BECL internship with ChangeGamer, he developed student activities for "The Family Farmer", "Over the Top", "Hunt for the Noor Stone", and "The End". Although Blaise has not decided whether his career lies in the classroom or shaping future curriculum models, he is sure that video games will continue to be a defining influence.

Advisor: Sarah Chu

Sarah Chu is a Ph.D. candidate in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she does research in the field of games and learning. Her broad experience in the field has included studying informal learning and literacy practices in massively multiplayer online games, designing and developing games for social impact and learning science, researching children’s and youth’s learning and play with games, and co-organizing the annual Games+Learning+Society Conference as well as other games-related events. Her current research interests are centered on informal learning and play in museums using digital games and exhibits. She is presently a research assistant in the Experiential Design and Gaming Environments (EDGE) Lab at Ryerson University.