Ciao!
Fabio here. I am Italian, born and raised in Sardinia, and I have been living in Japan since 2017.
Games have been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I grew up with them, learned English through them, made friends through them, and probably spent too much time thinking about why some of them stay with us for years.
I teach, design learning experiences, and I am currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Educational Technology. My work started from education, but it keeps bringing me back to games: how they teach, how they guide attention, how they make failure feel meaningful, and how players slowly understand complex systems by playing.
Outside research and teaching, I study Japanese drums.
My Story
I grew up in Sardinia as a curious and restless kid. I spent a lot of time in my own head. From an early age I was drawn to Japanese media like manga and anime. School was harder. Sitting still, listening quietly, and following rules without understanding why never felt natural to me. I learned better when I could move, imagine, and take part. A lot of my learning happened outside the classroom, while I was busy making up stories and worlds.
Dungeons and Dragons and the Super Nintendo changed how I related to learning. Through games, I stayed focused without forcing myself to. I tried things, failed, and tried again. Around that time, something strange happened at school. I was doing poorly in most subjects, but I suddenly became very good at English. I did not study grammar much, and I did not think in terms of rules. I just picked answers that felt right. Much later, I realized that years of playing video games in English had shaped how I understood the language. At the time, I did not think of it as learning. It just worked.
I kept moving, both mentally and physically. At nineteen I went to Australia, then to Canada a few years later. I spent some time in London before starting my Bachelor’s degree in Bologna. Living abroad taught me that understanding people comes before teaching them anything. Language, culture, and learning all break down quickly without empathy. That lesson stayed with me.
During my second year at university, I joined an exchange program and studied in Osaka at Kansai Gaidai University. While I was there, I started teaching English at a small language school.
Teaching felt right almost immediately. Not because I felt impressive or especially confident, but because helping someone understand, try, fail safely, and improve felt natural. Feedback from students and colleagues made me realize that this was something I wanted to keep doing, and eventually build my life around.
That experience shaped the way I think about learning and design. I care less about perfect explanations and more about what people experience while learning. If they feel lost, judged, or stuck, everything slows down. If they feel capable, curious, and safe to try, learning starts to happen.
This is also one of the reasons I keep coming back to games. Good games rarely teach only by explaining. They create situations where players notice, test, fail, adjust, and improve. That space between confusion and understanding is where a lot of my work begins.
I never stopped playing Dungeons & Dragons. I never stopped playing video games. I never stopped thinking about how people learn.
In 2023, I started learning wadaiko, Japanese drums. I play as often as I can. It is physical, repetitive, tiring, and deeply satisfying. Practicing for hours feels grounding in a way that is hard to explain.
My wadaiko club has become an important part of my life. It gives me something I need: rhythm, effort, people, and the strange joy of slowly getting better at something difficult.
icuwadaiko1990
Contact
I'm always looking for new and exciting opportunities. Let's connect.