Hi James,
If we are concerned with getting “side tracked” from the learning – are we saying that there is a prescriptive route that needs to be taken in order for learning to occur? The reason I ask this, other than to be slightly provocative (!) is that I was involved in running some teaching sessions in World of Warcraft. It was really quite striking how much “unintended” and additional learning took place that hadn’t been part of the intended learning outcomes of the sessions. Our choice of game was deliberate – we wanted to explore the educational / learning possibilities afforded by a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) game. As a massively multiplayer online (MMO) and pervasive game, we lacked a fair bit of control over the environment and what events might transpire. Each session was markedly different whilst still having the same basic outline structure. It was a calculated risk not to use a “walled garden” and all the participants had already had a fair degree of experience of learning in and using Second Life prior to this. I think in general the benefits outweighed the problems.
There are some excellent examples of WoW being used in education for management purposes, citizenship, economics etc. Whilst, as you say, they are designed purely for income generation, I think it’s possible to harness the deeply immersive experience and seamless design to great effect.
As an aside – interesting to note that you also had a similar reaction to Notpron as Sue and I!
Anna
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