Looks like Constance’s research group has had some more press. A few days ago, an interview that Constance did with Live Science went up, discussing the latest on the afterschool gaming programs that we piloted last year (and which she’s now expanding), the science reasoning in World of Warcraft forums paper that Constance and I recently had published in the Journal of Science Education and Technology, plus some interesting comparison experiences dealing with the game and “unschooling.”

Here’s a link to the video tied to the Live Science report, by Jeremy Hsu. It’s generally accurate and favorable, though with a few errors (including a cringeworthy mispronunciation of Constance’s last name).

This story has subsequently been picked up by WoWInsider — making it, by my count, the third time that this paper has been referenced on that particular blog (another mention after all the APA press, and another after Constance’s interview with Wired). Impressive, eh? This paper is the research that just keeps on giving!

I’m also excited to see that the Live Science article tackled the “unschooling” issue. I’m assuming that the interviewer made the connection between our work and World of Warcraft as an unschooling tool due to seeing a post I made on this topic on our research group’s blog last winter (itself, surprise, a commentary on a post from WoWInsider — everything goes through WoWInsider at some point, it seems).

It’s an interesting (and pressing) issue: How should gaming practices like World of Warcraft be related to traditional schooling — incorporated into schooling, as formal instruction (yeah, good luck with getting schools to agree to that)? Presented as an completely alternative experience to formal schooling (as in unschooling)? Creating spaces (like Constance’s afterschool groups) which are neither school, nor exactly free play? With respect to unschooling, I wrestled with this issue in last winter’s blog post:

Proponents of unschooling would likely say that games like WoW are rich enough environments that one doesn’t need to craft instruction “around” the game, but I disagree. The constraints of this particular virtual world are going to make some kinds of learning very difficult, as is the case with any learning environment; WoW itself might be a fantastic venue for encouraging collaborative play, apprenticeship, and leadership within the game, but is much more difficult for encouraging, say, critical readings of texts or even learning how to do science within the confines of the game itself. While we firmly believe that these latter literacy practices can evolve out of games such as WoW, it is rare for them to evolve without some explicit structuring or apprenticeship. While the unschoolers are laudable in their goal to provide the space for kids’ to explore and learn “naturally” within these virtual worlds, there’s a role for explicit instruction and gentle prodding by adults.

The question then becomes, what kind of “prodding?” And how much leads to the playing of videogames — often a transgressive enterprise, generally unapproved by parents and teachers alike — being considered “school” by kids? In my personal work, I have the hunch that online discussions (forums, blogs, etc.) might be critical for providing spaces which are appealingly ambiguous in this regard (not school, but allow for the incorporation of instructional scaffolds), and would love to explore these issues further.