From the Institute of Education at the University of London comes an interesting story about Researchers and teachers pushing for games in schools . The group made presentations at a seminar on 26 October, as part of the current debate about media literacy, one of the remits of Ofcom , the new media watchdog in the UK. The seminar explored the questions of understanding and creation in relation to computer games, an important – as well as controversial – form of new media. The group says…

“We want to reassure anxious parents and teachers that games are a
legitimate cultural form that deserve critical analysis in schools just as
film, television and literature do. But we also want to argue that full
understanding only comes when children have the tools to create their own
games.”

The Project ooutline is available online, in which the aim is stated as…

… to contribute towards a better understanding of the motivating pleasures of computer games, in order that their pedagogic potentials can be more effectively exploited.

Other coverage of this story is available on the BBC website , and on the Guardian site (which also has a number of links to other interesting stories about computer gaming and education.)
Having recently been introduced to a hands-on experience with Massively Multi-Player Games (MMPG) by my friend Lisa Galarneau I am even more convinced of the need to step up the level of research into this area so that we can more fully understand and harness the educational value of games as a part of learning!