The headline of an article in today’s New York Times by Motoko Rich, “Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?,” may be missing a question more important than the one it asks—more important, at least, to educators. That is, can online reading be merged with more traditional reading forms and methods to develop a new (and more culturally and technologically appropriate) form of reading? Fortunately, the piece does finally address the question.

Aaron Barlow reviews What Video Games have to Teach us about Learning and Literacy by James Paul Gee, New York, Palgrave MacMillan, December 2007, on the ePluribus Media Journal.

Barlow states,

This is one of those "duh" books. That is, there's nothing startling in it, just things that many of us teachers will say, on reading, "I should have thought of that." Thing is, we didn't; Gee did.

Video games have rarely been given any credit in a "learning" context, but as Barlow points out, perhaps we have sold them short.

Read the review on the Journal and come back here to discuss.