AFTERWORD

The papers in this volume offer a state-of-the-art overview of educational scholar-ship and practice at the intersection of video gaming, literacies, schooling, out-of-school learning, and two related areas of “content” (L1 and L2 education). The au-thors of these papers rightfully stress that videogames and gaming take many forms, that what people actually do in and around games is as crucial to learning and liter-acies as the games themselves, and that gaming is intertwined with other literacy practices that vary considerably across the contexts of school, home, community, and online spaces. As with any overview as good as this one, one marvels at far we have come. Two decades ago, when Jim wrote What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy (Gee, 2003), video gaming primarily was viewed as a deterrent to literacy and learning; at best, a form of mindless entertainment and at worst a medium that contributed to violence and aggression. The idea that the edu-cational benefits of gaming would become a legitimate area of scholarship in literacy education would have seemed absurd. Still, with all this activity, we can’t help but wonder (like Robert Frost) about the paths not taken in our collective interest in video gaming.