One important note that struck me from James Gee’s article Learning and Games is the importance of avatars and situated learning. When a student in a learning gaming environment has the ability to create and microcontrol their avatar, the level of emotional attachment and investment is improved. This goes hand in hand with situated learning as the gaming environment allows the learner to become situated in the environment that they need to learn about.  This could increase the likelyhood of efficient knowledge transfer to an occupation as the learner already has the mental model of the new world that they would be working in.

Distributed intellegence is also an important learning research concept when discussing educationally sound video games.  Students in the classroom could learn from others in the game world as well as from and using the tools that they pick up along the way.  This person-plus model lends itself nicely to the gaming world.