(MMORPG = Massively multi-player online role-playing game)

Clark Aldrich got quite a reaction a while back when he posted Second Life is not a Teaching Tool to LCB. While I generally agreed with those who rose in opposition to his declaration, something still just didn't fit for me. Even when his call for evidence of learning in SL with his post Second Life Redux got a lot of responses, something still gnawed at me like a young child who's newest linguistic trick is "but why? but why? but why?"

The nagging sense that there was more to the answer came to me the other day. If you look at formalized teaching as the only means of learning, then Clark is close to right. But if you simply broaden to say the arena Jay Cross advocates with informal learning, it's hard not to see SL as being a place where people, or at least their avatars, can be taught something - i.e. those flaming boulders can really smart.

But it dawned on me, this blog, Second Life, all those podcasts, all the experiments with mash-ups and AJAX and JSON, are all part of an environment where we are working together to create, learn, and share with each other so that we can all move forward. So doesn't that make all of this, including Second Life, part of the ultimate massive multi-player online role-playing game? Better known by it's old name as eLearning?