[quoting Foshay, 5 Mar 97.b] I think you may be looking at the comment out of the context of the original paper. In the original paper, I explained my use of TBT as an umbrella term, for the purposes of the discussion.
Yes, that was precisely my point. I was referring to your explicit use of the term TBT in the original paper to cover all learning contexts--a use of the term "training" that is most peculiar. My writing sometimes tends to be very concise, so let me waste some space and unpack part of my meaning. Then you may wish to re-read my original comment.
Of course, I agree that the issues being discussed are much broader than technology; we're just discussing them in a technological context here.
My point was not that the issues are broader than technology. I, like everyone else, did understand that the discussion was centered on technology. (After all, the first "T" in "TBT" does stand for "technology," does it not?) My point is that while one may argue, as you did, that fantasy contexts for instruction (oops, I mean "training") are not desired by (your) ID clients, the question of the usefulness of fantasy contexts for technology-delivered instruction go beyond training, and the (apparently) narrow concerns of your clients, and that while a fantasy context may not be appropriate for training for specific job skills, it may be quite appropriate for types of content traditionally associated with education such as literature, history, political science, the social sciences, and the other content areas that I mentioned that I believe are more important for an educated person to acquire even than specific job skills.
Alas, you don't have to be an educational technologist, instructional designer, or trainer to narrow the definition of education so that it includes only the narrowest and trivial definitions of learning--we have lots of that in schools and training settings already.
Well I am all of the above, but I think it most unfortunate that you want to so narrowly define education and throw out most of what really matters in education--those knowledge domains that are paramount in learning about and understanding one's own cultural heritage, as well as other cultures. There is no reason why technology-based instruction must be limited to training--or to applied skills like math and science, for that matter. So-called fantasy contexts are most appropriate in technology-based learning, and, in fact may very effectively promote transfer. For example, the first computer-based adventure game (Adventure) designed by Will Crowther (of BBN fame) was inspired by the fantasy roll-playing game D & D and consisted of a fantasy overlaid on reality. Remarkably, when Bev Schwartz was able to find her way around in the complex mazes of Bedquilt Cave on her first visit just from having played the (text-based) computer game, she demonstrated that near transfer of knowledge, so concrete that it could save one's life, may in fact occur from learning in the context of a fantasy.