Article at Mashable.com with some interesting examples of how games are inspiring learning in a more practical and exciting way. Some quotes:

While university departments have cleanly separated academic subjects, solving the real-life problem of, say, building a website, requires individuals to orchestrate the expertise of communication, business, and economics, in addition to computer science.

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Social gaming has a come a long way from the days when a dozen students would squint at a 10-inch screen of Oregon Trail. The 2000s seemed to be the decade of case studies: Bold educators willing to experiment with developing technologies. But now, the involvement of major funders, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, points to an industry that is on the cusp of freeing education from its 2D textbook prison.