Designing a pretend game with geotechnologies: toward active citizenship

Résumé En

In Sète, a small French southern town nearby the Mediterranean Sea, six companies are competing to implement new energies into the city. The companies are specialized in different “green” energies: heat pumps, windmills, ocean wave energy, photovoltaics and methanization. Each of them has to convince the committee tender responsible for the call for project that their project is the best for a sustainable development of the city. But they have to face cons from an active local association of citizens before they vote to choose the best project. The debate is tricky and the competition is merciless. Each one is aware of the importance of the stakes and is deeply involved in the struggle… but this is “only a game”. The “mayor of the city” is a secondary teacher. The “companies”, the “committee tender” and “association of inhabitants” are the different characters playing by secondary students.This role-playing game has been designed with geotechnologies. The different characters get data from a virtual globe. They use it to locate their project and to demonstrate its impact on the environment. The different characters have to judge the relevance of the projects on the field. To do that, they use pocket PCs with GPS functionalities that display interviews of local “inhabitants” when they reach the places where the projects are planned to be implemented. They get information from these interviews and from the field itself. Therefore the game includes the use of Augmented Reality.In this paper we describe an empirical research into the uses of geotechnologies to design a role-playing game for the development of citizenship. The research questions focus on the elements that the teacher should take into account to design such a role-playing game. We address the question of the added value of geotechnologies to design complex learning situations. Then, we discuss the relevance of geotechnologies to design a Game-Based-Learning situation which aims at developing citizenship for secondary students.