Playing in the Classroom with a Virtual Globe for Geography Learning

International audience; This paper describes an empirical research about the uses of a virtual globe for geography learning in lower secondary school. It aims at discussing the roles that a virtual globe, such as Google Earth, can take for elaborating a didactical setting in order to implement a pretend game. The game, based on a real project in the north of France, consists in a study about land use planning. The students have to argue about their choices according to the role that they play. The uses of the virtual globe take place during different steps of the game. (1) The students can access to information about their role and the rules of the game. (2) They can visualize and gather different data about the project. (3) They create their own set of data in order to argue their point of view. (4) They use the virtual globe to communicate with others paricipants. The research questions focus on different aspects of the impacts of the uses of the virtual globe during the learning process. According to the idea that the activity of the player/learner is driven by exploration and discovery (Ahuja, Mitra, R, & M, 1995), one of the questions deals with the level of implication of students and their awareness about their role and the problem to solve. We also address the question of the relevance of the use of a virtual globe to cope with the complexity of the project. Therefore, we examine the value of Geotechnologies for implementing Game-Based-Learning situations in the classroom