The Design of Learning Environments Using Videogames in Formal Education Bego��a Gros University of Barcelona bgros@ub.edu Abstract The fundamental aim of this contribution is to analyze the design of learning environments using videogames in schools. This analysis is the result of work done by our research team in primary and secondary education in Spain. Our interest is to analyze how content and strategies in education should be learnt via the use of digital games. During the last decade, the amount of research on this field has increased considerably. The problem of integrating videogames into education will lessen over time and, in particular, as a consequence of pedagogical proposals that allow the integration of the experience of play with the learning experience. In this contribution, we describe the pedagogical model for the integration of the videogames used. We analyze the results obtained in relation to those obtained in similar studies. Finally, we consider the most important advantages and disadvantages of the use of videogames in schools. 1. Videogames and their complexity. The use of videogame adventures and simulations as pedagogical tools are, to us, of fundamental interest because multiple dimensions and variables mediate these complex-learning experiences. The use of technology for learning continues to be and when it comes to the case of videogames, we find that such experiences are even more isolated. It appears to us that the pedagogical discourse pits the ���natural��� world against the ���technological��� world as if they were elements without a relationship [7]. However, objects, instruments and artifacts are not external things. We construct knowledge, our lives, our identities as a consequence of the relations we have with these supposedly external things. The latter are not neutral instruments: they shape our lives enabling us to give meaning to the same objects. Play activities are not an added expression of our identities. Play allows children to enter into the adult world, to understand symbols and to imitate behavior. Toys, understood in the technical sense, have also evolved in a manner that reflects the character of society. For this reason, it can hardly be thought of as being strange that a good part of play activity of children and adolescents should be founded in the use of electronic toys such as (gameboy and other technological gadgets mobile phones with games, PDA, etc). Videogames are fundamentally representative of contemporary technological society. They are not something foreign to contemporary knowledge and current forms of learning. On the contrary, it is through electronic games in their various forms that children enter the multiple dimensions of the digital world. Nowadays, no one disputes that one can learn from playing and that play activity has come to form of the dialectical strategies that are used by teaching staff in most levels of education [9]. Nevertheless, play activity is not always well accepted. Along with the positive concept of play favored in learning coexists another type vision of learning which is much more critical. Learning based on the protestant work ethic, just as with work, must be realized as if it were an absolute in itself, that is to say as a ���duty���. Time is structured and organized, and broken up according to the activities that are to be realized. In this instance, the introduction of elements that alter the said spaces and periods of time is seen as something critical. This perspective suggests that all diversions and entertainment are things that should be left to those moments of leisure, for one���s free time. The problem with this perspective is that one forgets that the effort and dedication that are present in an activity do not The First IEEE International Workshop on Digital Game and Intelligent Toy Enhanced Learning (DIGITEL'07) 0-7695-2801-5/07 $20.00 �� 2007