Play the Games I Mentioned Right Now:

Operation Resilient Planet, Mentioned on Slide 4: It is a big, 6 hr game. We also allow teachers to pick small 20-25 min experiences from the game to use in classrooms.
Transform-It and Energy City: Mentioned on slide 5: Free browser based flash games that provide a range of different challenges. Both have something you can do in 20 minutes in a class but provide hours of play later at home.
Coaster Creator and Eco Defenders. Mentioned on Slide 6: Both of these games provide spaces for direct classroom objectives, but also provide deeper experiences for players to try to best their own scores.
Here is an example of how videos model practices for classroom teachers. Mentioned in Slide 10:

You can log into the Jason Mission Center to browse some of these supporting classroom materials. Mentioned in Slide 11.

Image from Retrotyoys.com

Weird huh?  How did this happen?  Are we graduating incompetent people?  Hardly.  But somehow, we keep hearing from politicians, educations, and folks in the business community that we need scientists and engineers.  There is a dearth of talent.  We need to improve science education!  We need to inspire kids!

Looks like the main stream  message is finally starting to catch up the the reality:  We don’t have jobs for all our scientists.  Got that? We can stop the mea culpa about not having enough scientists.  We have too many, and we can’t give these people the jobs they’ve been preparing for for 10-14 years.

This doesn’t diminish the role of science education by a long shot, but it should make us reconsider what science education is for and why it is important.  The key focus should be science literacy for citizens.  There is of course, nothing new about this, but it is a good time to reflect on our priorities.  Do we need another unemployed nuclear scientsits, or do we want to have an informed citizenry that avoids ghosts, gouls, and the alignment of stars in making policy decisions?

Recently, I came across  Shape it Up, which is my favorite geology interactive so far.   Players try to make one landscape look like another by choosing a force of nature (volcano, wind, water, glacier) and choosing a time period.

This is a wonderful game for young kids.  There are several components that I think can be added or modified in order to make the game more sophisticated for middle school kids. 1) I’d like to see a more rule-based structure around it in order to make it more game-like.

2) Choose geological features that are the result of multiple natural forces and allow students to experiment with those forces.

3) Let students fail and see the results of their failed states.

4) Add elements where students are using forces to create smaller items such as various rocks and minerals in addition the the buttes, islands, and rivers.

Of course, it speaks to the original idea that it can be scaled up or down quite dramatically depending on the students’ age.  Nice work!

Image originally from www.digitalfrog.com

My blood was a’ boiling this morning after reading an article on  edweek about an investigation done by the College Board:

… can a student get the same level of experience from a virtual dissection online, without actually smelling the formaldehyde or making a cut?

In recent years, the College Board, which authorizes AP classes and offers college-level material to high school students, has been trying to determine whether simulated labs in some science courses can take the place of real-world experiments. It’s a debate that online science providers and hands-on teachers are grappling with as well.

The very first comment on this post insists that virtual labs can never replace “real labs” (in this case, fetal pig dissection is the example used).  From Dr. Brad Huff:

Simulations represent how the programmer thinks the real world should behave, not how the real world does respond when explored by a student.

Learning science is learning to be a skilled observer and accurate recorder of what is observed, not a participant in a computer game purporting to teach the nature of Nature.

Here is  the thing:

Let’s disregard the fact that the article mentions formaldehyde, which no one uses anymore…
1) Cost- dead animals are expensive, and disposing of these dead animals, year after year, means you have to keep ordering and keep buying them.
2) Evidence- What exactly do students get out of dissecting animals? DO we have empirical evidence that they make students better recorders of nature? That they motivate students to become scientists? Why don’t we hold our previously held assumptions to the same scrutiny that we hold tradition?
3) Real Science -There are numerous physics, meteorologists, chemists, immunologists, that deal STRICTLY in models and simulations, and never hold a messy piece of nature in their hands. They are scientists in every bit and in fact, quite frankly, they are the scientists that are leading the way in contemporary sciences. Modelers get much more of the funding these days and make headlines far more often than zoologists. They need to learn how to understand and interpret a coder’s “bias” (BTW- no coder works in isolation outside of subject matter experts and instructional designers these days) just as much as any experiment has bias and noisy data.

1) Wild, Wild Climate

It isn’t quite geology but it does what I do love about it is its page on “Junk Science Detection” and a great explanation about the role of peer review. There is a real intellectual crisis when it comes to evaluating data, especially scientific data and having it laid out in such a straightforward manner is welcome and necessary.  Too often, we take political opinion as fact.

(from http://wildwildclimate.com)

2) The Interactive RockCycle

I’ve never formally studied geology (along with meteorology it is the only science I’ve really neglected) so I loved how crisp, clear, straightforward and well illustrated this particular interactive was.  It is a very elegant piece.

3) Annenberg Media

Now found at learner.org, these are free, on demand, and impeccably produced videos.  I cannot believe how readily accessible these gems are.  I’m using them to get a crash course in geology.

4) School Yard Geology

This project was apparently inspired by a scientist who taught inmates in a California prison field geology.  There are several great ideas for activities, especially for younger grades.

You can see that my approach is to examine a smattering of media.  I need video game ideas, but so far I’ve gotten a lot out of movies, interactives, lesson plans, and presentations.  Merging ideas from all of these helps me eventually hone in on a game idea.  If you have any other geology resources, of know of anything that could make a great geology game, send me a tweet @mchmiel