Adaptations In Ecosystemsmr. Mac's Class 2019 20

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  • We love science in 4th grade - from the building and programming of Lego robots to the exploration of nature, the basic elements of organisms, and the moons and stars in outer space!
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Adaptations In Ecosystems Mr. Mac's Class 2019 20 Day

The publicly available Global Coal Plant Tracker (GCPT17) dataset 20 provides the location, capacity, status, heat rate, combustion technology, and vintage for 3456 existing and 751 planned (under construction, permitted, or pre-permitted for operation before the year 2030) coal-fired power plants that are within the spatial extent of the.

Providing healthy food for a growing world population, reducing food losses and waste, boosting productivity under changing climatic and economic conditions, safeguarding biodiversity, using a broad range of genetic resources, ensure access to data and technological innovations to all farmers worldwide, fighting globally spreading pests and diseases: Such challenges cannot be tackled by sole fighters, in fact smart team play is required for progress and real impact. Hence in 2011 the G20 states decided to break new ground in developing joint agricultural research strategies as well as in implementing new cooperation formats.

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Games in Mr. Mackey's Classroom

Class posted Jul 20, 2016, 5:28 PM by Jordan Mackey [ updated Jul 26, 2016, 1:51 PM]

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First off, I just want to say that all of the games I played over at the Bioman Biology website were amazing learning adventures. If you are an educator in the field of biology, I would highly recommend clicking the title of this column (found above) and heading over to Bioman's website to play a few educational and entertaining games.
In Snurfle Islands, students are encouraged to explore various islands as a make believe creature called a Snurfle. Each island has its own set of environmental factors, and predator species, in essence modeling the effects different ecosystems have on the survival of species with different types of adaptations. The goal of the game is for students to determine how the various adaptations, and natural selection drive the evolution of different populations of Snurfles.
Before the student sets out on the evolutionary adaptive adventure, they can embark on a quick background research perusal to familiarize themselves with the terminology used in the game. Each term, or set of terms, is accompanied by a very short animated graphic useful for learners of various needs. After they have read through the brief vocabulary review, it becomes time to build a Snurfle.
This is where it gets interesting, and a bit tricky to figure out. All the while remaining engaging and fun throughout. Before seeing what sorts of pressures their Snurfle will be presented with, students are asked to choose the adaptations they wish to put on their Snurfle (There is a screenshot of this above in the post). Each of the adaptations cost Survival Points, ranging anywhere from 10 - 70 points each. Students are allowed to put as many adaptations on their Snurfle as they want, and this is where it gets a bit tricky if this is their first time playing the game. For instance, when I first played the game, I had no idea what the Survival Points meant, and put a bunch of ridiculous adaptations on my Snurfle, and failed immediately. That was because, once students start a level, their Snurfle needs to begin eating fruit, which give them 10 Survival Points each, while also trying to find a mate. Let's say, the adaptations cost 200 Survival points and the island entered has exactly 200 points in fruit available to the Snurfle. The student may be thinking, awesome, I can meet my required Survival Point intake. They would be correct there, but Their Snurfle would have no points left to produce offspring once they found their mate, because offspring cost 10 Survival Points each after the Snurfle's Survival Point quota has been met. So, the more extra points, the more offspring produced by the Snurfle, and thus the more the Snurfle affects the allele frequencies of the population on the island.
After completion of the level, students are presented with a page showing them their game stats (If they survived, how many offspring they produced, and how they have affected the allele frequencies on the island). Students are even presented with a simple graph and a textual interpretation of the data underneath. Once students are finished reviewing their data, they can either change the adaptations for their Snurfle and venture to another island, or they can go back to the main menu. Once at the main menu, students are presented with the options to take a quiz for game points or go to their score sheet to view their progress, save, or send their stats to their teacher.
I think Snurfle Islands is a great inquiry based interactive game aimed to educatate students in biology at the secondary level while also making them laugh at times, because it's just a silly looking game.


I found Nova's Evolution Lab while wandering around on the website Games For Change. This particular game caught my attention as it involved building phylogenetic trees in a puzzle based format, and it teaches students about evolution and common ancestry at the same time.
Once students have set up their login information and are in The Evolution Lab website, they are immediately greeted with an informative and thought provoking video presenting them with some basic background information about evolution. I like that the video doesn't just give the information away, but tries to invoke a sense of wonder and curiosity about why things are the way they are, it leaves the viewer wanting more.
After students have watched the short video on evolution, they begin with the first exercise which involves building a basic tree and just really getting to know how to use the functions in the puzzle game. The game is based around a drag and drop style where students pick up an organism and place it where they think it goes on the phylogenetic tree. While they are doing this, they can click on the organism which brings up a fact sheet so they can read up and learn more which might help them in determining where to place the organism. Once they have placed the organisms and created a tree, the students need to place traits below each branch point to successfully complete the puzzle. Oftentimes, this will involve a reshuffling of the arrangement of the organisms on their tree, especially when the puzzles become more difficult in later levels. What I really like about this game is that after the student completes one of the sub-missions in the game, they are presented with a quiz question based on the tree that they had just completed, and are given immediate feedback on their answer.
As the game progresses it becomes more and more challenging, and eventually incorporates DNA comparison analysis between species to build the tree. I think that this game could be a great asset in any secondary biology classroom exploring common ancestry and evolution. The information is presented in a challenging and engaging way that very well could promote collaboration among peers and/or the entire class. I think it would be very interesting to put one of these up on the board and work through it as an entire class holding a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses we encountered as we went through the puzzle, defining what ended up working and why.