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Welcome to the Life Science Library Hub! I'm Mr. A, your school librarian. Are you a student ( or a teacher) in 7th Grade Science this year? Then this hub is for YOU! I have pulled together some great things from around the web and the library collection to help you throughout the year. Each section is grouped either based on a unit or information about the library. Email me if you have any questions! Onwards!

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You can check these out or place a hold if you want to take a look at some of the great books that have been written about biology and life science.

Try using the following keywords in our catalog to find Life Science books:

Genetics, Evolution, Genes, Heredity, Ecosystems, Conservation, Bioengineering, Genetically Modified Organisms, Cells, Plants, Zoology

Come to the library and talk to Mr. A for more information or send him an email :)

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This Library Hub aims to connect students and teachers to new resources and information from both within and outside of the library about Life Science as it relates to their classroom explorations.

The curation and creation of this Library Hub are aligned with the Life Science standards within the New Jersey Standards for Science. Each of the broader themes within the standards (Cells, Ecosystems, Heredity, and Evolution) are represented for users to discover further.

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- More practice for the parts of a cell?
- Visual ways to understand how living things interact?
- Videos to explain concepts from this unit in your science class?

Then explore this section! Remember to leave a like or a comment for resources that you found helpful.

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Do you need a little more help understanding the parts of a plant or animal cell? Here is a great interactive cell map that you can explore. Try clicking on different parts of the cell to read about how they work.

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Plant and Animal Cell Organelles

Eukaryotes (protozoa, plants and animals) have highly-structured cells. These cells tend to be larger than the cells of bacteria, and have developed specialized packaging and transport mechanisms that may be necessary to support their larger size. Use the following interactive animation of plant and animal cells to learn about their respective organelles.

Nucleus: The nucleus is the most obvious organelle in any eukaryotic cell. It is enclosed in a double membrane and communicates with the surrounding cytosol via numerous nuclear pores. Within each nucleus is nuclear chromatin that contains the organism's genome. The chromatin is efficiently packaged within the small nuclear space. Genes within the chromatin are made of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). The DNA stores the organism's entire encoded genetic information. The DNA is similar in every cell of the body, but depending on the specific cell type, some genes may be turned on or off - that's why a liver cell is different from a muscle cell, and a muscle cell is different from a fat cell. When a cell is dividing, the nuclear chromatin (DNA and surrounding protein) condenses into chromosomes that are easily seen by microscopy. For a deeper understanding of genetics, visit our companion site, GeneTiCs Alive!

Nucleolus: The prominent structure in the nucleus is the nucleolus. The nucleolus produces ribosomes, which move out of the nucleus and take positions on the rough endoplasmic reticulum where they are critical in protein synthesis.

Cytosol: The cytosol is the "soup" within which all the other cell organelles reside and where most of the cellular metabolism occurs. Though mostly water, the cytosol is full of proteins that control cell metabolism including signal transduction pathways, glycolysis, intracellular receptors, and transcription factors.

Cytoplasm: This is a collective term for the cytosol plus the organelles suspended within the cytosol.

Centrosome: The centrosome, or MICROTUBULE ORGANIZING CENTER (MTOC), is an area in the cell where microtubules are produced. Plant and animal cell centrosomes play similar roles in cell division, and both include collections of microtubules, but the plant cell centrosome is simpler and does not have centrioles.

During animal cell division, the centrioles replicate (make new copies) and the centrosome divides. The result is two centrosomes, each with its own pair of centrioles. The two centrosomes move to opposite ends of the nucleus, and from each centrosome, microtubules grow into a "spindle" which is responsible for separating replicated chromosomes into the two daughter cells.

Centriole (animal cells only): Each centriole is a ring of nine groups of fused microtubules. There are three microtubules in each group. Microtubules (and centrioles) are part of the cytoskeleton. In the complete animal cell centrosome, the two centrioles are arranged such that one is perpendicular to the other.

Golgi: The Golgi apparatus is a membrane-bound structure with a single membrane. It is actually a stack of membrane-bound vesicles that are important in packaging macromolecules for transport elsewhere in the cell. The stack of larger vesicles is surrounded by numerous smaller vesicles containing those packaged macromolecules. The enzymatic or hormonal contents of lysosomes, peroxisomes and secretory vesicles are packaged in membrane-bound vesicles at the periphery of the Golgi apparatus.

Lysosome: Lysosomes contain hydrolytic enzymes necessary for intracellular digestion. They are common in animal cells, but rare in plant cells. Hydrolytic enzymes of plant cells are more often found in the vacuole.

Peroxisome: Peroxisomes are membrane-bound packets of oxidative enzymes. In plant cells, peroxisomes play a variety of roles including converting fatty acids to sugar and assisting chloroplasts in photorespiration. In animal cells, peroxisomes protect the cell from its own production of toxic hydrogen peroxide. As an example, white blood cells produce hydrogen peroxide to kill bacteria. The oxidative enzymes in peroxisomes break down the hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen.

Secretory Vesicle: Cell secretions - e.g. hormones, neurotransmitters - are packaged in secretory vesicles at the Golgi apparatus. The secretory vesicles are then transported to the cell surface for release.

Cell Membrane: Every cell is enclosed in a membrane, a double layer of phospholipids (lipid bilayer). The exposed heads of the bilayer are "hydrophilic" (water loving), meaning that they are compatible with water both within the cytosol and outside of the cell. However, the hidden tails of the phosopholipids are "hydrophobic" (water fearing), so the cell membrane acts as a protective barrier to the uncontrolled flow of water. The membrane is made more complex by the presence of numerous proteins that are crucial to cell activity. These proteins include receptors for odors, tastes and hormones, as well as pores responsible for the controlled entry and exit of ions like sodium (Na+) potassium (K+), calcium (Ca++) and chloride (Cl-).

Mitochondria: Mitochondria provide the energy a cell needs to move, divide, produce secretory products, contract - in short, they are the power centers of the cell. They are about the size of bacteria but may have different shapes depending on the cell type. Mitochondria are membrane-bound organelles, and like the nucleus have a double membrane. The outer membrane is fairly smooth. But the inner membrane is highly convoluted, forming folds (cristae) when viewed in cross-section. The cristae greatly increase the inner membrane's surface area. It is on these cristae that food (sugar) is combined with oxygen to produce ATP - the primary energy source for the cell.

Vacuole: A vacuole is a membrane-bound sac that plays roles in intracellular digestion and the release of cellular waste products. In animal cells, vacuoles are generally small. Vacuoles tend to be large in plant cells and play several roles: storing nutrients and waste products, helping increase cell size during growth, and even acting much like lysosomes of animal cells. The plant cell vacuole also regulates turgor pressure in the cell. Water collects in cell vacuoles, pressing outward against the cell wall and producing rigidity in the plant. Without sufficient water, turgor pressure drops and the plant wilts.

Cell Wall (plant cells only): Plant cells have a rigid, protective cell wall made up of polysaccharides. In higher plant cells, that polysaccharide is usually cellulose. The cell wall provides and maintains the shape of these cells and serves as a protective barrier. Fluid collects in the plant cell vacuole and pushes out against the cell wall. This turgor pressure is responsible for the crispness of fresh vegetables.

Chloroplast (plant cells only): Chloroplasts are specialized organelles found in all higher plant cells. These organelles contain the plant cell's chlorophyll responsible for the plant's green color and the ability to absorb energy from sunlight. This energy is used to convert water plus atmospheric carbon dioxide into metabolizable sugars by the biochemical process of photosynthesis. Chloroplasts have a double outer membrane. Within the stroma are other membrane structures - the thylakoids. Thylakoids appear in stacks called "grana" (singular = granum). Estrella Moumtain Community College provides a good source of information on photosynthesis.

Smooth Endoplasmic Reticulum: Throughout the eukaryotic cell, especially those responsible for the production of hormones and other secretory products, is a vast network of membrane-bound vesicles and tubules called the endoplasmic reticulum, or ER for short. The ER is a continuation of the outer nuclear membrane and its varied functions suggest the complexity of the eukaryotic cell.
The smooth endoplasmic reticulum is so named because it appears smooth by electron microscopy. Smooth ER plays different functions depending on the specific cell type including lipid and steroid hormone synthesis, breakdown of lipid-soluble toxins in liver cells, and control of calcium release in muscle cell contraction.

Rough Endoplasmic Reticulum: Rough endoplasmic reticulum appears "pebbled" by electron microscopy due to the presence of numerous ribosomes on its surface. Proteins synthesized on these ribosomes collect in the endoplasmic reticulum for transport throughout the cell.

Ribosomes: Ribosomes are packets of RNA and protein that play a crucial role in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. They are the site of protein synthesis. Each ribosome comprises two parts, a large subunit and a small subunit. Messenger RNA from the cell nucleus is moved systematically along the ribosome where transfer RNA adds individual amino acid molecules to the lengthening protein chain.

Cytoskeleton: As its name implies, the cytoskeleton helps to maintain cell shape. But the primary importance of the cytoskeleton is in cell motility. The internal movement of cell organelles, as well as cell locomotion and muscle fiber contraction could not take place without the cytoskeleton. The cytoskeleton is an organized network of three primary protein filaments:

microtubules

actin filaments (microfilaments)

intermediate fibers

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This exploration of plant and animal cell organelles and cell structure is presented in a mobile-friendly interactive model with detailed descriptive text.

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How do humans and cells fit together? How is an organ different from an organ system? Take a look at this great infographic and explanations to see the different levels of organization you find in and among living things.

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Levels of Biological Organization: Take a look around you. Life is found almost everywhere on Earth. In fact, the vast diversity of organisms present is indeed fascinating. Different species of plants, various types of animals, and all sorts of organisms comprise our planet. But did you ever wonder how each life form is in any way interconnected?

The Earth is assumed to be about 4.5 billion years old for that much time, various species of organisms have already emerged and disappeared. However, it is quite ironic how in order to maintain equilibrium (balance), living organisms are classified in a hierarchical and orderly manner according to their level of complexity.

In each successive level of organization, the complexity of life increases and a distinguishable property can be observed. To further understand the complexity of life, listed below are the ten levels of biological organization in living organisms listed based on the hierarchy starting with the basic element, .

Levels of Biological Organization

Our planet is indeed composed of a variety of living things ranging from a simple cell to a massive sphere of life forms. While each organism tend to vary on size and function, still, no one lives alone and can live alone. Each organism somehow depends or affect the life of other living organisms and non-living factors in the environment. Any change in a part of one system can drastically increase or decrease the chances of survival of an organism.

Absolutely, such hierarchy in the biological organization is sufficient enough to show the complexity of life. Doesn't that make you appreciate life more?

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Levels of Biological Organization | 10 Levels of Organization | BioExplorer

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Levels of Biological Organization: Take a look around you. Life is found almost everywhere on Earth. In fact, the vast diversity of organisms present is indeed fascinating. Different species of plants , various types of animals , and all sorts of organisms comprise our planet.

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- Fun ways to investigate ecosystems?
- More information on the cycles of ecosystems (Water, Carbon, and Nitrogen)?
- Videos to explain concepts from this unit in your science class?

Then explore this section! Remember to leave a like or a comment for resources that you found helpful.

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Cells: Experience Life at Its Tiniest by Gibson and Cornell

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Cells: Experience Life at Its Tiniest by Gibson and Cornell

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عبدالمناف عبد أبوطالب

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If you look at a piece of a leaf or a drop of saliva through a microscope, what do you see? Cells are the basic building blocks of life a...

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This year, you will investigate animal communication and behavior. Try watching this TED Talk from the Wildlife DJ Ben Mirin about how he uses the sounds of nature to help us better understand what is going on out there.

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DJing to the sounds of nature | Ben Mirin

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While Crash Course might be made for High School Biology, this overview (and the plant cell one) are very informative. If you think you might be struggling with difficult content in this video, try using the Playback Speed and slow it down or rewatch it. Crash Course videos can be fast, and it's okay if you don't get everything on the first watch-through!

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Eukaryopolis - The City of Animal Cells: Crash Course Biology #4

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While Crash Course might be made for High School Biology, this overview (and the animal cell one) are very informative. If you think you might be struggling with difficult content in this video, try using the Playback Speed and slow it down or rewatch it. Crash Course videos can be fast, and it's okay if you don't get everything on the first watch-through!

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Here is another great resource to understand photosynthesis. The process and science of photosynthesis can be difficult to master, and this video breaks down the information in a visual way. Instead of just reading about it, you can see some of the ways that photosynthesis works!

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Trees, plans, algae, and phytoplankton all do it. Learn about photosynthesis, the process that powers the world.

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Understanding how ecosystems are balanced is essential to seeing the larger picture when studying these patterns in our environment. Though Brainpop might be for younger students, Food Fight is both a challenging game and a great way to gain a better understanding of energy and food chains in an ecosystem. See if you can create a balanced food web and ecosystem!

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In this free educational science game, students can watch food chains come to life! Learn about food webs and producers/consumers within a biome.

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Cellular Respiration! (Breaking It Down)

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Cellular Respiration! (Breaking It Down)

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Cellular Respiration | PBS NC Science | PBS LearningMedia

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Cellular respiration helps keep the earth in balance by breaking down the food that photosynthesis produces.

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Super Simple Biology: The Ultimate Bitesize Study Guide

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Super Simple Biology: The Ultimate Bitesize Study Guide

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Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Supersimple Biology: The Ultimate Bitesize Study Guide is a resource guide for learning and studying biology. Due out 23rd June 2020 from Penguin/Random House on their DK imprint, it's 288 pages and will be available in paperback and ebook formats. As almost always with DK's offerings, I was blown away by the detailed, clear, and solidly expert photography. Every photo is well rendered and easy to follow. The supportive text is also clear and a...more

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Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader. Supersimple Biology: The Ultimate Bitesize Study Guide is a resource guide for learning and studying biology. Due out 23rd June 2020 from Penguin/Random House on their DK imprint, it's 288 pages and will be available in paperback and ebook formats.

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The Smithsonian Science Education Center is a great place to look for more information on things you learn in class. This webpage provides an overview of photosynthesis that is short and gets right to the point. The infographic is really helpful for the big picture of what is happening during photosynthesis.

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What is Photosynthesis

When you get hungry, you grab a snack from your fridge or pantry. But what can plants do when they get hungry? You are probably aware that plants need sunlight, water, and a home (like soil) to grow, but where do they get their food? They make it themselves!

Plants are called autotrophs because they can use energy from light to synthesize, or make, their own food source. Many people believe they are "feeding" a plant when they put it in soil, water it, or place it outside in the Sun, but none of these things are considered food. Rather, plants use sunlight, water, and the gases in the air to make glucose, which is a form of sugar that plants need to survive. This process is called photosynthesis and is performed by all plants, algae, and even some microorganisms. To perform photosynthesis, plants need three things: carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight.

By taking in water (H2O) through the roots, carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air, and light energy from the Sun, plants can perform photosynthesis to make glucose (sugars) and oxygen (O2). CREDIT: mapichai/Shutterstock.com

Just like you, plants need to take in gases in order to live. Animals take in gases through a process called respiration. During the respiration process, animals inhale all of the gases in the atmosphere, but the only gas that is retained and not immediately exhaled is oxygen. Plants, however, take in and use carbon dioxide gas
for photosynthesis. Carbon dioxide enters through tiny holes in a plant's leaves, flowers, branches, stems, and roots. Plants also require water to make their food. Depending on the environment, a plant's access to water will vary. For example, desert plants, like a cactus, have less available water than a lilypad in a pond, but every photosynthetic organism has some sort of adaptation, or special structure, designed to collect water. For most plants, roots are responsible for absorbing water.

The last requirement for photosynthesis is an important one because it provides the energy to make sugar. How does a plant take carbon dioxide and water molecules and make a food molecule? The Sun! The energy from light causes a chemical reaction that breaks down the molecules of carbon dioxide and water and reorganizes them to make the sugar (glucose) and oxygen gas. After the sugar is produced, it is then broken down by the mitochondria into energy that can be used for growth and repair. The oxygen that is produced is released from the same tiny holes through which the carbon dioxide entered. Even the oxygen that is released serves another purpose. Other organisms, such as animals, use oxygen to aid in their survival.

If we were to write a formula for photosynthesis, it would look like this:
6CO₂ + 6H₂O + Light energy → C₆H₁₂O₆ (sugar) + 6O2
The whole process of photosynthesis is a transfer of energy from the Sun to a plant. In each sugar molecule created, there is a little bit of the energy from the Sun, which the plant can either use or store for later.

Imagine a pea plant. If that pea plant is forming new pods, it requires a large amount of sugar energy to grow larger. This is similar to how you eat food to grow taller and stronger. But rather than going to the store and buying groceries, the pea plant will use sunlight to obtain the energy to build sugar. When the pea pods
are fully grown, the plant may no longer need as much sugar and will store it in its cells. A hungry rabbit comes along and decides to eat some of the plant, which provides the energy that allows the rabbit to hop back to its home. Where did the rabbit's energy come from? Consider the process of photosynthesis. With the help of carbon dioxide and water, the pea pod used the energy from sunlight to construct the sugar molecules. When the rabbit ate the pea pod, it indirectly received energy from sunlight, which was stored in the sugar molecules in the plant.

We can thank photosynthesis for bread! Wheat grains, like the ones pictured, are grown in huge fields. When they are harvested, they are ground into a powder that we might recognize as flour. CREDIT: Elena Schweitzer/Shutterstock.com

Humans, other animals, fungi, and some microorganisms cannot make food in their own bodies like autotrophs, but they still rely on photosynthesis. Through the transfer of energy from the Sun to plants, plants build sugars that humans consume to drive our daily activities. Even when we eat things like chicken or fish, we are transferring energy from the Sun into our bodies because, at some point, one organism consumed a photosynthetic organism (e.g., the fish ate algae). So the next time you grab a snack to replenish your energy, thank the Sun for it!
This is an excerpt from the Structure and Function unit of our curriculum product line, Science and Technology ConceptsTM (STC). Please visit our publisher, Carolina Biological, to learn more.
[BONUS FOR TEACHERS] Watch "Photosynthesis: Blinded by the Light" to explore student misconceptions about matter and energy in photosynthesis and strategies for eliciting student ideas to address or build on them.

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When you get hungry, you grab a snack from your fridge or pantry. But what can plants do when they get hungry? You are probably aware that plants need sunlight, water, and a home (like soil) to grow, but where do they get their food? They make it themselves!

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- Games to help you learn more about heredity?
- Visual ways to see the processes of meiosis and the formation of chromosomes?
- Videos to explain concepts from this unit in your science class?

Then explore this section! Remember to leave a like or a comment for resources that you found helpful.

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- Resources to investigate evidence of evolution?
- Games and interactives to explore the similarities of living things?
- Articles about genetic engineering and some real-life science fiction?
- Videos to explain concepts from this unit in your science class?

Then explore this section! Remember to leave a like or a comment for resources that you found helpful

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In Life Science this year, one of the newer concepts that you will be introduced to are cycles of elements or important resources (Water, Carbon and Nitrogen). Here is a great in-depth resource that explains the different cycles and why they are important for ecosystems.

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The three main cycles of an ecosystem are the water cycle, the carbon cycle and the nitrogen cycle.

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This is an interactive lesson that covers a big concept for the Ecosystems unit: Human Interaction with the Environment. Understanding human impact on the environment can be a tough topic to master without real examples, so this lesson provides a way for you and your teachers to explore how humans have changed their ecosystems in the Crystal River area of Florida.

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Crystal River, located on the Nature Coast of Florida, is known for pristine, crystal clear waters, bays, and streams that give the area its name. With more than 70 springs, Crystal River/Kings Bay is the largest winter refuge for manatees on the Florida Gulf Coast and is a National Wildlife Refuge.…

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Food is not the only thing that moves through an ecosystem, energy does too! Understanding how energy moves through an ecosystem is central to not only the standards, but also your own place in the environment as well. Watch this video and see how energy connects you to all other living things in your ecosystem.

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Conservation is human action that is taken to preserve the environment and its ecosystems. In this video from National Geographic, you can learn more about conservation and ways that scientists (and you!) can take actions to preserve nature. Conservation will also be a large part of your ecosystem unit, so this is a good way to solidify your understanding.

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Earth's natural resources include air, minerals, plants, soil, water, and wildlife. Conservation is the care and protection of these resources so that they can persist for future generations. It includes maintaining diversity of species, genes, and ecosystems, as well as functions of the environment, such as nutrient cycling.

Conservation is similar to preservation, but while both relate to the protection of nature, they strive to accomplish this task in different ways. Conservation seeks the sustainable use of nature by humans, for activities such as hunting, logging, or mining, while preservation means protecting nature from human use.

This difference is illustrated by how the United States manages its public lands. The goal of National Parks, for instance, is preservation with an emphasis on causing minimal change to the landscape or environment, meanwhile National Forests can be used for cattle grazing, lumber, hunting, and recreation.

Continued human population growth has led to unsustainable rates of consumption of our natural resources, resulting in a loss of Earth's biodiversity. The main factors driving biodiversity loss include habitat destruction, climate change, invasive species, overexploitation, and pollution.

Declining biodiversity is closely intertwined with species extinction. While extinction is a normal process of nature, the rate at which it is happening today is not. Scientists estimate that current extinction rates are about a thousand times higher now than would be expected based on the fossil record, and that we may be experiencing a mass extinction event, which is when 75 percent or more species are lost at a time.

The extinction of the passenger pigeon is a famous example of an extinction caused by human activity. It was once the most abundant land bird in North America, with a population of approximately three to five billion when Europeans arrived. Despite its vast numbers, this pigeon became extinct in the wild by the 1900s because of overhunting. The last individual bird, named Martha, died in captivity in 1941 at the Cincinnati Zoo.

Conservation practices and policies-ranging from the removal of invasive species, to setting aside protected land for wildlife and plants, to establishing the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA)-have been put in place to combat these extinction pressures. Currently, more than 26,500 species are estimated to be at risk of extinction, though the exact number is difficult to calculate.

One of these species is a small porpoise called the vaquita. With fewer than thirty individuals remaining in the wild, the vaquita is the world's most endangered marine mammal. They only live in the northern part of the Gulf of California and their biggest threat is an illegal fishery for the totoaba fish. The vaquita gets caught and tangled in the nets used to catch the totoaba, which are themselves endangered.

Despite conservation efforts, the vaquita will likely go extinct in the next few years with so few numbers and continued threats. Other animals, including the grizzly bear, bald eagle, and California condor, have recovered from near extinction thanks to conservation action under the ESA.

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Conservation | National Geographic Society

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Earth's natural resources include air, minerals, plants, soil, water, and wildlife. Conservation is the care and protection of these resources so that they can persist for future generations. It includes maintaining diversity of species, genes, and ecosystems, as well as functions of the environment, such as nutrient cycling.

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This is probably one of the best genetics resources out there. Learn.Genetics was created by the University of Utah for middle school and high school students to explore genes and heredity. Take a look at the Build a DNA Molecule and the Make a Karyotype interactives!

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Learn.Genetics visitors, We're asking for your help. For over 20 years, the Learn.Genetics website has provided engaging, multimedia educational materials at no cost. Learn.Genetics is one of the most-used science websites. Tens of millions of visitors come to our site each year to find the science and health information they're looking for.

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Zach Arlt Curation Project Proposal and Personas

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You will learn about Mitosis and Meiosis this year in Life Science. These are important processes that happen in cells before they divide and replicate. CellsAlive has a great interactive walkthrough where you can read about all the different phases of Meiosis and take your time exploring the different steps.

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A mobile-friendly interactive animation elucidates the complex sequence of stages in the production of a 1N gamete from a diploid (2N) Oogonium or Spermatogonium prior to fertilization.

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Gene Whiz! It's a Boy! | The Gene: An Intimate History | PBS LearningMedia

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If you're curious about the origin of boys, look no further than the Y chromosome.

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Why do most animals reproduce sexually? This video segment from Evolution: Why Sex? explores the question of sexual versus asexual reproduction. Biologist Jerry Johnson discusses a parthenogenic species of salamander, the Cnemidophorus tessellatus.

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While Dragons might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of genetics and life science, this game is great practice at Mendelian genetics and Punnet Squares. You can practice some of the math and concepts from this life science unit while breeding dragons!

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Here Be Dragons

Deep within the membrane of a giant egg, an ancient and dangerous creature lies dormant - a dragon!

Learn about genetic inheritance as you breed dragon species, complete phenotype missions and meet monstrous creatures in a cloud-hopping sky world! Become the dragon master by breeding all types of dragons.

About Dragon Breeder (BETA)

Dragon Breeder (BETA) is a game where players progress by using the principles of Mendelian Genetics. Breed target dragons, or determine the genotypes of the dragons in your den. Purchase special skills and upgrades, and work your way through a storyline mode that will take your knowledge of genetic principles to their limit.

The game contains two major modes: Freeplay and Campaign.

In Freeplay, the player can level up by breeding, correctly analysing and selling dragons.

In Campaign, the player can then take on specified missions which identify specific genotypes which need to be correctly analysed or bred. The Campaign also presents the player with the story of the games world, as well as the history of the dragons as a species.

There is also a tutorial mode which the player can use to learn the foundations of gameplay.

The story follows the dragon breeder in training Esse Ipsum, as he explores the island of Lacertae Alatum as a research agent for the dragon breeding guild. However, he soon discovers the history of the island, as well as the dragons. Players must advance te story through fulfilling specific criteria for the guild.

Support

If you are having trouble completing the missions, please try the tutorial. The tutorial can be accessed on the main menu of the game.

Because the game is in beta, we value any feedback or suggestions you may have. Please click here to give us feedback!

To discuss the game, please check out our Facebook Page!

Because the game is written in HTML5, you will need the latest version of whichever browser you use.

The game is built in HTML 5, and is currently in BETA for the web version. The iOS and Android versions are currently undergoing optimization and maintenance.

If you would like to send your opinions or suggestions about the game, check out our feedback form!

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Deep within the membrane of a giant egg, an ancient and dangerous creature lies dormant - a dragon! Learn about genetic inheritance as you breed dragon species, complete phenotype missions and meet monstrous creatures in a cloud-hopping sky world! Become the dragon master by breeding all types of dragons.

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Do you like science books? Then you should read Gregor Mendel:Genetics Pioneer. This is is a book about Gregor Mendel and how he wondered about genetics. My favorite part of the book was when Gregor first tried to mix genes of animals. This book is a nonfiction chapter book. I liked this book because I like science/biography books. If people like science/biography books they would love this book.

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Do you like science books? Then you should read Gregor Mendel:Genetics Pioneer. This is is a book about Gregor Mendel and how he wondered about genetics. My favorite part of the book was when Gregor first tried to mix genes of animals. This book is a nonfiction chapter book.

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Evolution: How We And All Living Things Came to Be

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Evolution: How We And All Living Things Came to Be

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Evolution is the process that created the terrible teeth of Tyrannosaurus rex and the complex human brain, clever enough to understand th...

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Natural Selection, or as some know it "Survival of the Fittest" is an important concept in this unit. This video highlights scientist Charles Darwin, who theorized Natural Selection and the work he did in the Galapagos Island with the many different species of finches.

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Evolution by Natural Selection - Darwin's Finches | Evolution | Biology | FuseSchool

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Email Mr. A with any questions you might have about this Hub or the library!

Mr. Arlt is your School Librarian. You can usually find him in the library, where he is trying to learn something new every day and bring you interesting stories. He loves reading, baking, exploring museums, and spending time with his dog, Walker.

Before becoming a school librarian, he studied History and Theater at George Mason University in Virginia and earned a master's in Library and Information Science at Rutgers University.

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Zach Arlt 515 Curation Tools Platform Analysis Worksheet

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An interesting article about the scientists working to find whale fossils that appeared in the middle of a construction project. The fossil record is covered in this unit and you will how scientists can use fossils to link modern-day animals to the ancient and extinct animals.

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In Chile's dry, hot, desert-like Atacama Region, a group of Smithsonian researchers are digging up whales.

The fossil site, near the port city of Caldera in northern Chile, was discovered in late 2010 by a construction company expanding the Pan-American Highway. In a road cut, the workers discovered complete skeletons of baleen whales, says paleobiologist Nick Pyenson, the curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. The company agreed to grant the site a brief reprieve, allowing Pyenson to coordinate a short-term excavation of the fossils.

Since October, Pyenson and a team of researchers have made two trips to the site's late Miocene marine rocks, which contain a rich diversity of marine vertebrates. They are striving to learn how the site was formed and how the marine mammals died-a field known as taphonomy.

The team has found more than 20 complete whale skeletons, and about 80 individual specimens, as well as other types of marine mammals. Facing a deadline sometime next month, the team has been working as quickly as possible to remove the fossils. "We're pushing the limits for what we can do with [whole] fossils," he adds. "It's really logistically challenging."

Since the site itself may soon be destroyed, the researchers are also hoping to create a record of it, so that scientists can continue to learn from it. Toward that goal, they have brought in experts from the Smithsonian's 3D Digitization program to image entire skeletons of fossil whales in situ before removing the fossils. "What they're doing is using sophisticated long-range and high-resolution laser scanners," Pyenson says. The laser imaging ratio is 1:1, he adds, so that the "literally terabytes" of data they've recorded can eventually be used to virtually reproduce the fossils for museums and future study by paleontologists. "My vision is that, with all this data, people could virtually go back to this site that no longer exists."

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Researchers Rush to Recover Whale Fossils From Highway Project

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In Chile's dry, hot, desert-like Atacama Region, a group of Smithsonian researchers are digging up whales. The fossil site, near the port city of Caldera in northern Chile, was discovered in late 2010 by a construction company expanding the Pan-American Highway.

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Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

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In this video, paleontologist Nick Pyenson shows how fossil whales are excavated and what they reveal about conditions on Earth millions of years ago.

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Evolution Lab | Interactive Lesson | Mission 2 | PBS LearningMedia

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Explore the evidence of evolution with this interactive worksheet based off of NOVA's Evolution Lab. This resource is designed to be completed while playing through the Evolution Lab game and contains multiple choice and free response questions and covers Mission 2 of the Evolution Lab game with embedded videos.

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If you want to see concrete evidence of evolution, look no further than your hand or your foot. Five fingers, five toes. There's nothing magical about the number, yet five digits at the end of their limbs is a motif that runs through all the animals with four limbs, called tetrapods. Even when there are fewer than five digits in the adult animal -- as in horses' hooves and the wings of bats and birds -- it turns out that they develop from an embryonic five-digit stage. There is nothing inherently advantageous about five digits. Nor is there any environmental pressure that favors five digits on the operating end of four-legged animals' limbs.

Pentadactyly (having five digits) is, in fact, an accident of evolutionary history. All tetrapods descended from a common ancestor that just happened to have limbs with five digits. And over the eons of evolution following that, natural selection worked with variations on pentadactyly rather than starting over again to produce tetrapods with another number of digits, be it two, seven, or 17.

The pentadactyl limbs that tetrapods far and wide all have are examples of homologous structures. The term refers to similarities among species that are inherited from common ancestors. Such similarities are not necessarily functional -- that is, there's no physical reason why the body parts are similar based on the tasks they perform. (When body parts resemble each other for functional reasons, they're called analogous structures.) Critics of evolution argue that species were created separately in their distinctive forms and didn't descend from common ancestors. But the prevalence of the pentadactyl limb argues just the opposite: That for whatever prehistoric reasons, an ancestral tetrapod had five digits per limb, and all of its descendants did as well. The similarity isn't restricted to the ends of the limbs -- the bones of the arm, forearm, and hand of different vertebrates form a recognizable pattern, even though they have been adapted to different functions. And aspects of the nerves, blood vessels, and other tissues in the limb reveal other homologous structures.

Homologies are also seen in other structures, and can even be found biochemically, in the very genetic code that stores information for reproducing individuals. These molecular homologies provide some of the best evidence of a single common ancestor for all life on Earth.

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If you want to see concrete evidence of evolution, look no further than your hand or your foot. Five fingers, five toes. There's nothing magical about the number, yet five digits at the end of their limbs is a motif that runs through all the animals with four limbs, called tetrapods.

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Evidence of evolution: embryology (video) | Khan Academy

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Learn for free about math, art, computer programming, economics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, finance, history, and more. Khan Academy is a nonprofit with the mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.

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How CRISPR lets you edit DNA - Andrea M. Henle

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Scientists usually shy away from using the word miracle. Unless they're talking about the gene-editing tool called CRISPR, that is. "You can do anything with CRISPR," some say. Others just call it amazing.

Indeed, it amazed so many people and so swiftly that just eight years after they discovered it, Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier took home the 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry.

CRISPR stands for "clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats." Those repeats are found in bacteria's DNA. They are actually copies of small pieces of viruses. Bacteria use them like collections of mug shots to identify bad viruses. Cas9 is an enzyme that can cut apart DNA. Bacteria fight off viruses by sending the Cas9 enzyme to chop up viruses that have a mug shot in the collection. Scientists recently figured out how bacteria do this. Now, in the lab, researchers use a similar approach to turn the microbe's virus-fighting system into the hottest new lab tool.

This CRISPR/Cas9 tool was first described in 2012 and 2013. Science labs around the world soon started using it to alter an organism's genome - the entire set of its DNA instructions.

This tool can quickly and efficiently tweak almost any gene in any plant or animal. Researchers already have used it to fix genetic diseases in animals, to combat viruses and to sterilize mosquitoes. They have also used it to prepare pig organs for human transplants and to beef up the muscles in beagles.

So far CRISPR's biggest impact has been felt in basic biology labs. This low-cost gene editor is easy to use. That has made it possible for researchers to delve into the basic mysteries of life. And they can do it in ways that used to be difficult if not impossible.

Robert Reed is a developmental biologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. He likens CRISPR to a computer mouse. "You can just point it at a place in the genome and you can do anything you want at that spot."

At first, that meant anything that involved cutting DNA. CRISPR/Cas9 in its original form is a homing device (the CRISPR part) that guides molecular scissors (the Cas9 enzyme) to a target section of DNA. Together, they work as a genetic-engineering cruise missile that disables or repairs a gene, or inserts something new where the Cas9 scissors has made some cuts. Newer versions of CRISPR are called "base editors." These can edit genetic material one base at a time, without cutting. They're more like a pencil than like scissors.

Here's how it works

Scientists start with RNA. That's a molecule that can read the genetic information in DNA. The RNA finds the spot in the nucleus of a cell where some editing activity should take place. (The nucleus is a compartment in a cell where most of the genetic material is stored.) This guide RNA shepherds Cas9 to the precise spot on DNA where a cut is called for. Cas9 then locks onto the double-stranded DNA and unzips it.

This allows the guide RNA to pair up with some region of the DNA it has targeted. Cas9 snips the DNA at this spot. This creates a break in both strands of the DNA molecule. The cell, sensing a problem, repairs the break.

Fixing the break might disable a gene (the easiest thing to do). Alternatively, this repair might fix a mistake or even insert a new gene (a much more difficult process).

Cells usually repair a break in their DNA by gluing the loose ends back together. That's a sloppy process. It often results in a mistake that disables some gene. That may not sound useful - but sometimes it is.

Scientists cut DNA with CRISPR/Cas9 to make gene changes, or mutations. By comparing cells with and without the mutation, scientists can sometimes figure out what a protein's normal role is. Or a new mutation may help them understand genetic diseases. CRISPR/Cas9 also can be useful in human cells by disabling certain genes - ones, for instance, that play a role in inherited diseases.

"The original Cas9 is like a Swiss army knife with only one application: It's a knife," says Gene Yeo. He is an RNA biologist at the University of California, San Diego. But Yeo and others have bolted other proteins and chemicals to the dulled blades. That has transformed that knife into a multifunctional tool.

CRISPR/Cas9 and related tools can now be used in new ways, such as changing a single nucleotide base - a single letter in the genetic code - or adding a fluorescent protein to tag a spot in the DNA that scientists want to track. Scientists also can use this genetic cut-and-paste technology to turn genes on or off.

This explosion of new ways to use CRISPR hasn't ended. Feng Zhang is a molecular biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. He was one of the first scientists to wield the Cas9 scissors. "The field is advancing so rapidly," he says. "Just looking at how far we have come...I think what we'll see coming in the next few years will just be amazing."
This story was updated on October 8, 2020 to note the Nobel committee's decision to award CRISPR's discovery the 2020 prize in chemistry.

Power Words
More About Power Words

application A particular use or function of something.

base (in genetics) A shortened version of the term nucleobase. These bases are building blocks of DNA and RNA molecules.

biology The study of living things. The scientists who study them are known as biologists.

Cas9 An enzyme that geneticists are now using to help edit genes. It can cut through DNA, allowing it to fix broken genes, splice in new ones or disable certain genes. Cas9 is shepherded to the place it is supposed to make cuts by CRISPRs, a type of genetic guides. The Cas9 enzyme came from bacteria. When viruses invade a bacterium, this enzyme can chop up the germs DNA, making it harmless.

cell The smallest structural and functional unit of an organism. Typically too small to see with the naked eye, it consists of watery fluid surrounded by a membrane or wall. Animals are made of anywhere from thousands to trillions of cells, depending on their size. Some organisms, such as yeasts, molds, bacteria and some algae, are composed of only one cell.

chemical A substance formed from two or more atoms that unite (become bonded together) in a fixed proportion and structure. For example, water is a chemical made of two hydrogen atoms bonded to one oxygen atom. Its chemical symbol is H2O.

CRISPR An abbreviation - pronounced crisper - for the term "clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats." These are pieces of RNA, an information-carrying molecule. They are copied from the genetic material of viruses that infect bacteria. When a bacterium encounters a virus that it was previously exposed to, it produces an RNA copy of the CRISPR that contains that virus' genetic information. The RNA then guides an enzyme, called Cas9, to cut up the virus and make it harmless. Scientists are now building their own versions of CRISPR RNAs. These lab-made RNAs guide the enzyme to cut specific genes in other organisms. Scientists use them, like a genetic scissors, to edit - or alter - specific genes so that they can then study how the gene works, repair damage to broken genes, insert new genes or disable harmful ones.

developmental (in biology) An adjective that refers to the changes an organism undergoes from conception through adulthood. Those changes often involve chemistry, size and sometimes even shape.

DNA (short for deoxyribonucleic acid) A long, double-stranded and spiral-shaped molecule inside most living cells that carries genetic instructions. It is built on a backbone of phosphorus, oxygen, and carbon atoms. In all living things, from plants and animals to microbes, these instructions tell cells which molecules to make.

engineering The field of research that uses math and science to solve practical problems.

field An area of study, as in: Her field of research was biology. Also a term to describe a real-world environment in which some research is conducted, such as at sea, in a forest, on a mountaintop or on a city street. It is the opposite of an artificial setting, such as a research laboratory.

fluorescent Capable of absorbing and reemitting light. That reemitted light is known as a fluorescence.

gene (adj. genetic) A segment of DNA that codes, or holds instructions, for producing a protein. Offspring inherit genes from their parents. Genes influence how an organism looks and behaves.

genome The complete set of genes or genetic material in a cell or an organism. The study of this genetic inheritance housed within cells is known as genomics.

muscle A type of tissue used to produce movement by contracting its cells, known as muscle fibers. Muscle is rich in a protein, which is why predatory species seek prey containing lots of this tissue.

mutation (v. mutate) Some change that occurs to a gene in an organism's DNA. Some mutations occur naturally. Others can be triggered by outside factors, such as pollution, radiation, medicines or something in the diet. A gene with this change is referred to as a mutant.

nucleus Plural is nuclei. (in biology) A dense structure present in many cells. Typically a single rounded structure encased within a membrane, the nucleus contains the genetic information.

organ (in biology) Various parts of an organism that perform one or more particular functions. For instance, an ovary is an organ that makes eggs, the brain is an organ that interprets nerve signals and a plant's roots are organs that take in nutrients and moisture.

palindrome (adj. palindromic) A word, a name or a phrase that has the same ordering of letters when read forwards or backwards. For instance, dad and mom are both palindromes.

protein Compound made from one or more long chains of amino acids. Proteins are an essential part of all living organisms. They form the basis of living cells, muscle and tissues; they also do the work inside of cells. The hemoglobin in blood and the antibodies that attempt to fight infections are among the better-known, stand-alone proteins. Medicines frequently work by latching onto proteins.

RNA A molecule that helps "read" the genetic information contained in DNA. A cell's molecular machinery reads DNA to create RNA, and then reads RNA to create proteins.

tag (in biology) To attach some rugged band or package of instruments onto an animal. Sometimes the tag is used to give each individual a unique identification number. Once attached to the leg, ear or other part of the body of a critter, it can effectively become the animal's "name." In some instances, a tag can collect information from the environment around the animal as well. This helps scientists understand both the environment and the animal's role within it.

Citations

Journal:​ S. Wang et al. An RNA-aptamer-based two-color CRISPR labeling system. Scientific Reports. Vol. 6, May 27, 2016, p. 26857. doi: 10.1038/srep26857.

Journal:​ ​A. C. Komor et al. Programmable editing of a target base in genomic DNA without double-stranded DNA cleavage. Nature. Vol. 533, May 19, 2016, published online April 20, 2016, p. 420. doi:10.1038/nature17946.

Journal:​ D. A. Nelles et al. Programmable RNA tracking in live cells with CRISPR/Cas9. Cell. Vol. 165, April 7, 2016, p. 488. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2016.02.054.

Tina Hesman Saey is a senior staff writer and reports on molecular biology at Science News. She has a Ph.D. in molecular genetics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in science journalism from Boston University.

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Scientists usually shy away from using the word miracle. Unless they're talking about the gene-editing tool called CRISPR, that is. "You can do anything with CRISPR," some say. Others just call it amazing. Indeed, it amazed so many people and so swiftly that just eight years after they discovered it, Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier took home the 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry.

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Do you want to understand how common traits are used to figure out ancestry? Then look at a cladogram. While there are other kinds of evidence to consider, constructing charts with common traits is an important task biologists do. This interactive gives you a chance to practice comparing and contrasting different living things. You can find this interactive at the Field Museum in Chicago!

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by Michael Horn (July 3, 2015)

Over the past few years I've been working with Florian Block, Chia Shen, and the Life on Earth team to create an evolution puzzle game called Build-a-Tree (BAT) for natural history museums and other informal learning spaces. This has been a challenging project from the beginning. Evolution is a fascinating topic, but it's still hard to get people to engage in difficult science thinking in free-choice environments. Our challenge was to strike the right balance between fun and learning, while using the game as a starting point for deeper conversations.

Build-a-Tree debuted as part of the Tree of Life exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences in October 2012. Florian and Chia followed that up with a web-based version of the game that was released as part of a PBS NOVA Lab on evolution. Eventually we'd like to make BAT available as a tool that anyone could use to illustrate evolution concepts. The idea is to make it easy to embed custom BAT levels in blogs, web pages, or mobile apps. To give a sense for what this would be like, you can try the game as part of this post. Just drag the species circles in the green window together to start building a tree...

In this post I'm going to talk about how our design changed over time as we struggled to find the right balance of fun, playability, and value as a learning experience.

Learning Goals

As we were putting BAT together, we had a few big-picture learning goals in mind. The first is that all life on earth is related. In other words, if you could travel far enough back in time, you could find a common genetic ancestor for any two organisms on the planet, no matter how different they might seem. So, just like you and your cousin share an ancestor in common (a grandparent), you and the banana you ate for breakfast also share a distant, distant ancestor. The difference is that unlike your grandparent, this ancestor was a primordial Eukaryotic organism that carried genetic information that is still shared by all plants and animals to this day.

The second big idea is that there are key evolutionary landmarks that define major groups of life. These landmarks are shared genetic traits that emerged from evolutionary processes (like natural selection, genetic drift, and mutation), and allowed organisms to take advantage of new ecological niches. One of my favorite examples is the amniotic egg sac that made it possible for the common ancestors of modern-day birds, mammals, and reptiles to lay eggs away from water and colonize newly accessible inland habitats. Amphibians don't have this trait, which means that they have to return to the water to lay eggs and reproduce.

The last big idea relates to something called tree-thinking skills. One of the most important representations of modern biology is called a cladogram or a phylogenetic tree. These diagrams depict hypothesized relationships and traits of organisms, genes, or even proteins. Baum, Smith, and Donovan published an influential paper in the journal, Science, arguing that everyone should learn tree-thinking skills as a matter of basic science education. These skills include to being able to read and understand trees without misinterpreting their meaning. Common mistakes include assuming that the left-to-right ordering of a tree is important or that the organisms on the far right side are the most "evolved". For example, a misunderstanding of the tree shown here is that giraffes are the most complex or evolved species (which is not true), and that butterflies and birds are more closely related than birds and giraffes (also not true).

We had lots of other learning goals that were more factual in nature. For example, it would be nice if people learned that lizards and humans are more closely related than lizards and frogs. But this kind of factual knowledge was less important than big-picture concepts that support a deeper understanding of evolution.

Design Principles

To get at these learning objectives, our design was guided by a number of design principles mostly taken from research on learning, games, and museums. One of the most important concepts is called intrinsic integration. This concept was originally proposed by Yasmin Kafai and then elaborated on by Habgood & Ainsorth in an influential paper in the Journal of the Learning Sciences. Intrinsic integration is meant to contrast with the edutainment movement of the 1990s in which game-like elements and incentives were used to motivate kids to do educational activities that they would otherwise be less interested in. In other words, it's not about making learning fun as much as it's about making it more palatable. The difference with intrinsic integration is that you're trying to tightly integrate game play with the target learning objectives. This has some important implications.

First and most important, games should be fun. This doesn't mean that they have to be easy, but they shouldn't feel like drudge work. My friend Nathan Holbert thinks a lot about the fun factor in his dissertation research with Uri Wilensky. This also means that the fun parts of the game should be the same as the learning parts, which is what the word integration refers to. You want the most exciting and interesting bits of the game to be where players are engaging with your learning objectives. Lastly, the core mechanics of the game should involve the manipulation of external representations of the learning content. This last part is jargony, but for us it just means that you play the game by building phylogenetic trees. And, importantly, these trees are similar to those used by real scientists use to describe evolutionary relationships.

There was one other really important goal for us. Because we had initially designed BAT as a museum exhibit, the first 30 seconds of visitors' experience with the game is crucial. Sue Allen, who was writing about exhibit design at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, called this principle immediate apprehendability. The same idea has also been referred to as early assured success by the Science Museum of Minnesota. I just call this the 30-second rule. If visitors can't figure out what's going on with your exhibit in the first 30 seconds, they're going to walk away and find something else to do. This doesn't mean that they have to understand everything about the exhibit from top to bottom, but they at least need to get how they're supposed to play the game and get some positive reinforcement around their actions. Scott Snibbe and Hayes Raffle have a great paper from the CHI 2009 conference called Social Immersive Media that digs into some of they ways you can go about doing this.

First Version

I started work on the design and programming for the first version of BAT in late 2010. For this first pass, I was preoccupied with playfulness and simplicity. To build trees, all you had to do was drag species tokens together on the touch screen. The order in which tokens were assembled would determine how the tree appeared. So, for example, if you dragged bats and birds together first, followed by humans, you would get the tree shown below. But, if you dragged humans and bats together first, you would get a different tree with humans and bats sharing a more recent common ancestor. If the tree you created was "incorrect", the tree would appear greyed out. But if it was correct, it would appear white, and you would earn stars. With this design, the tree structure just appeared automatically with traits drawn in place.

In some ways this first version of BAT seemed successful. Over the summer of 2011, we observed 188 visitors at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Based on our observations, visitors generally seemed engaged, they were reasonably good at figuring out the game mechanics in a short amount of time, and lots of people stuck around to try to finish all seven levels that we offered. They even talked about evolution, although maybe not in the depth that we were hoping for. Around 70% of the visitors stuck around for at least a minute, and 28% longer than four minutes, which about what you want for an interactive museum exhibit. Shorter than that is an indication that people are struggling to figure out what they're supposed to do or worse that the activity is too shallow. Longer than that, and you risk causing a backup in the flow of visitors or distracting people from all of the other amazing things to see and do at the museum.

The multi-touch tabletop also seemed to provide decent support for collaboration. Visitors worked together and crowded around all sides of the table, collaborating in ways both expected and unexpected. So all of this was pretty good, but there were a few big problems as well: First, because of our emphasis on simplicity, people were only indirectly manipulating the tree structure by dragging species together. This meant that there was a lack of direct control over the placement of the tips in the tree. To try different combinations, you had to drag the tree apart and start over. Second, people had difficulty connecting traits to their corresponding species. Since the idea of shared traits was one of our most important learning objectives, this seemed like a big shortcoming. Lastly, people weren't using the help function for the most part. And, even when they did use it, it didn't really tell you anything useful about the traits.

All of this was clear from watching visitors play at the museum. Even though lots of people were determined to finish the entire game, there was a shift as they advanced to the harder levels. They would start to understand what was going on after the first few levels, but as the levels got harder, they would give up and revert to trying random combinations without much thinking. Some early thrashing like this is probably good, but people weren't able to use what they had learned in early levels to systematically solve the puzzles in the harder levels.

Second Version

Based on these problems, it seemed like it was time for a redesign. We started with a series of design sessions with paper prototypes. Then Florian Block took the best of these ideas and built a new prototype with several new features. First, traits are objects in their own right that players have to drag and place on the tree to solve levels. Players also had much more direct control over the structure of tree itself. Florian introduced splitter tokens that can be dragged onto the tree in order to introduce branching points. Once branching points were defined, it was easy to rearrange the species tokens along the canopy of the tree. So the order in which players placed species tokens on the tree was much less important. Florian also introduced an animated flow from the root of the tree up to the tips. The nice part about this flow was that it showed how traits would spread through branching points to all descendants of a particular clade. This reinforced tree thinking skills and the idea of shared ancestral traits. Finally, a new microscope feature let visitors learn more about the traits themselves and what those traits mean for different species.

We tested this new version at the Field Museum in Chicago with 40 parent-child pairs. We're still in the process of analyzing the video data from this study, but we saw some important shifts in game play. First, the game was clearly harder; you have to think more, especially in the earlier levels. But, players were also focusing much more on the tree itself and the relationships between traits and organisms. This seemed like a huge improvement that was reflected in the kind of evolution talk that we were hearing from players. The microscope, when it was used, also seemed much more informative and helpful than the help feature in the previous version.

All of this seemed like a positive step forward. Our biggest worry was that we had lost a little of playfulness of the original game and that it was a little too hard for families to figure out what they were supposed to do without explicit scaffolding. And that led to another revision...

Third Version and Beyond?

Our last major iteration tried to combine the best parts of the previous two versions. For the most part this meant removing the splitter tokens and bringing back the features that let people build trees by touching species tokens together. Of course, it's a little more complicated than that because we wanted to make it easier to reorganize the tree structure without having to tear everything apart and start from scratch. This meant that Flo and I spent a lot of time refining the interaction to be intuitive and simple, but flexible as well. So that's where we are. Please send your comments, feedback, and suggestions!

Other stuff to read

Snibbe, S. and H. Raffle. (2009). Social Immersive Media: Pursuing best practices for multi-user interactive camera/projector exhibits. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'09).

Villanosa, K., Block, F., Horn, M.S., Shen, C. (2014). Build-a-Tree: Parent-child gaming to learn about evolution in museum settings. Games, Learning, and Society (GLS'14).

Horn, M.S., Leong, Z.A., Block, F., Diamond, J., Evans, E.M., Phillips, B., Shen, C. (2012). Of BATs and APEs: An interactive tabletop game for natural history museums. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'12).

Sue Allen. (2004). Designs for learning: Studying science museum exhibits that do more than entertain. Science Education, 88(S1), S17-S33.

Credits

Lots of people helped make BAT possible. The Life on Earth Team included Chia Shen (Harvard University), Judy Diamond (University of Nebraska State Museum), E. Margaret Evans (University of Michigan), Michael Horn (Northwestern University), Florian Block (Harvard University), and Brenda Phillips (Boston University). Zeina Atrash Leong (Northwestern University) and Krystal Villanosa (Northwestern University) ran the studies at the Field Museum and the Harvard Museum of Natural History with the assistance of Audrey Hosford. Sebastian Velez verified the evolutionary relationships that appear in the game and provided valuable help identifying appropriate biological traits. We thank the Harvard Museum of Natural History and Janis Sacco, and the Field Museum and Matt Matcuk and Jaap Hoogstraten for allowing us to conduct this research in their galleries. Finally, we thank the National Science Foundation for their support of this project (DRL-1010889). Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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by Michael Horn (July 3, 2015) Over the past few years I've been working with Florian Block, Chia Shen, and the Life on Earth team to create an evolution puzzle game called Build-a-Tree (BAT) for natural history museums and other informal learning spaces. This has been a challenging project from the beginning.