Fun Online Science Game

Imagine, there I was trying to think of a less complex activity that taught students about the computational thinking skill of abstraction (a longer, in-depth post about that process soon to follow), when I stumbled upon a really awesome game! 

               Context: My thought process was that a way to teach students about abstraction using an electronic tool might be to have them create a monster using an online monster generator and then pick out which characteristics make the monster unique. The students would then take those characteristics and try to classify their monster within a broader monster category, e.g. zombie, vampire, werewolf, ghost, etc. Admittedly, not my best work, I think it might be too easy and/or boring. I might still use it because I’m having a hard time coming up with something better, but who knows. ^[1] Anyway. . .

The Game: I was trying to find a simple random monster generator when I stumbled upon this: https://askabiologist.asu.edu/monster-maker-game/. You make a monster by decoding a monster’s “genome.” Each part of the genome is three dots, and each dot can be green, red, blue, or yellow. Below the genome there is a key that tells you what letter, number, or symbol the three dots correspond to. For example, a yellow, blue, yellow might correspond to a comma. As you decode each whole characteristic it shows up in a white box next to the genome. When I was trying it out, the first characteristic was spiky hair. A purple polka dotted head with spikes at the top suddenly showed up when I finished writing hair. I think this could be a really fun way to teach about DNA, but it is also just really fun to play in general.

I’m posting about it because a) why not, and b) I thought some of my classmates who are science teachers might be interested in using this game (Brooke and Alexa). 

Below is a picture of the monster I made!

 ^[1] Spoiler alert, I totally did use this for my last CT activity, although I changed it to something that I think gets the point across better. If you wanted to see it as well as my other learning activities click here :)