Tyto+Ecology+(Jourdan)

Tyto Ecology

Tyto Ecology is an ecology simulation game. You are provided with a Biome Dome that is more or less completely devoid of any life. Your job is to start adding plants and animals in a way that continues to provide a beneficial balance. Get that balanced wrong and many lifeforms can start to become very unhappy. You get the choice between three starting biomes: Desert, Rainforest, or Great Plains. I chose the Great Plains. The game does a pretty good job of making the plants and animals look pretty realistic and it is really neat to see your biome start to shape up into something that you might actually see in nature.

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= What I Learned =

I actually had to look up more about this game than I did for my entertainment game. I was worried that things were going horribly wrong and my boyfriend can attest that I yelled at the screen asking why my moths were dying???? Then my prairie dogs decided they didn’t want to live anymore. Oh my goodness Prairie Dog, you have so much food! How can you be starving?

The game had it’s own language as well as introduced quite a few scientific terms. Some Terms that the game used: > >> > >> Some Scientific Terms that the game used: > >> > >> > >> The game of course also gives a good understanding of the role pollinators and scavengers (at least at the beginning of the game theses were ants) as well as the relationship between herbivores, plants, and carnivores.
 *  Impact Points
 *  Impact Points were how you ‘purchased’ different plant life to add to your biome. They are located at the top bar on the right side of your screen and are represented by a lightning bolt. They actually regenerate quite quickly and you can earn more by having you biome working successfully.
 *  Tyto Coins
 *  Tyto Coins are also located in the top bar on the right of the screen. They are represented by a T in a circle. These are a little harder to come by but unlock ‘cooler’ things like: Zones in your biome; More animals; More plants; More decomposers.
 *  Producers
 *  These are the plants in the game. They need sunlight, water, and soil to live, but they then provide for herbivorous Consumers.
 *  Consumers
 *  Theses are the animals. Herbivores ‘consume’ the plants and carnivores ‘consume’ the herbivores.
 *  Decomposers
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;"> The two decomposers that existed in my game were mushrooms and worms. These two had the job of taking dead and rotting material and turning it into productive soil.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;">In a basic nutshell the game taught me that there needs to be a relatively precise balance between all the different types of life in my biome, and that if I rushed things or made something unbalanced that the biome was going to ‘fix’ that, most likely by killing something off.

= How I Learned (Learning Principles) =

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;">As in many games there were a lot of Gee’s principles being applied in this game. I’m going to give examples of four principles I found in the game, the Probing Principle, the Semiotics Domain Principle, the Multiple Routes Principle, and the Active Critical Learning Principle. > >> > >> > >> > >>
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Probing Principle
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;"> The probing principle is one of the strongest in this game. It definitely encourages a ‘try and see if it fails’ model. For example, I mentioned the moths earlier and the fact that I couldn’t figure out why they were dying. They had plenty of food and seemed to be happily pollinating away and yet their numbers were rapidly declining! I ended up having to Google what was going on. Well, it turns out that the prairie dogs I had originally introduced also ate insects as well as plants. Darn it. Back to the drawing board.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Semiotic Domains Principle
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Another principle quite actively involved in this game. It becomes quite necessary to understand the roles of producers, consumers, and decomposers as well as pollinators and scavengers in order to create a sustainable biome. I’m pretty sure my biome was not sustainable.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Multiple Routes Principle
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;"> The fact that you get to make such detailed decision about what plants and animals you want in your biome as well as exactly where you want to put them guarantees that each person's biome is unique. There isn’t necessarily one ‘right’ way to balance your biome.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Active Critical Learning Principle
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;"> This game does a great job in keeping you actively engaged in what you're learning. You become so invested in making sure that everything isn’t going to turn into an entire meltdown that you don’t even realize that you’re actively learning what traits go into a balanced and sustainable ecosystem.



= Reflection =

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;">I thought this was a really neat game. Introduced predators way too soon so now I want to go back and start a new game with what I’ve learned. I feel that this game could be advantageously used in a science classroom when studying ecosystems. Since the game keeps running even when you’re not playing it could work as a whole term long project. A day or two could be used to set up the class biome. That way only the teacher needs to buy a copy of the game. Then the class can check in each day to see how their biome is doing and discuss what decisions if any they should make to improve the biome. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;">It almost reminds me of when we got to watch caterpillars build a cocoon and turn into butterflies in our kindergarten classroom. Normally it wouldn’t be practically to have an entire biome with predators and prey in your classroom but now you can!