Education Arcade

In order to increase public understanding of evolution and life on earth, a team of computer scientists, biologists, learning scientists, and museum staff partnered to create Build-a-Tree (BAT). BAT is a multi-player puzzle game played on interactive tabletop surfaces in natural history museums. BAT has been on display at the California Academy of Sciences since October 2012 and has been played by thousands of visitors. It was developed to help players understand the proximity and distance of species relationships through their shared—and not shared—traits. In order to level up, players must drag-and-drop icons to assemble scientifically-valid trees that show particular species inheriting certain traits while others do not. BAT is designed to encourage experimentation, collaboration, and reasoning about the evolutionary relationships between species. See a video demo of the game here: http://vimeo.com/97068984.