Learning Activities for SimLife
After reviewing each software package, we asked the evaluators to design a learning
activity that uses SimLife.
Learning Ideas by John Arle
I will be working this summer to structure BIO 105 Environmental
Biology, a new course to Rio Salado. This is taught at other
campuses but is new on our campus. I hope to include three or
four computer simulated labs. I think SimLife holds great
promise with its emphasis on environmental conditions and
population success. I plan to purchase a copy of the 'game' and
work with it this summer. I will begin from the basic
experimental design that was provided in the evaluation
workshop. I would prefer that students design as much of any
experiment as possible, but this may be too time consuming.
Without the additional time working with the program, I can't
supply a 'detailed description of the learning activity'. I
hope that students will be able to create controlled experiments
that show the inter and intra-specific competition as well as
populations interfacing with the environment.
Learning Ideas by Sherri McCarthy-Tucker
Because of the reasons noted in my evaluation, I would not use this program.