AU's Deutsch Develops Hot New Science Education Game

By: Jamie Creamer

An Auburn University fisheries researcher who built Alabama Water Watch (AWW) into an internationally recognized and oft-emulated community-based water-quality monitoring program has developed an environmental classroom game called Macro Mania that's sitting atop the "What's Hot for 2004" list of science education products for middle- and high-school students

CoAg's Bill Deutsch and representatives of LaMotte, the Maryland-based company that produces AWW's swater analysis kits and is now manufacturing and marketing Macro Mania, unveiled the game recently at the National Science Teachers Association convention in Atlanta.

The LaMotte Company bills Macro Mania as an exciting classroom adventure that teaches students the connection between aquatic macroinvertebrates–tiny stream-dwelling bugs that are visible with the naked eye–and water quality.

Macro Mania is a scaled-down version of BIO-ASSESS ©, an advanced card game Deutsch invented and copyrighted in 1993 as a tool to train AWW volunteers in identifying aquatic bugs and their ecologies and using that information to assess water quality.

In the years since, AWW, which produces BIO-ASSESS in-house, has sold an average of 20 games a year, primarily to volunteer water-quality monitoring programs in other states and to some schools nationwide. But the hefty price tag of $250 has been too steep for the vast majority of schoolteachers.

With Macro Mania, LaMotte simplified BIO-ASSESS, adapted it to make it playable in one class period and lowered the price to $39. Auburn University has entered into a Macro Mania license agreement with LaMotte, under which set percentages of royalties from sales will go to Deutsch, AU's College of Agriculture and its Department of Fisheries and Allied Aquacultures, the AU vice president for research and the university's general fund.

In its Macro Mania marketing campaign, LaMotte bills the product, not as a "game," but as an "exciting classroom adventure." The game comes with everything included, from the teaching manual to a classroom poster to the all-important decks o aquatic critter ID cards. What's more, it's easy to teach ("No macroinvertebrate experience necessary!"), it correlates to National Science Content Standards and it can be easily adapted for use in math, public speaking and art class periods.

Within days of the game's release, LaMotte was filling orders.

"The response has been very positive," LaMotte market manager Linda Watts says. "Teachers love the format, and they're pleased to have an economical science classroom activity that doesn't have any safety concerns and that does have interdisciplinary extensions."

Macro Mania was a venture whose time had come, Deutsch says.

"I approached LaMotte several years ago about producing and marketing BIO-ASSESS, and they were interested, but nothing came of it at the time," he says. "When they started moving into developing new niche products, including educational games, that's when they approached me about modifying BIO-ASSESS into what became the Macro Mania version."

To order Macro Mania directly from the LaMotte Company, call customer service at 1-800-344-3100, or visit the company's Website at www.lamotte.com.

Deutsch, meanwhile, will continue producing and selling BIO-ASSESS through AWW.

"We don't see it as competing with Macro Mania, because it's two different audiences," Deutsch says. "BIO-ASSESS will probably be the product used more for adults training to be Water Watch volunteers."

Both will be equally as effective in accomplishing the AWW mission, he said.

"The study of aquatic invertebrates can be very exciting and motivating for school groups and volunteer water-quality monitors," Deutsch says. "Collecting and studying aquatic bugs is one of the easiest and most dramatic ways of convincing people that a stream isn't just 'water flowing over rocks.' It's a living, complex system worth knowing about and protecting."

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