NanoLegends: Biology Blast!

Posted by LisaHill - 04/04/09 at 09:04 pm

Subject Matter: Biology
Grades: Middle to High School

Biology Shooter Game
Most first person shooter (FPS) games present lots of body parts, and not in a good way. NanoLegends isn’t a gory FPS, and it sure beats cracking a book when students have to learn basic cellular biology and cellular function.

In the future,  fleets of nano-sized medical bots are released in the human body to scout, protect and destroy diseases. One nano scout ship, the Hyperion, travels through the body to identify a potentially lethal cell formation: cancer. Problems arise when the body doesn’t recognize the Hyperion as a good guy, and starts attacking the ship.

Aerin and L.O.R.
With Aerin, a young bridge officer, and L.O.R, the ship’s artificial intelligence, players learn how cells function, divide, produce energy, different organelles and their function, and how cells protect themselves. It’s a fun ride diving through the cell wall, collecting ATP, fighting off proteins, circumventing lysosomes, regenerating mRNA, combining amino acids, and more fantastic features of cellular biology.

Call Out the Expert
I’m not a gamer, so I called on my expert – my teenage son. In a flash, using the keyboard and a mouse, he was racing down paths, jumping cell wall tissue, zapping hungry proteins and chasing mRNA. At the end of each chapter, he answered specific questions about cell function that he’d learn while playing the game – material that I hadn’t covered for awhile! I stepped in and actually enjoyed playing this FPS, because I was relearning about cellular function in a completely new fashion.

And this game kept my son engrossed. NanoLegends would have worked better with a joystick, yet he didn’t miss a beat and was learning cellular biology. There are different playing levels, from Novice to Expert. With seven chapters, the game is fairly long, but if students were allowed free time, or allowed to play at home, they’d pick up basic cellular function in an atmosphere they recognize – game playing.  Many teachers provide this game in class, and it was amazing how much my son remembered and enjoyed answering the review questions.  He liked the challenge.

Support
This game meets National Science Standards. Teachers can download the Teacher’s Guide containing lesson plans, quizzes, chapter outlines, review questions and Science Standard Maps (grades 5-8, 9-12). In addition, teachers ad students can download a Science Content PDF file. Free classroom trials are available, or request a demo at kendallhunt.com.

System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4.1 with Intel (using Windows); Windows 2000
Contact: nanolegends.com
Cost: Single User $49.00; Multiple Users $499 – $799

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 4th, 2009 at 9:39 pm and is filed under Animation, Fun! Games, Science. The entry is tagged under Aerin, biology, cancer, cell biology, cell function, first person shooter, FPS, game, gaming, high, L.O.R., learning, middle, nano, nano technology, NanoLegends, school, teacher. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.