Educational Games

A friend of mine introduced me to EteRNA last summer when I was first entering UCSB's Teacher Education Program.  I glanced through it and then promptly forgot about it in the midst of this intensive program.  However, while looking at educational games for this assignment, I was suddenly reminded of EteRNA.

According to this New York Times article, EteRNA is a successor to Foldit, a game that harnessed mass collaboration to determine the structure of a specific protein.  EteRNA uses a similar principal applied to RNA.

The game starts off pretty simply with an introduction to the base-pairing rules, but even then it takes a fairly advanced teaching approach.  For example, did you know that G and U can pair together?!  Apparently, this is an example of wobble base pairing, which I didn't even know existed before playing EteRNA.

The fact that I, a prospective biology teacher, can learn something new from this game, makes me both excited to, and wary of, introducing this game in the classroom.  Wobble base pairing is a small example of the many learning opportunities this game provides for students, but I am also concerned that the material is a little too abstract.  Designing RNA in the context of this game is fun, but is entirely outside of RNA's real context.  With the exception of in the introduction, the game does not contextualize or explain why RNA design matters.  RNA is already a difficult concept for high school students, which is why I was originally excited about this game.  However, I would be worried that the game would make it even more theoretical, and that perhaps students would enjoy it, but would walk away unable to apply their knowledge to class discussions about RNA.

On a more positive note, EteRNA is an excellent example of inquiry-based learning as it encourages students to experiment and try different combinations and patterns.  Perhaps EteRNA would be better suited to an AP Biology course after the fundamentals of RNA are more thoroughly understood.