EvoBuild
EvoBuild is a construction toolkit designed to engage middle-school learners in building agent-based models of evolutionary phenomena using block-based primitives. It has been built using DeltaTick, a blocks-based programming interface for NetLogo. DeltaTick was developed by Michelle Wilkerson-Jerde for her dissertation.
The design of EvoBuild is based on my work on the productive intuitions children recruit when reasoning about micro-evolutionary change.
Learners can build an agent-based model to begin simulating micro-evolutionary processes: Adding one or more species to their models, Building distributions of variations of a trait in the species to model individual-level differences, Assigning behavior-based rules such as eat, reproduce, or die to individuals, Adding plots to their model to track how populations change over time, and finally, Running the model to investigate what happens, and subsequently modifying the graphical blocks of code based on what they observe.
To view a demo, click here
To download a sample EvoBuild activity, click here