Pokémon GO: Has Your Science Classroom Evolved with the Phenomenon?
Luke Holbrook
As students are returning to school, they might be hunting for Pokémon with the wildly popular PokémonGo app. Part of the game allows students students to evolve their Pokémon into other pocket monsters. But is this an accurate portrayal of biological evolution? Can science educators actually use PokémonGo to teach evolution or other scientific concepts? To help answer some of these questions, we are happy to welcome Dr. Luke Holbrook to the show. Luke belongs to the department of Biological Sciences at Rowan University, and has thought a lot about using Pokémon to help teach concepts of evolution (he even designed a Pokémon activity many years ago – on paper!) Listen to the show to hear more about PokémonGo and evolution, and if you could use it to teach science in your classroom.
Got a Pokémon science activity? Share it with us! Submit your ideas, pictures and lessons through our contact page or tweet to us at @laboutloud.
Links:
- Fine, Let’s Talk about Pokémon by Stephanie Keep (NCSE)
- Shelomi, Richards, Li and Okido. (2012, Jul-Aug). A Phylogeny and Evolutionary History of the Pokémon. The Annals of Improbable Research. Retrieved from http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume18/v18i4/Phylogeny-Pokemon.pdf
- Pokémon Goes to Science Class (dalebasler.com)
- Using the Pokemon Alphabet to Teach Classification and Phylogeny (Freidenberg and Kelly. 2005. NSTA’s Science Scope)
- Spore (game)
- No Man’s Sky (game)
Connect with our guest:
- Luke Holbrook on Twitter: @LukeTHolbrook
- Luke Holbrook on Facebook
-
Department Biological Sciences at Rowan Facebook page
- Stephanie Keep on Twitter: @keeps3
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It is excellent for those of us that teach intelligent design. The Pokemon evolutions are great to use for pointing out the low amount of real science used by evolutionists.
Haha, Unown isn’t my favorite Pokémon but thanks for the clicks. Every bit helps.
Scott Pyle, being ironic? Intelligent design has scientific evidence? Or are you just making a facetious play at willful ignorance?
Anyone have a link to the app that lets you collect different leaves?
It’s called Leafsnap. http://leafsnap.com/