The Exciting Immune Attack Video Game
Picture the scenario. A bunch of high school kids having to deal with an immune system dysfunction, fighting off pathogens and trying to make the cells of the immune system work the way they’re supposed to. Is this an instance of a new flu or plague sweeping through the schools? Not at all. It’s the scenario in a fun new video game called Immune Attack. It gives young people a chance to play, while incidentally helping them learn about the intricacies of the immune system.
The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) created the Immune Attack video game to test whether it would help make cell biology and molecular science any easier for high school students to understand and retain. Students learn the innate system, the adaptive immune system, and so on, by having to take specific types of immune cells and teach them how to do what they’re supposed to do. In the game, the students go into the sick body via little nanobots, and go through the various levels that way.
The three-dimensional video game was released in 2008, and the FAS program manager, Melanie Stegman, noticed an immediate change in students’ understanding of healthy immune systems. She conducted several evaluations of students from grades seven to twelve. In the process, she discovered that after they had played several levels of the Immune Attack game, they showed a much better general knowledge of real cell biology, including gene regulation, proteins and chemical signals. They also demonstrated an increased confidence and interest in learning more about molecular science in general.
The Immune Attack game, like so many other video games, goes from level to level, with the student having to complete one level before moving on to the next. On each of these levels, they train new cells to meet a new challenge in the compromised immune system. If they want to download this game, for free, they can find it as the FAS official game website (http://fas.org/immuneattack/). They can have a good time with a video game and even learn something while they’re at it.
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