Learning from the Kids - Gene Pool Simulation

I'm so busy learning, its sometimes hard to find time for school! I've had several major "Wow!" moments of discovery in the past weeks. The best of them was today's lesson from a couple of middle school students. A few weeks ago I helped them pursue their independent learning goals for learning Java programming in their ELP class. I introduced them to Robocode, and I turned them loose. Over the next few weeks, I dropped in to see how their programming skills and robots had evolved. They were excited to show me what they had learned, and explained how they solved problems and developed new robots.

Today, they were excited to share something else with me. They introduced be to the "swimbots" of Gene Pool. I was quickly hooked on this simulation of primordial "organisms" that ate, mated, survived or died, and evolved. They showed me a little about the interface, how the simulation worked, where to learn more, and how to tweak the environment or engineer organisms' genes.

The techie and the biology teacher in me were both intrigued and so excited to share this, that I broke out of my long drought of blog posts to share what these students taught me. Now, I need to get back to the gene pool and see how my critters are evolving!