Phyto Heroes has officially been launched on the Apple App Store.  Download and install on any IOS device, but it particularly works well on IPads with their larger screen real-estate for interaction / game play.   This project is the result of a collaboration between the Coaction Lab at the University of Maine,  Openlab Research at the University of California Santa Cruz and Epsilon / Alliance Data.

Phyto Heroes is a game about phytoplankton. These tiny creatures are invisible to the human eye but make half our worlds oxygen while also feeding the oceans creatures.  Oceanic Scales has expanded to include an educational app / game titled “Phyto Heroes” that explores phytoplankton as a STEM to STEAM research subject through an interactive game system designed for 3rd through 5th grade students and beyond, supplemented with ten downloadable lesson plans for instructors that bring this app system into their classroom or for parents that want to extend their children’s education beyond the classroom.  These lesson plans are designed to work within the new Core Curriculum model and National Science standards and can be easily downloaded and printed in PDF format. Here are a few images of the new app system and lesson plan designs to give you an idea of where our education system is heading.  We have started this education platform with one of the smallest aquatic organisms / micro-algae (phytoplankton) and have plans to extend into a variety of other algae based organisms at a variety of scales, as we add additional games and lesson plans to the system.