 Welcome to the Wednesday Webinar. My topic for today is, yes, there are apps for that. Educational games from the National Library of Medicine. My name is Christian Minter, and I'm the Education Coordinator for the National Network of Libraries of Medicine Mid-Consonantal Region. It is no secret that children love to play games. Games are fun and challenging, and they can incorporate educational concepts all the better. With input from teachers and students, the National Library of Medicine has created several games and interactive sites to teach about chemistry, biology, and environmental health. So my objective for this session is to introduce you to five games that you can use to support K-12 health and science curriculum. But before we start exploring games, I want to give a little background information about the National Library of Medicine. The National Library of Medicine is the world's largest biomedical library and is one of the National Institutes of Health. It produces free, authoritative health information resources that are used daily by people all around the world. There are over 130 websites and databases available, and many are well-suited for K-12 educators and students. With so many different resources and audiences to reach, the National Library of Medicine needs help to provide promotion and training. This is where the National Network of Libraries of Medicine comes in. The National Network of Libraries of Medicine is a program that I currently work with. We serve at the local hands and feet of the National Library of Medicine. The National Network has eight regional offices, and our mission is to provide K-12 educators, public library staff, health professionals, and the general public with equal access and training on health and science resources. Your educational service unit falls under the mid-continental region. I have included the URL to our website on the screen in case you want to learn more information. The first game we're going to talk about is called Talks Mystery. And Talks Mystery focuses on safety in the home and environmental hazards. It's available in both English and Spanish, and geared towards grades one through six. This interactive website is a great resource to use with younger children to teach them about chemical hazards that exist in their home. These dangers can include mold, batteries, bleach, carbon monoxide leaks, lead in food and water, and so much more. Children can go through the house room by room looking for hazards and answering multiple-choice questions to identify the correct hazards for each room. Players can print personalized certificates when they complete the whole house. Talks in a cat helps the children find the hazards hidden in each room and offers hints when needed. When all the risky spots in the house have been discovered, Talks Mystery does a little dance and celebrates with them. There are a lot of fun sound effects from the doorbell ringing at the beginning of the game when they enter the house to the sound of different items falling over in each of the rooms. Talks provides verbal and written instructions as students go through the game. Here's an example of one of the bedrooms. There are three hazards in this room, and one is related to the spray bottle next to the plant. If I click on the spray bottle, a question pops up. All the questions are multiple-choice. You can see that Talks is there to offer a hint if I don't know the answer. If I were to click on the word hint, another pop-up opens with a hint from Toxy. You can see this hint helps the children to figure out that the toxic chemical related to the spray bottle near the plant is for pesticides. There is a page of teacher resources. At the bottom of every page in Talks Mystery, there is a menu bar, and you can select four teachers. There you will find a list of lesson plans to accompany this game and print out for activity pages as well. If you have trouble with having a constant internet connection in your classroom, this game is also available on CD in both English and Spanish. On the teacher resource page, there's an email address to contact the National Library of Medicine to request the CD version, and the CD is free as well. The next game we're going to look at is called Talks Invaders. Talks Invaders engages children in a fast-paced attack on toxic chemicals in the environment. The game involves shooting bad chemicals as they fall from the sky and collecting good chemicals to form protective shields. They will learn more information about the chemicals through quizzes and reviewing information sheets. In order to unlock the next level, players have to pass a quiz that covers the chemicals encountered in the attack. Quiz questions and answers can also be used for classroom discussions. A detailed tutorial is included in this game, and the game is geared towards grades 5 and above as available free through iTunes. So there are four levels in this game and three quizzes, one quiz in between each level. This is a screenshot of the home page before the game begins. If you click on the puzzle pieces for the levels or the quizzes, you will receive instructions on how to play the level or how to take the quiz. For example, for the game, it will tell you in level one that the objective is to shoot 20 toxic chemicals and then provide tips for success. For the quiz, it will tell you how many questions there are and what chemicals are covered by the quiz. If you click on the images of the chemical structures, you'll be able to access a list of chemicals that are covered by that level of the game. So here's an example of some of the chemicals that are covered in level one. You can see the chemicals include carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, lead, mercury, and there are some others for this level as well. And the good chemicals on the list would be highlighted in green. So students would easily be able to tell the difference as they're reading the background information. Here's a screenshot of the game action. At the bottom of the screen is the rocket launcher that shoots out red darts as it moves back and forth across the screen. And on the right-hand side, you can see some of the bad chemicals that are falling from the sky. On the left-hand side, you see some of the good chemicals that will help the player collect protective shields. Here is one of the questions from the level one quiz. Players must complete each level and also choose the correct answers on the following quiz to unlock the next level. So once they finish level one of the game, they also have to correctly answer questions for the level one quiz before they can unlock level two. And players have three lives for each quiz. So that leads to three chances to attempt the quiz before they have to start over again. The game is called Run for Green. And Run for Green teaches the importance of environmental conservation through an interactive Mario Brothers style game. Topics such as greenhouse gas production, renewable energy, and green product purchases are emphasized throughout game play. Playing as a jolly green and earth-shaped character, users can collect coins and perform environmentally friendly tasks. This game is geared towards students in grades five through eight, and it's available for free in iTunes. To play the game, they learn about choosing eco-friendly products. So for example, on this screenshot, they're receiving tips about choosing green products and avoiding environmentally harmful products. On this screenshot, if they're able to collect the electric car, they get a power-up, and it gives them 10 seconds of invincibility. And on this screenshot, if they are able to capture the energy-efficient light bulb, it gives them additional power-up and additional powers as well. At each level, they can collect coins. There are different coins for each level, and the coins can be used in a store within the game. The game also includes information sheets with brief explanations or environmental risks and things that students can do to help reduce those risks. So for example, for cars, they discuss how cars are sourced with carbon dioxide and how that impacts the environment. And students are encouraged to take public transportation or carpool with friends to reduce the risk to the environment. The game is called Base Chase. And Base Chase can be used to support biology curriculum. It's available for free in iTunes, and it gives for grades 9 through 12. So in Base Chase, students learn the basis of DNA with this very fast-paced game. Players grab bases of DNA in order to complete unique DNA strands for a variety of animals. Dina is the game's mascot, and she assists players in completing each of the required tasks. And the game does include a tutorial that can be reviewed before beginning the game. So here are some examples, screenshots. Dina jumps across the different platforms. Sometimes she'll be jumping from side to side, sometimes up and down. And the goals of the game, as I said, is to teach Dina a pairing by using Dina as she bounces on the different platforms and collects the base components and pairs them together. So for example, on the right-hand side, you'll see that Dina is Base A, so she must be paired with Base T and is up to the students to help Dina collect the number of T bases that she needs to make the correct number of pairs. The final game is called Bore Through. If your students enjoy Candy Crush, then they'll definitely like them playing Bore Through. This game teaches the Bore model of the atoms by using a three-max game style to collect protons, neutrons, and electrons to create the first 18 elements on the periodic table. The model describes how protons and neutrons form an atom's nucleus surrounded by electrons in orbit at different energy levels. Element structures are further reinforced during bonus rounds where players that successfully build Bore models earn power-ups to use in the game. The game's mascot, Adam, travels along with the players and provides fun and interesting facts about the chemical elements. The game supports entry-level curriculum and is available for free in iTunes and is geared towards grades 9 through 12. To each level, it focuses on a different element, for example, level one of the game is hydrogen, level two is helium, and level three is lithium, and so on and so forth. There's a tutorial available to explain how to play this game. The proton, neutrons, and electrons are hidden behind the little images of lab equipment, so if matches are made and moved around, the proton, neutrons, and electrons are revealed and collected. In the top right-hand corner of the app, it will tell you how many of each that you need to collect for each element, so as you can see, on the left, for hydrogen, the player only needs to collect one proton and one electron, whereas for beryllium on the right, the player needs four protons, five neutrons, and four electrons. When an element has been successfully assembled, then the player receives congratulations about the different elements, and here's an example of some of the information provided about helium. Some of the five games that I wanted to highlight, and so now I'm going to quickly review a few other related resources from the National Library of Medicine, in case you're looking for additional materials that you can pair these games with to integrate into your curriculum. So the first resource I'm going to talk about is called Toxtail. Toxtail helps students develop an understanding of the relationship between human health and the environment. So this is a fun and interesting website to use, particularly when students can find information relevant to their own communities. This site focuses on six specific types of neighborhoods, including cities, farms, towns, border regions, southwest, and ports. This is a free website available in both English and in Spanish. The website is geared towards medical school students and above. There's also a teacher's resource page with lesson plans, activities, and an active school science club curriculum. This website is good to gear with the games that are featured focused on toxic chemicals and environmental health, so that we include toxic mysteries, toxic invaders, and Run for Green. The Environmental Health Student Portal is geared towards grades six through eight. It explores the interrelationship between human health and the environment whether natural or man-made. This site provides information, games, videos, and activities for teens to learn how the environment can impact their health. And the website explores water pollution, climate change, air pollution, and chemicals. It also provides details on different STEM careers and includes current event press releases from Medline Plus on environmental health-related topics. There is a section for educators that links to resources from different federal agencies and other organizations that provide lesson plans and guidance for how to integrate these topics into learning activities. And again, this website can be paired with toxic mysteries, toxic invaders, and Run for Green to focus on environmental health. ID Plus is a database of over 400,000 chemical records. This database can be used along with the game for through, to learn about different chemicals. It's not created specifically to be a K-12 resource. It's more of a reference to look up different chemicals. So the site has two versions. K-M-I-D Plus Lite offers a very simplified name-searching option, and there's no need for additional software plugins. And K-M-I-D Plus Advanced provides some search capabilities beyond K-M-I-D Plus Lite, which includes searching by chemical structure, toxicity, physical property, molecular formula, classification codes, and locator codes. This site does not have any lesson plans or learning activities integrated in it, but it's definitely a good resource for high school students to get more in-depth information about the different chemicals since they're learning about. Gene-Ed is a useful resource for students and teachers in grades 9 through 12 to learn about genetics. So it's a good resource to pair with the Base Chase game where the site explores topics such as cell biology, DNA, genes, chromosomes, genetic conditions, biostatistics, evolution, and a whole lot more related to genes and health. Teachers can use this site to introduce topics, supplement existing materials, provide reliable sources for students when they're conducting research for homework. The site links to materials such as research articles, different animations, games, videos, interactive tutorials, and labs and experiments. There are specialty pages such as teacher resources and labs and experiments that you may find particularly helpful. Other specialty pages such as careers and genetics and highlights allow students to see what's new in the field and are aware of different career options in the healthcare environment. The teacher resources include lesson plans, genetic educational materials, printable activity sheets, and other resources that you can use to increase students genetic and genomic literacy such as learning about vision and color perception, family health history, and personal genetics. The column provides other resources as you can see listed here on the screen. If you want to explore further, I've included a URL to their website for K-12 health and science resources. That is the end of my presentation. I am happy to answer any questions you may have about the National Library of Medicine or other resources not both the ones that I showed today and others that I may not have had time to conclude in the presentation. Feel free to email me or call me. I am also available to come to your school to do a more in-depth training on specific resources. Training can be for teachers, librarians, or K-12 health professionals. Or if you will be attending the ESU-8 Winter Workshop in January 2017, I will also be presenting there as well. That's all I have for today. Thank you so much.