Subject: Fish Banks

Posted by Anne Lavigne on 10/5/2009
In Reply To:Fish Banks Posted by Tim Joy on 10/5/2009

Message:

Sorry for this delayed response. I’ve been experiencing technical problems with getting the listserve to accept a reply from my IP address and have been troubleshooting it with the List managers. Hopefully this one makes it through.


A number of local schools have used variations of FishBanks over the years within middle school ecology contexts and within high school courses such as Marine Biology. Students would “play” the game, initially with the goal of making money. Typically, they would dry up the fish population, causing a number of companies to go bankrupt. The debrief conversation allowed the students to consider why they experienced the results they did and to consider if it was possible to sustain the population for the long-term, given different decisions made with an endogenous point of view. Students would discuss and eventually decide on structures they needed to change to accomplish this goal - make money AND sustain the fish population.

Students then played the game again to implement their decisions and almost all classes were able to sustain the population. Of course, this would quickly turn to yet another aspect of the debrief conversation – Were the policies they implemented possible and reasonable within real world contexts? How would their policies impact real people, and would they be truly willing/able to follow the same path? Of course, interesting conversation followed.

On a technical note, one version used here was a multi-user version created with HyperCard (a program on the Macintosh). Unfortunately, this version is no longer usable due to operating systems being updated and HyperCard being dropped as an integral program.

A variety of single-user versions are available from various sources, and these have been great in allowing individuals to explore some of the dynamics. Until now, I haven’t seen a version that allows multiple teams’ data to be simultaneously integrated in a seamless online environment. I’m always on the lookout for another multi-user version; locally, we’ve also been exploring ways we might use online simulation hosting services to create a multi-user fishing game that would be easily and freely accessible for teacher use.

I looked at the link from a previous message and found another link: http://learningwithdata.org/fishbanks/FB_Index.html There, a FishBanks multi-user version is described as being developed by Art Clifford and William Prothero. The site mentioned it would be available in 2008, but I couldn’t find any version of it at this point. Perhaps it is still in the works. Of course, given how much student learning I’ve seen come from experiencing a multi-user version, I’d love to hear of further developments in this area.

Anne