Can you gamify Great Lakes news?

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Upending the Basin rotationAl Jazeera’s has got an interesting environmental news experiment underway.

A story about illegal fishing in West Africa is coupled with an interactive web game. It lets you play the role of a reporter tracking down the story.

Players watch video clips to gather evidence and notes.

Apparently the idea is that news consumers can gain greater understanding of an environmental issue when they are actively involved with it.

It’s an interesting concept. Give it a try here.

I’m curious about what you think. Is it engaging? Could you stick with it? Do you think you better understand the issue?

But better yet, I’d like your help in developing a challenge. Suggest a Great Lakes relevant environmental issue that might benefit from similar treatment. Use the comment section below. And feel free to rough out how such a game might unfold.

I can’t promise you we’ll execute it.

But I’ve got a class of smart aspiring environmental journalists that I’d like to see tackle something unusual. Come up with a concept and I’ll toss it their way.

Great Lakes Echo Editor David Poulson is the senior associate director of Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism. Upending the basin is an occasional series about reporting on the Great Lakes environment.

3 thoughts on “Can you gamify Great Lakes news?

  1. I also thought the Asian carp idea could be interesting. I would add in DNA evidence that is being collected in various waterways.

    I think another idea is the botulism outbreak that is killing birds on beaches. There are lots of great mysterious and engaging things here. Walking the beaches looking for birds, diving below the surface to sample for the botulinum bacteria (plus there are ship wrecks down there!), tracing the toxin through food chains, sampling water for DO and nutrient components. Dreissnia mussels and the round goby have their roles to play as well.

  2. The Friends of the St. Clair River are overseeing several local fish and wildlife habitat restoration projects in the Blue Water area. We could use a tool like this to engage our community in the monitoring, educational outreach and stewardship of these critical assets. All of these habitat projects are directed at lifting the fish/wildlife habitat BUI, and ultimately the delisting of the St. Clair River as an area of concern.

    Our community clearly values our natural resources and the environment. Our Stream Leaders and MSU Extension’s Adopt a Stream programs have involved hundreds of local families, educators, students and conservationists in monitoring the health of local streams.
    A recent community kayaking event attracted hundreds to our blue-ways. And the annual Earth Fair event held at one of our county parks draws several thousand people over two days. As a supplement to these and other hands-on outdoor activities, gaming could assist us in engaging people who might more easily benefit from or prefer the digital environment or for times when the weather is unfavorable. Additionally, gaming could help us continuously engage classrooms who might be unable to travel to our sites as a group as often as we’d like. Interactive multi-media lends richness to content, so the game environment seems like a natural fit for us to further connect our community to the watershed.

    Sample game components:
    Mapping and journaling
    Wildlife sightings and reports
    Native plants and animals likely to occur
    Invasive species identification and impact assessment
    Measuring and controlling invasive species and other threats
    Water quality monitoring and cause and effect
    Long term and short term actions to ensure habitat success

    Perhaps the game could be developed for the Blue Water River Walk, which is the most public, best-financed and most visible of our projects, and then adapted to other places and projects.

  3. A few ideas:

    Gamify the issue of nutrient loading and algal blooms. Readers can select different regions around lake Erie, investigate fertilizer best practices, use precipitation and temp weather data, and discover their connection to bloom occurance.

    Similar: gamify Asian carp barrier policy proposals. Have reader pick one of the ACE proposals for barrier, then hunt for clues to learn about the positive and negative of related cost, ecosystem impact, etc.

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