Spinder for iOS

In Spinder, students play the role of a breeder trying to create peacock spiders with specific traits. The peacock spiders vary in three traits: tail size, tail colour, and dancing rate. As students navigate different goals, they learn about how selection functions, how the value of a trait changes the relative effect of selection, why selection on multiple traits may be more difficult, and why populations vary in phenotypes.

The intuitive interface allows students to quickly grasp concepts and test different ideas of how selection functions.

Uses

Spinder is a single player game that is best assigned as homework prior to introducing the concept in class. The game is perfect for a flipped classroom style of teaching.

Analytics

Teachers will be able to view student performance to see which levels, and therefore which concepts, students had difficulty with. These concepts can then be reinforced in class.