05/13/2004

New Science Education Game Turns Middle-Schoolers on to Water Quality Issues

AUBURN, Ala. — An Auburn University fisheries researcher who has built Alabama Water Watch (AWW) into an internationally recognized and oft-emulated community-based water-quality monitoring program has developed an environmental classroom game called Macro Mania that’s sitting atop the “What’s Hot for 2004” list of middle-school science education products.

Auburn’s Bill Deutsch and representatives of LaMotte, the Maryland-based company that produces AWW’s water analysis kits and is now manufacturing and marketing Macro Mania, unveiled the game last month at the National Science Teachers Association convention in Atlanta.

The LaMotte Company bills Macro Mania as an exciting classroom adventure that teaches kids the connection between aquatic macroinvertebrates—tiny bugs that live in streams and are visible with the naked eye—and water quality.

Macro Mania is a scaled-down version of BIO-ASSESS©, an advanced card game Deutsch invented and copyrighted in 1993 as a tool to train AWW volunteers in identifying aquatic bugs and their ecologies and using that information to assess water quality. In the years since, AWW, which produces BIO-ASSESS in-house, has sold an average of 20 games a year, primarily to volunteer water-quality monitoring programs in other states and to some schools nationwide. But the hefty price tag of $250 has been too steep for the vast majority of schoolteachers.

With Macro Mania, LaMotte simplified BIO-ASSESS, adapted it to make it playable in one class period and lowered the price to $39. Auburn University has entered into a Macro Mania license agreement with LaMotte, under which set percentages of royalties from sales will go to Deutsch, AU’s College of Agriculture and its Department of Fisheries and Allied Aquacultures, the AU vice president for Research and the university’s general fund.

In its Macro Mania marketing campaign, LaMotte bills the product, not as a “game,” but as an “exciting classroom adventure.” The game comes with everything included, from the teaching manual to a classroom poster to the all-important decks of aquatic critter ID cards. What’s more, it’s easy to teach (“No macroinvertebrate experience necessary!”), it correlates to National Science Content Standards, and it can be easily adapted for use in math, public speaking and art class periods.

Macro Mania was a venture whose time had come, Deutsch said.

“I approached LaMotte several years ago about producing and marketing BIO-ASSESS, and they were interested, but nothing came of it at the time,” he said. “When they started moving into developing new niche products, including educational games, that’s when they approached me about modifying BIO-ASSESS into what became the Macro Mania version.”

To order Macro Mania directly from the LaMotte Company, call customer service at 1-800-344-3100, or visit the company’s Website at www.lamotte.com.

Deutsch, meanwhile, will continue producing and selling BIO-ASSESS through AWW.

“We don’t see it as competing with Macro Mania, because it’s two different audiences,” Deutsch said. “BIO-ASSESS will probably be the product used more for adults training to be Water Watch volunteers.”

Both will be equally as effective in accomplishing the AWW mission, he said.

“The study of aquatic invertebrates can be very exciting and motivating for school groups and volunteer water-quality monitors,” Deutsch said. “Collecting and studying aquatic bugs is one of the easiest and most dramatic ways of convincing people that a stream isn’t just ‘water flowing over rocks.’ It’s a living, complex system worth knowing about and protecting.”

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News from:

Office of Ag Communications & Marketing

Auburn University College of Agriculture
Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station
3 Comer Hall, Auburn University
Auburn, AL 36849
334-844-4877 (PHONE) 334-844-5892 (FAX)

Contact Jamie Creamer, 334-844-2783 or jcreamer@auburn.edu

05/13/04

For immediate release