Two Population Apps

 Today, I'm looking at two more apps produced by the The Creative Learning Exchange in collaboration with BTN.  As with the previous two I reviewed in Monday's column, these two apps set up a scenario, discuss the factors in detail, show how the model is put together, and let students explore.T

The first is "Population Collapse" which explores population growth and natural resource usage.  It creates a small model to follow the population growth on a small island.  The model discusses birth rate, mortality rate, and uses some fairly real life based rates.

The model then goes on to set the use of the renewable resource in the form of trees and mentions tree capacity. The app goes into explaining how demand determines the amount of trees used each year and introduces the idea of stress which is defined as demand divided by tree capacity.


The model takes time to show the relations between the factors and explains why certain rates fall within certain limits.  It goes through each and every item on the drawing before showing students what happens and how long it takes for the population to collapse.

The app then goes through explaining how each factor effects the overall situation before introducing technology into the equation. It has students change certain factors to see how these change the final rates.

At the end, it suggests students make their own model to see how they can do on this.  This would be perfect to take some real life scenarios such as the deer population back in the 1920's where they killed all the predators and the population grew till they began starving.

The second app is Population Planner.

This app is only focused on the birth and death rates for a population.  The story is that you are a commander of a space colony and you are trying to get the population to grow at a certain rate so you have to play with the birth and death rates.


Each time you make a change, you run the model to see if you have made it.  If you don't, it tells you to try again but if you get close, it gives you encouraging messages.

I think, I'd have students do the population planner to let students learn about birth and death rates before adding in capacity, stress, and other factors.

I also think at the end of these two I'd have students create their own model for a population of animals and have them create it in the SPLASH! app. The app allows them to create simple models they can run and change values on.

Again, all three apps are free for android and apple devices.  They can be used at home during this time when students are expected to learn by distance.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.