Oceanic Scales has expanded to include an educational app / game about phytoplankton titled Phyto Heroes. These tiny creatures are invisible to the human eye and produce half the earth’s oxygen while also feeding the oceans creatures.

Phyto Heroes was create for fun and to explore phytoplankton as a STEM to STEAM research subject through an interactive game system designed for 3rd-5th grade students and beyond. The app is accompanied by downloadable lesson plans for instructors that bring this app system into student classrooms or home for caregivers that want to extend their children’s education beyond the exhibit. These lesson plans are designed to work within the new Core Curriculum model and National Science standards and can be easily downloaded and printed in PDF format.

Phyto Heroes can be dowloaded from the Apple App Store on any IOS device, it works particularly well on iPads with their larger screen real-estate for interaction / game play.   This project is the result of a collaboration between the Coaction Lab at the University of Maine,  Openlab Research at the University of California Santa Cruz and Epsilon / Alliance Data.