POKéMON GO: USING AUGMENTED REALITY TO TEACH BIOGEOGRAPHY

Teaching biogeographic concepts in a classroom setting is challenging, primarily due to the limitations of available data and the cut-and-dried approaches used. The recent release of the Pokémon Go mobile phone app allows for a much more dynamic and field based approach, enabling students to act as the researchers, and allowing urban areas to become the ecosystems studied. To test the usefulness of this app as a teaching aid, the app was used to generate samples of nine nearby Pokémon at set locations on the Tarleton State University campus. These data were then gathered and analyzed using standard biogeographic techniques (parsimony analysis, neighbor joining cluster analysis) and then create a map of the campus divided into hypothesized ecosystems and populations.