In the virus exercise, students walk around the room and talk with each other until various tags start to light up, signaling the outbreak of a virus. Then students discuss and develop hypotheses about who started it, how it was passed, and why it affected only certain people. They repeat the experiment multiple times to test their ideas. If one person consistently starts the virus, students may have them sit out in another experiment. Or maybe the yellow-numbered tags got the virus first, and they observe those tags in the next experiment.
People build on each other's ideas.
You cannot figure out the virus game by yourself. Thinking tags were initially developed by Rick Borovoy for a Media Lab cocktail party. Partygoers had answered five opinion questions, and when they met another person, the lights would go on according to how much they had in common. Colella and Klopfer also demonstrated the StarLogo modeling tool, which enables students and teachers to build models and simulations of complex systems, like ecosystems, animal populations, and forest fires. The pair have visited schools around the country and run workshops on how to use such tools in teaching.