The mysterious spots began popping up without explanation on the digital faces of Whyvillians.
At first, the spots looked like freckles on the cartoon-like avatars of visitors to the science education Web site called Whyville. Then they developed into red acne-like welts. When users tried to chat, an electronic "ah-choo," courtesy of the site's San Marino-based programmers, wiped out their words.
Dubbed "Whypox," the plague was designed to trigger an interest in learning more about epidemiology and the spread of diseases. And it proved to be a terrific motivator on a site dominated by adolescent girls who are as image-obsessed in cyberspace as they are in the hallways of their junior high schools.
It also was an example of why an innovative attempt to mine the educational potential of the Internet is gaining international attention among adolescents and researchers alike.
The philosophy of Whyville (www.whyville.net) is what its founder calls "edu-tainment" because it taps the Internet's interactivity to get kids engaged in learning.
Some close watchers of Whyville worry, however, that users get so wrapped up in activities such as choosing lips and noses for their digital faces and chatting that science becomes secondary to socializing. Yet researchers also theorize that those aspects of Whyville help explain why more than two-thirds of its 225,000 registered users are female, most between 11 and 13.
That statistic "runs very counter to what we know about girls being interested in science and technology," said Yasmin B. Kafai, a UCLA researcher who studies computerized learning environments.
Educators say many girls lose interest in science starting in middle school, apparently because of misgivings about their math abilities and fears that they'll be seen as unfashionable nerds.
Computer use among girls drops off dramatically after age 13, experts say, citing a dearth of games and activities that don't involve speed, fighting or competition.
Whyville, launched in 1999, didn't start out with the intention of countering those trends. But its apparent success in capturing girls' attention has caught the eye of the National Science Foundation, which over the years has spent tens of millions of dollars trying to achieve that same goal.
Now the agency is underwriting a study to figure out the formula and how it can be improved upon in designing computer software, and even in setting up classrooms.
