Fowl play is an activity for school districts in Western New York wherein students will be assigned to teams responsible for guiding their community through a disaster caused by an outbreak of an extremely virulent form of the flu. This project will lead the students through information at many levels, from the global implications of a flu pandemic through local response and readiness and on to the cellular and molecular information known about influenza. It is expected that the participants will walk away from the exercise with a much greater appreciation for the gravity of the present situation and that they will be better informed citizens as well as be introduced to a large number of areas for potential future study.

Teams from different schools will provide solutions to a number of questions and their answers will be posted on the site for the other teams to observe. Experts in the represented fields will be called upon to review their responses and in the end of the exercise prizes will be awarded to the teams with the best overall answers.

Students will also be given the opportunity to isolate their own viruses and perhaps become part of a Howard Hughes Institute study and be able to perform additional research on their own virus isolate.