ICCS06/Eric Klopfer
From NECSIWiki
[edit] Eric Klopfer
Teacher Education Program
MIT
[edit] StarLogo The Next Generation
For several years the Adventures in Modeling (AIM) program has been working with secondary school students and teachers to develop understanding of complex systems through modeling activities (on desktops and handhelds) and curriculum set in science and math classes. The program has placed an emphasis on professional development of teachers, through which they learn computer modeling (in StarLogo). This approach facilitates the implementation of teacher-designed models and curriculum to uniquely fit their own classes.
The curricula and models that teachers develop have become integrated into their standard classroom practices. However, activities in which students develop their own models have been relegated to a small number of classrooms (often where teachers have some programming background, or in fact in programming classes), or in after-school settings. Our research has shown that there are several barriers to a wider adoption of the practice of students developing their own models in science classes (instead of isolated computer classes), including time in the classroom and teacher and student comfort with the syntax of programming languages. These barriers stand in the way of the deeper learning we have observed when students are given the opportunity to develop their own models.
To address these barriers, and to promote greater engagement of students in model development activities, we have designed StarLogo The Next Generation (TNG). StarLogo TNG provides two significant advances over the previous version. First, the programming is now done with programming blocks instead of text commands. The primary advantage of this innovation is that the program has moved from the abstract to the visual. As many students are already familiar with using a computer by dragging and dropping objects, StarLogo TNG comes more naturally to them. The programming blocks are arranged by color based on their function, and it enables students to associate similar programming blocks with each other. Since the programming blocks are puzzle piece shaped, only blocks can fit together only in syntactically sensible ways, which eliminates many sources of problems for students. StarLogo TNG also provides visual organization capabilities, such as “breed drawers”, which provide similar functionality to object oriented programming.
StarLogo TNG’s second significant advance is a 3D representation of the world. This in turn presents several new opportunities. These include the ability to model new kinds of physical phenomena, and a feature that allows students to take the perspective of an individual agent in the environment, which helps them bridge the description of individual behaviors with system level outcomes.
In this talk I will discuss the kinds of modeling and learning opportunities presented by this system.
Presentation at the 6th International Conference on Complex Systems (ICCS), June 25-30, 2006; Boston, MA
ICCS06 Conference Program
Hosted by the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI)
