Have you heard of this distance learning thing?

It's tough, but it's necessary.

• A small list of cases where schools reopened and outbreaks occurred

Over the past 3 weeks, we covered different models that helped us understand real, relevant problems. But in the creation of these projects, many different ideas came up:

Problem Posing, the Scientific Method

As we can see from the all of these models, we started with some situation: a forest fire, a virus spread, an economy. We defined the rules and parameters of those models and then we began proposing some questions about the model.

• Forest fires: What effect will changing the forest-density have on the model? How quickly or slowly does the effect happen for different amounts of forest density?
• Virus Spread: How will changing the number of people in our model affect how many people that get infected at one time? How might different things increase or decrease the amount of active cases?
• Economy: What are the effects of an economic model where people exchange money with each other? What effects might this have on people's livelihood, the decisions they make, where they shop?

As you can see, NetLogo is great for describing these situations, trying to understand them better, and to question some aspect of it for further investigation! As a creator and a maker of models and other code material, you can impact the community around you. To take you through this process, we are going to make our first project just that: Create some NetLogo model to take one of your classes and...

• Help your teacher create a simulation to use as a lab activity (recommended)
• Help yourself understand a topic or idea better

What is that going to look like?

1. Communicate with a teacher and suggest a topic or idea that you want to turn into a model!

   This can be a teacher you have right now or a teacher that you've enjoyed working with in the past. Whether that's... a science model to help understand chemistry better or a physics model to better see Newtonian kinematics and its graphs or a social science/government model to understand the effects of gerrymandering or anything else that you can think of..

   This will require some time and research. You should feel confident enough and well versed about this topic to explain it to a 5 year old! What are the core ideas that are happening? How are the agents (turtles, patches) in your model going to behave? What is going to happen as a result of that?

2. Communicate with ME!

   This will be in the form of deadlines and milestone achievements to get through the project. If any issue arises, you need to let me know ASAP.

What do I need to do?

1. Come up with two or more topics that you'd like to work with. (9/17/2020)

   This will look like a form of a write-up. Do some research on each topic and then describe what you want to cover. Think of a teacher or two you'd like to work with on these topics.

1.5. Do some research on your topic. What/how do you want your model to look like? (9/18/20)

1. Make a plan for the model. (9/22/20)

   Sketch out your model! Describe what the turtles are going to do and draw diagrams and pictures.

2. Reach out to the teacher to work with and share your ideas! (9/24/20)

   Do this in their office hours or through email.