[IAEP] What is a Lesson Plan?

[Bobby Powers]

On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 5:43 AM, Antoine van Gelder <antoine at g7.org.za> wrote:
>
> On 09 Jul 2008, at 06:07, Bobby Powers wrote:
>>
>> On a similar note, I'm an intern working on an activity for
>> graphically modeling and simulating systems using System Dynamics.
>>
>> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Model
>>
>> there are a ton of lesson plans and course materials, most free, for
>> system dynamics lessons available:
>> http://www.clexchange.org/lom/default.htm
>>
>> While my focus right now is getting the activity working and
>> simulating, I've been following some of the threads about lesson plans
>> and lesson bundles with interest, as the easier it is for teachers to
>> integrate activities into coursework the faster things will get picked
>> up.
>
>
> A single action, which - I believe - will contribute more to the task of
> getting humanity on track to a sustainable present than any amount of
> eight-course G8 dinners would be the creation of a SD simulator that can run
> the models in this book:
>
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limits_to_Growth [1]

I agree that would be cool.  Lucky for us, there is a version of the
World3 model that is freely available at:
http://metasd.com/models/Library/Environment/World3/

I believe the guy who runs that site (there are a fair amount of
models on there) would be amenable to formally releasing them under a
CC license.

Beyond simply providing the model, I think where we can really add
something is in presenting the results.  Sure there are the classic
graphs:
http://muratopia.org/NUGW/FOCAS/Economy/world3.html

but I think on the XO we could do something really interesting,
perhaps even wrapped as a full-blown activity, to get people involved
in the simulation.  I don't have any great ideas right now, but I'm
sure with our collective wisdom we could come up with something!


> Go Bobby!

Thanks for the support :)

>  - antoine
>
> [1] Bonus points for getting the book relicensed under a CC license. Looking
> at my copy I see that the copyright-holder is Dennis Meadows himself.

I'll talk to some of my professors who know him.  Who knows, that
would be awesome to be able to freely distribute.

yours,
Bobby

> --
> "Your paradigm is so intrinsic to your mental process that you are hardly
> aware of its existence, until you try to communicate with someone with a
> different paradigm."
>  - Donella Meadows
>
>
>