Thursday, January 21, Volen 101, 2:10-3:10 pm. (Refreshments at 2:00pm)
Probabilistic and decentralized systems are important throughout the sciences and social sciences, but most people have difficulty understanding the workings of such systems, and are often not taught about them until graduate school. When people see patterns in the world (like orderly ant nests), they generally assume that there is some type of centralized control (a "queen" ant) and that this control proceeds in a deterministic manner. According to this way of thinking, a complex pattern can exist only if someone (or something) creates and orchestrates the pattern.
In this talk, I will discuss educational tools and activities that enable young students to construct their own models of probabalistic and distributed systems. Using my object-based parallel modeling language StarLogoT, they can write rules for, experiment with and observe the behavior of thousands of objects. In a traditional approach to learning about physics, students learn the microscopic rules governing particles in a completely separate context from the macroscopic ideal gas laws. Using our technology, students can dive into working computational models and personally connect with both the microscopic and macroscopic levels. We thus provide students with a new framework for making sense of the complex world around them.
Uri Wilensky graduated from Brandeis in 1977, and received his Ph.D. from the MIT Media Laboratory. At Tufts University, he directs the Center for Connected Learning, holds academic appointments in the Departments of Education and Child development, and is affiliated faculty in Computer Science, Psychology, Media and Communications and Cognitive Science.
Host: Jordan Pollack