How One Small School District Embraces CS Education This is a fantastic article about how Computer Science education is embraced and supported in the small town of Melrose, NM. It highlights the work of Alan Dougherty (science teacher, and bus driver for the district) as he leads student teams to compete in the Supercomputing Challenge. Alan was a participant in the NM-CSforAll PD program and a past participant in Project GUTS PDs offered in concert with the Supercomputing Challenge.
Where Does Plastic End Up? This article shows visualizations of where plastics dropped in oceans ends up. It is not clear what kind of modeling was used but it is a compelling use of modeling and simulation. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/29/if-you-drop-plastic-in-the-ocean-where-does-it-end-up?CMP=share_btn_fb
Computer Modeling of Namibia's Mysterious Fairy Circles Two graduate students developed a computer model of how fairy circles form. In their model, the interaction of termites and vegetation caused the development of fairy circles and another smaller scale pattern between fairy circles that no one before had see. The two students went to the desert of Namibia to look for this secondary pattern and found it. While not "proof" of how the Namibian fairy circles were formed, the finding furthers our understanding of pattern development in nature in
How to Color a Lizard In an article from phys.org, researchers have used simulation to show that skin color in animals arise from microscopic interactions between neighboring cells.
GUTS Alum on Winning Supercomputer Challenge Team Photo (from left): Kathy Keith, director of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Community Partnerships Office and Supercomputing Challenge winners Theo Goujon, Lisel Faust, Ramona Park, Rowan Cahill (GUTS alumni), and their teachers Hope Cahill (former GUTS club leader) and Brian Smith, and Shaun Cooper, the awards ceremony MC.
New issue of Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 20(3) If you haven't heard of this online journal before, I urge you to take a look at http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS.html. The journal is filled with examples of how agent-based modeling is used by professionals and students to understand complex adaptive systems. Some examples of complex adaptive systems written about in this issue are:
Interview with Susan Yoon In this video, Dr. Susan Yoon of University of Pennsylvania talks about science education, modeling and simulation, and gives a delightful historical perspective on her involvement with StarLogo Nova.
Interview with Cristián Rizzi Here's a video of the interview with our colleague Cristián Rizzi (the interview starts around 00:05:30). Cristián translated the Project GUTS MOOC and many resources into Spanish. He talks about new developments in modeling and simulation that excite him.
Modeling and Mapping the Spread of the "Gangnam Style" video This article describes a research study that asked "Do viral videos spread in the same way as infectious diseases?" The study minimized the impact of geographical distance as a measure and looked at the linkages and spread of disease. They found that indeed the spread of a viral video had characteristics similar to the traditional "wave pattern" of contagion spread.
Computational Thinking in Science - a new article by Peter Denning In this article, Peter Denning recounts the origin of computational science, a meld of computer science and science. He states "scientists who used computers found themselves routinely designing new ways to advance science. They became computational designers as well as experimenters and theoreticians" and "computational thinking emerged from within scientific fields—it was not imported from computer science.
Project GUTS at NSTA STEM Forum and Expo Project GUTS has been on the road this summer, spreading the news about modelling and simulation!
Santa Fe Design Workshop Participants Produce New Lessons This summer, a small but determined group of experienced Project GUTS teachers from Santa Fe, New Mexico met to share out some pedagogic changes they made to existing curriculum, and to create new curriculum to meet the needs of their students.
Project GUTS partners with CSNYC and Tata Consulting Services to offer workshop Project GUTS partnered with CSNYC to offer a 3 day professional development workshop at Microsoft Times Square in NYC on August 28-30, 2017. This workshop, facilitated by Su Gibbs, Paige Prescott and Irene Lee, prepared NYC teachers to integrate the CS in Science curricular modules into regular school day science classes.
MIT STEP/EA releases StarLogo Nova 2.0 MIT Scheller Teacher Education Program / Education Arcade is pleased to announce the release of StarLogo Nova 2.0, the long awaited HTML5/JavaScript version of StarLogo Nova. This new version contains many new features, easy to use interface elements, and fixes many previous issues encountered by the teachers in our community.
Why CS Belongs in Every Science Classroom Project GUTS teacher and supporter Sheena Vaidyanathan wrote a terrific article for EdSurge on "Why Computer Science Belongs in Every Science Teacher's Classroom" (November 16, 2013). She focuses on data analysis and computer modeling and simulation as NGSS practices that can be "brought to life" with tools like StarLogo Nova. Project GUTS was recommended as a place to get
Project GUTS at CSEdWeek Kickoff in San Mateo, CA This year, Paige Prescott and Sheena Vaidyanathan will be representing Project GUTS at the CS Ed Week Kickoff conference in San Mateo, CA. The organizers are expecting to have around 100 district administrators from all over the country at the event. Project GUTS will have a booth at the showcase to talk to attendees about how they can implement computer science in science at their schools/districts.
Don't You Dare Try to Teach Science Without Building Models In this January article in Wired by Rhett Allain, the author states that science is about building models and thus science classes should be framed around building models. Do you agree? https://www.wired.com/2017/01/dont-dare-try-teach-science-without-building-models/