Subject: Social Studies follow up

Posted by Jeff Potash on 3/24/2006

Message:

All –

We’d like to follow through on the request (threat?) we made in our recent CLE newsletter article (“Musings on Social Studies and System Dynamics”) to hear thoughts on “what you might be interested in doing to contribute to the CLE’s collections and to bolster our collective capacity to assist social studies educators.”

We’ll start by soliciting your reactions to the article itself. If you obtained the “DemoDozen” Irish Potato Famine model from us, your comments on that simulation and debriefing would also be welcome. Responding to the whole list would facilitate a broader exchange.

A major purpose of this pair of papers was to stimulate folks to share what they are doing with any of the systems thinking or dynamic modeling tools, to reflect on what is working well (or not), and what other topics could these tools assist. Is there anything that particularly resonated with you, either in the sense that it reflected something you’re already doing or have been thinking about doing (Please share!)? Alternatively, could we have done better? How and where could we improve to either make the case for using system dynamics tools stronger or more accessible to an audience of social studies teachers? We consciously chose to focus on population as a powerful and potentially “generic system” of interest to social studies. Did this starting point make sense to you?

We don’t want this to feel too constrictive; please feel free to share ANY experiences, materials, and/or ideas that will help us better understand
(1) what’s been done in the social studies realm, (2) what else could be done with those themes and units, and (3) what additional explorations should be done. Ultimately our goal is to bolster the CLE’s collections and its capacity to assist social studies educators in cultivating “systems citizens” who are prepared and willing to use the tools of systems thinking and system dynamics modeling to grapple with today’s complex and challenging issues.

We’d love for you to share your experiences and suggestions; please share any and all feedback!

Jeff Potash and John Heinbokel
Co-Directors, Educational Modeling Exchange (EME)

Follow Ups:

Social Studies follow up - Bill Ellis 3/24/2006 
Irish Potato Famine Model - Ana María Rosón 3/24/2006 
Social Studies follow up - Jeff Potash 4/28/2006