Workshop Program
Sunday, December 12, 2010
9:00 am - 5:30 pm, City College of San Francisco Ocean Campus
in the Earth Sciences Department Lab Room
8:00 – 9:00 Early arrival for those who have not yet installed STELLA on their laptops
9:00 – 9:15 Welcome. Introductions and goals for the day
9:15 – 9:30 Why Use Models in the Classroom? Discussion of the pedagogical value of teaching modeling
9:30 – 10:00 Introduction to STELLA. Components of the iconographic box-modeling software, example: the Moore and Derry cooler model. Download the Powerpoint presentation by Kirsten Menking on Introduction to STELLA - the Coleman cooler problem (PowerPoint 155kB Dec12 10)
10:00 — 10:30 Mathematics and STELLA. Discussion of the relationship between differential equations and STELLA; analytical vs. numerical solutions. Download the Powerpoint presentation by Dave Bice on The Mathematics Behind Stella (PowerPoint 570kB Dec12 10)
10:30 – 10:45 Break
10:45 – 12:30 Examples of STELLA modeling exercises
10:45 – 11:10 Modeling simple systems in STELLA, Radioactive decay. Download the Powerpoint presentation by Kirsten Menking on U/Pb concordia/discordia models (PowerPoint 805kB Dec12 10)
11:10 – 12:00 Modeling complex systems in STELLA, Daisyworld; Dave Bice's Powerpoint Presentation (PowerPoint 289kB Dec12 10)
12:00 – 12:30 More complexity — Thermohaline Circulation
12:30 – 1:30 Lunch, Small group formation. Over the lunch hour, participants break into groups of 3-5 and decide on a simple system or process they wish to model
1:30 – 2:00 STELLA's limitations and work arounds. Iteration and spatial limitations, examples: radioactive decay and heat flow in permafrost
2:00 – 4:00 Small group work time. Participants work together to develop models and accompanying exercises
4:00 – 5:00 Small group reports. Participants describe their small group projects to the entire workshop
5:00 - 5:30 Workshop evaluation
