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Modeling Your World 2009
Shodor > SUCCEED > Workshops > Archive > Modeling Your World 2009

The first lesson after lunch was an exploration into probability using the Fire!! applet on Interactivate, Shodor's online curriculum. The applet was a graph with a single tree at each coordinate. First, the students were assigned a decimal, which represented the chance that a tree next to a flaming tree would catch fire. The students then clicked on the center tree, and recorded the percentage of all trees burned. The students were supposed to learn how chances affected the outcome of a result. This also showed how useful modeling was. If a student wanted to test how much of a forest would burn if trees had a 30% to catch on fire from their neighbor , the student would not have to do it in real life, but on a computer model.

The students then started to work with an agent-modeling program called Agent Sheets. The students decided to make a model that consisted of people, zombies (who could turn people into more zombies), and doctors (who would be able to turn a zombie back to a human). Valerie, who was teaching for the day, showed the class some other things Agent Sheets can do. Valerie then showed that when a human turned into a zombie, the students could program the human to scream. After everyone had their own model, and had added their own modifications such as adding a zombie killer.