Today, Matt taught the students about Netlogo using the SIR (Susceptible, Infected, Recovered) model. He started with a brief explanation on Netlogo, and from there he went over each of the tabs, as well as the sliders, graphs, buttons and all other portions that the students would be using for this example. Matt explained how the sliders interacted with variables and the ways that they can be changed.
Next, Matt showed the students the SIR model itself. SIR model consists of three groups of people: sick, infected, and recovered. Each person on the graph is represented by an image and a corresponding color determining his or her current status. Matt walked the students through how to add additional sliders that would eventually have an effect on the agents on the screen, as well as buttons which would allow them to start, pause, and reset the program. Matt then showed how to give the new sliders and buttons functionality by adding code to the 'Procedures' tab and explaining what each line would do in the program when it was started by the user.
At the end of the day, the students were able to get some decent experience with Netlogo and a general idea of what programming is like. The use of SIR as an example today will help the students for the rest of the week as they attempt to create their program in Java.