Re: After Genoa - tangibles on eco-modelling

"Ken Kahn" <[email protected]> Thu, 12 May 2005 17:54:06 +0100
Newsgroups gmane.education.weblabs.general
Message-ID <004201c55713$36d1a030$57f34ed5@ESTLAP05>
------=_NextPart_000_003F_01C5571B.9765ECA0
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Hi all.

Sorry I sounded so negative -- I actually agree with what Jakob has written=
. (And I do find it curious how little science was really explored in the p=
roject -- even Lunar Lander has turned into something that is more about ma=
thematics than physics. And I see randomness as largely mathematical despit=
e the connection with tangibles.)

I was trying to argue that we shouldn't give inaccurate LABELS to the activ=
ities of our Swedish partners. Jakob writes, "To deny the value of how that=
 domain is formulated by referring to a scientific journal about complex sy=
stems I have to say seems incredibly naive." Maybe. But I think it is quite=
 a stretch to characterize those activities as doing "complex systems". (If=
 you don't like the journal's definition of the term then use Google --=20
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=3Dnavclient&ie=3DUTF-8&rls=3DGGLC,GGL=
C:1970-01,GGLC:en&q=3Ddefine%3A+%22complex+systems%22=20
.)  Also I think describing the activities as "complex systems" invites com=
parison with StarLogo/NetLogo research. I'm OK with describing the work as =
"dynamic modelling".

Best,

-ken
  ----- Original Message -----=20
  From: Jakob Tholander=20
  To: Ken Kahn ; [email protected] ; Joao Filipe Matos=20
  Cc: [email protected]=20
  Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2005 2:49 PM
  Subject: Re: [weblabs-general] After Genoa - tangibles on eco-modelling


  Hi everyone,

  I have to say that even though I wasn't present at Ylva's presentation I =
understand from her reaction and from what I gather from the reaction of th=
e rest of the project that our work on tangibles did not get much positive =
feedback.=20

  Unfortunately, from my point of view the dominant part of the project has=
 adopted a very limited view of the core ideas of weblabs i.e. transparent =
modules, working models, collaboration, and knowledge building for knowledg=
e domain in math and science for 10-14 year-olds. We all have interpreted t=
hese ideas in different ways and adapted them to our different conditions, =
while some has focused more on knowledge building through group discussions=
 other have focused on the idea of transparent models. I believe that it sh=
ould be considered a strength of the project that we are working with diffe=
rent perspectives of how these ideas might support the different knowledge =
domains for the age-span of our target group (don't forget 11 year-olds are=
 very different from 14 year-olds). However, as the project has developed i=
t has basically all been about small and quite advanced areas in mathematic=
s and how one can make those accessible for kids. In Sweden on the other ha=
nd we have chosen to work with a knowledge domain that have less such prope=
rties. We have spent considerable efforts in grounding our domain in the Sw=
edish curriculum and the schools we are collaborating with. To deny the val=
ue of how that domain is formulated by referring to a scientific journal ab=
out complex systems I have to say seems incredibly naive. Also, we would be=
 terribly ignorant if we when discussing appropriate knowledge domains with=
 the teachers of our school if we simply dismissed their interests and ways=
 of working. As a researcher it is not my job to tell the teachers what the=
y should be teaching their children, it is merely to provide them with a ne=
w set of tools that they might find useful in their practice.

  An other important thing which seem not to have been discussed is that th=
e work with tangibles that we have been doing aimed at addressing the issue=
s in the contract that were about exploring new=20
  tangible technologies for building working models of one's knowledge. Thi=
s has involved exploring and investigate technologies for tangible systems =
that we did not have access to at the start of the project. The application=
 that we have built is therefore still a prototype and not finished in any =
way. It is of course easy to criticize it in many ways. What our applicatio=
n attempts to demonstrate is how tangible technologies can be designed for =
children to collaborately build working models of dynamic systems. Therefor=
e we have also chosen to implement a subset of the ecomodelling behaviours =
that we have been implementing in ToonTalk. We are very much aware that the=
 prototype needs further work when it comes to the kinds of models that chi=
ldren can build with it, but the goal was never that this application would=
 be ready for full-scale testing within the project. In our activities with=
 children we believe that we actually have come quite far in also evaluatin=
g the use of the system for learning about ecosystems.

  /jakob


  At 09:33 2005-05-12, Ken Kahn wrote:

    Hi all.
=20=20=20=20=20
    I think Ylva and Jakob's work on tangibles has led to an innovative and=
 interesting input device. Furthermore they showed how the device can chang=
e the way children build models, especially how they collaborate. I think t=
his is good work and I'll leave it to others to make this work fit into the=
 project final report.
=20=20=20=20=20
    Where I disagree with Joao Filipe is about the word "eco" and to lesser=
 extent "complex systems". A very quick Google search and I found "Complex =
Systems is a journal devoted to the science, mathematics, and engineering o=
f systems with simple components but complex overall behavior." My problem =
with making a connection to complex systems is I don't see what we or the k=
ids have to say about "the complex overall behaviour". If we want to say th=
ey were doing complex systems then they should be trying to understand the =
overall behaviour -- I don't recall hearing that the kids were trying to do=
 this.
=20=20=20=20=20
    I have a few problems using "eco" to describe what the kids were doing.=
 First, this year the kids have drifted even further from modelling ecologi=
es -- I admit that vampires and skeletons could be part of an imaginary eco=
logy but I think the kids were not approaching things that way. Previous ye=
ars were more focussed on ecologies. Yes, one small part of understanding e=
cologies is that some creatures eat other creatures. But it seems hard to m=
ake a case that kids need to build computer models to understand that more =
deeply. Ecological questions are about balance, disturbances, sustainabilit=
y, etc. At the minimum there needs to be reproduction since without it ever=
yone starves. Ideally there should sources and sinks for energy and other r=
esources. Compare the WebLabs eco-literacy efforts with those in StageCast =
Creator -- http://www.stagecast.com/cgi-bin/templator.cgi?PAGE=3DSchool/wor=
lds/simhost/POPULATIONGROWTH/ -- I bet the StageCast version is at least as=
 transparent as the eco-modelling TM and is so much richer.
=20=20=20=20=20
    Best,
=20=20=20=20=20
    -ken

      ----- Original Message -----=20

      From: Joao Filipe Matos=20

      To: [email protected]=20

      Cc: [email protected] ; Joao Filipe Matos=20

      Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2005 4:29 PM

      Subject: [weblabs-general] After Genoa - tangibles on eco-modelling


      Dear Weblabs'



      First of all thanks to our Italian colleagues for the hospitality dur=
ing the meeting.

      When returning to Lisbon (two flights connection and 9 hours travelli=
ng) I guess I realized how impressed I was of the reaction of several peopl=
e in the meeting after the short presentation of Ylva on Eco-modelling tang=
ibles, and how unconfortable I felt for not having reacted (as I think I sh=
ould). Certainly that we need to make a (collective) effort to provide evid=
ence of the relevance of what we are all doing in the project and to convin=
ce our audience(s) that our claims are educationaly soundfull. As this is a=
 research project, and as open-minded researchers, I think that our positio=
ning as researchers must go in the line of interrogate what evidence are we=
 providing for the claims we are doing and discuss this openly (and this cr=
iteria must certainly be equally applied to all knowledge domains) and we m=
ust support all efforts to explore new ways of representing knowledge and d=
evelop powerful ideas and learning (at the end, this is what WebLabs is abo=
ut).

      As far as I could interprete, Ylva presented a first exploration of a=
 kind of tangibles that allow children to both embody and be in the millieu=
 of a phenomenon which clearly is in the domain of complex systems and ecol=
ogy. Being the basis to children activities a "computational world", this g=
oes in parallel with the work of Abelson and DiSessa when they were explori=
ng virtual worlds with Logo back in the 1980's (although in different time =
and distance of the technology resources available by that time) . The adde=
d value of the line Ylva is following now, is that it brings together new w=
ays of looking at learning and cognition (see for example the way Francisco=
 Varela discusses this in his book Principles of Biological Autonomy bringi=
ng in the concept of "autopoiesis"; the way Humberto Maturana and Francisco=
 Varela go in Ch. 5 the natural drift of living beings in The Tree of Knowl=
edge; the forms the discussion of Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores assume=
 in Ch.3 and 4 into cognition as biological phenomena on Understanding Comp=
uters and Cognition-new frontiers for design; the way Boohan suggest creati=
ng worlds from objects and events in Ogborn et al. Learning with Articial W=
orlds-Computer bases Modelling; etc).

      Flying from Genoa to Paris I got from the French newspaper Liberation=
 of 10 May an article on how scientists are trying to fight Homalodisca Coa=
gulata (a small fly that is terrible for several kinds of fruit) with anoth=
er fly, La microguepe. This is a rather important problem in the field of e=
cology as the scientists are not sure if there is some further implication =
of the action they are taking to combat the bad fly although the probablity=
 is low acoording to the report (see how natural is puting together randomn=
ess and eco-modelling). A decision was taken to make a controled experiment=
 in Polinesia and then to decide if the problem can be addressed in the sam=
e way in the US. It is a simple real and important problem that children ca=
n model when being exposed to the story of what is happening in those count=
ries, and in doing so, deal with relevant issues in ecoliteracy, science an=
d mathematics. But this has to make sense in the particular context of the =
Swedish school (or any other country) in order to be fully appreciated by t=
eachers and children.

      Certainly one needs to ask relevant and powerful research questions w=
hen looking at the experiments Ylva is doing with the tangibles. Let me off=
er a few suggestions:

      - how do children decide what behaviours to assign to each character =
and why?  what is their alignment (i.e. what do they aim for, what is the e=
xpected outcome of the model built)?

      - what steps can we identify in children's discussion and dialogue (e=
.g. reflecting + identifying variables and behaviours -- assigning behaviou=
rs -- defining quantities of characters -- putting the model in action -- o=
bserving the global behaviour of the population of characters -- telling st=
ories (i.e. constructing narratives to make sense of the phenomena) -- refi=
ning the model (i.e. changing the behaviours -- etc).

      - how do children relate the local to the global (i.e. the local defi=
nition of each character to the global population)? how is locality address=
ed by children? how do they formulate (in their repertoire) those relations=
hips? how do they deal with this dimention of complexity?

      - how do children "project" themselves in the field of the characters=
 they build? what is specific of their location in that field (of character=
s) -- as "part of the system" in the sense of Varela or within the system -=
- that becomes visible in the way they collaborate in the production of the=
 global system?

      - what is the nature of the ressonance of this activity of children i=
n the way they address problems such as the example I got from Liberation?

      - in the methodological dimension, would it be helpful to make a coll=
ective interview of the group following guidelines that allow the researche=
r to have detailed evidence of the ways they appropriate powerful ideas in =
eco-modelling?



      I hope this is helpful. It is the way I found to support Ylva here.

      All the best,

      Joao Filipe



      http://www.educ.fc.ul.pt/docentes/jfmatos







--------------------------------------------------------------------------

      Yahoo! Groups Links=20
      a.. To visit your group on the web, go to:=20
      b.. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/weblabs-general/=20
      c..=20=20
      d.. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:=20
      e.. [email protected]=20
      f..=20=20
      g.. Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Servi=
ce.=20


  ------
  phone + 46 8 674 74 79
  mobile + 46 70 482 12 51
  www.dsv.su.se/research/kids=20

------=_NextPart_000_003F_01C5571B.9765ECA0
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2627" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>


<DIV><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size=2>Hi all.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size=2></FONT>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size=2>Sorry I sounded so negative -- I actually 
agree with what Jakob has written. (And I do find it curious how little science 
was really explored in the project -- even Lunar Lander has turned into 
something that is more about mathematics than physics. And I see randomness as 
largely mathematical despite the connection with tangibles.)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size=2></FONT>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size=2>I was trying to argue that we shouldn't 
give inaccurate&nbsp;LABELS to the activities of our Swedish partners. Jakob 
writes, "<FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>To deny the value of how that 
domain is formulated by referring to a scientific journal about complex systems 
I have to say seems incredibly naive.</FONT>" Maybe. But I think it is quite a 
stretch to characterize those activities as doing "complex systems". (If you 
don't like the journal's definition of the term then use Google -- </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size=2><A 
href="http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rls=GGLC,GGLC:1970-01,GGLC:en&amp;q=define%3A+%22complex+systems%22">http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rls=GGLC,GGLC:1970-01,GGLC:en&amp;q=define%3A+%22complex+systems%22</A>&nbsp;</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size=2>.)&nbsp; Also I think describing the 
activities as "complex systems" invites comparison with StarLogo/NetLogo 
research. I'm OK with describing the work as "dynamic modelling".</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size=2></FONT>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size=2>Best,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size=2></FONT>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size=2>-ken</FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr 
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
  <DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
  <DIV 
  style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> 
  <A [email protected] href="mailto:[email protected]">Jakob Tholander</A> 
  </DIV>
  <DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A [email protected] 
  href="mailto:[email protected]">Ken Kahn</A> ; <A 
  [email protected] 
  href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</A> 
  ; <A [email protected] href="mailto:[email protected]">Joao Filipe 
  Matos</A> </DIV>
  <DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Cc:</B> <A [email protected] 
  href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</A> </DIV>
  <DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Thursday, May 12, 2005 2:49 
PM</DIV>
  <DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [weblabs-general] After 
  Genoa - tangibles on eco-modelling</DIV>
  <DIV><BR></DIV>Hi everyone,<BR><BR>I have to say that even though I wasn't 
  present at Ylva's presentation I understand from her reaction and from what I 
  gather from the reaction of the rest of the project that our work on tangibles 
  did not get much positive feedback. <BR><BR>Unfortunately, from my point of 
  view the dominant part of the project has adopted a very limited view of the 
  core ideas of weblabs i.e. transparent modules, working models, collaboration, 
  and knowledge building for knowledge domain in math and science for 10-14 
  year-olds. We all have interpreted these ideas in different ways and adapted 
  them to our different conditions, while some has focused more on knowledge 
  building through group discussions other have focused on the idea of 
  transparent models. I believe that it should be considered a strength of the 
  project that we are working with different perspectives of how these ideas 
  might support the different knowledge domains for the age-span of our target 
  group (don't forget 11 year-olds are very different from 14 year-olds). 
  However, as the project has developed it has basically all been about small 
  and quite advanced areas in mathematics and how one can make those accessible 
  for kids. In Sweden on the other hand we have chosen to work with a knowledge 
  domain that have less such properties. We have spent considerable efforts in 
  grounding our domain in the Swedish curriculum and the schools we are 
  collaborating with. To deny the value of how that domain is formulated by 
  referring to a scientific journal about complex systems I have to say seems 
  incredibly naive. Also, we would be terribly ignorant if we when discussing 
  appropriate knowledge domains with the teachers of our school if we simply 
  dismissed their interests and ways of working. As a researcher it is not my 
  job to tell the teachers what they should be teaching their children, it is 
  merely to provide them with a new set of tools that they might find useful in 
  their practice.<BR><BR>An other important thing which seem not to have been 
  discussed is that the work with tangibles that we have been doing aimed at 
  addressing the issues in the contract that were about exploring new 
  <BR>tangible technologies for building working models of one's knowledge. This 
  has involved exploring and investigate technologies for tangible systems that 
  we did not have access to at the start of the project. The application that we 
  have built is therefore still a prototype and not finished in any way. It is 
  of course easy to criticize it in many ways. What our application attempts to 
  demonstrate is how tangible technologies can be designed for children to 
  collaborately build working models of dynamic systems. Therefore we have also 
  chosen to implement a subset of the ecomodelling behaviours that we have been 
  implementing in ToonTalk. We are very much aware that the prototype needs 
  further work when it comes to the kinds of models that children can build with 
  it, but the goal was never that this application would be ready for full-scale 
  testing within the project. In our activities with children we believe that we 
  actually have come quite far in also evaluating the use of the system for 
  learning about ecosystems.<BR><BR>/jakob<BR><BR><BR>At 09:33 2005-05-12, Ken 
  Kahn wrote:<BR>
  <BLOCKQUOTE class=cite cite="" type="cite"><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" 
    size=2>Hi all.<BR></FONT>&nbsp;<BR><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size=2>I think 
    Ylva and Jakob's work on tangibles has led to an innovative and interesting 
    input device. Furthermore they showed how the device can change the way 
    children build models, especially how they collaborate. I think this is good 
    work and I'll leave it to others to make this work fit into the project 
    final report.<BR></FONT>&nbsp;<BR><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size=2>Where I 
    disagree with Joao Filipe is about the word "eco" and to lesser extent 
    "complex systems". A very quick Google search and I found "</FONT><FONT 
    face="Times New Roman, Times" size=2><I>Complex Systems</I> is a journal 
    devoted to the science, mathematics, and engineering of systems with simple 
    components but complex overall behavior." </FONT><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" 
    size=2>My problem with making a connection to complex systems is I don't see 
    what we or the kids have to say about "the complex overall behaviour". If we 
    want to say they were doing complex systems then they should be trying to 
    understand the overall behaviour -- I don't recall hearing that the kids 
    were trying to do this.<BR></FONT>&nbsp;<BR><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" 
    size=2>I have a few problems using "eco" to describe what the kids were 
    doing. First, this year the kids have drifted even further from modelling 
    ecologies -- I admit that vampires and skeletons could be part of an 
    imaginary ecology but I think the kids were not approaching things that way. 
    Previous years were more focussed on ecologies. Yes, one small part of 
    understanding ecologies is that some creatures eat other creatures. But it 
    seems hard to make a case that kids need to build computer models to 
    understand that more deeply. Ecological questions are about balance, 
    disturbances, sustainability, etc. At the minimum there needs to be 
    reproduction since without it everyone starves. Ideally there should sources 
    and sinks for energy and other resources. Compare the WebLabs eco-literacy 
    efforts with those in StageCast Creator -- <A 
    href="http://www.stagecast.com/cgi-bin/templator.cgi?PAGE=School/worlds/simhost/POPULATIONGROWTH/">http://www.stagecast.com/cgi-bin/templator.cgi?PAGE=School/worlds/simhost/POPULATIONGROWTH/</A> 
    -- I bet the StageCast version is at least as transparent as the 
    eco-modelling TM and is so much richer.<BR></FONT>&nbsp;<BR><FONT 
    face="Comic Sans MS" size=2>Best,<BR></FONT>&nbsp;<BR><FONT 
    face="Comic Sans MS" size=2>-ken<BR></FONT>
    <DL>
      <DD>----- Original Message ----- <BR>
      <DD>From:</B> <A href="mailto:[email protected]">Joao Filipe Matos</A> <BR>
      <DD>To:</B> <A 
      href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</A> 
      <BR>
      <DD>Cc:</B> <A href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</A> ; <A 
      href="mailto:[email protected]">Joao Filipe Matos</A> <BR>
      <DD>Sent:</B> Wednesday, May 11, 2005 4:29 PM<BR>
      <DD>Subject:</B> [weblabs-general] After Genoa - tangibles on 
      eco-modelling<BR><BR>
      <DD><FONT size=2>Dear Weblabs'<BR></FONT>
      <DD><BR>&nbsp;
      <DD><FONT size=2>First of all thanks to our Italian colleagues for the 
      hospitality during the meeting.<BR>
      <DD>When returning to Lisbon (two flights connection and 9 hours 
      travelling) I guess I realized how impressed I was of the reaction of 
      several people in the meeting after the short presentation of Ylva on 
      Eco-modelling tangibles, and how unconfortable I felt for not having 
      reacted (as I think I should). Certainly that we need to make a 
      (collective) effort to provide evidence of the relevance of what we are 
      all doing in the project and to convince our audience(s) that our claims 
      are educationaly soundfull. As this is a research project, and as 
      open-minded researchers, I think that our positioning as researchers must 
      go in the line of interrogate what evidence are we providing for the 
      claims we are doing and discuss this openly (and this criteria must 
      certainly be equally applied to all knowledge domains) and we must support 
      all efforts to explore new ways of representing knowledge and develop 
      powerful ideas and learning (at the end, this is what WebLabs is 
      about).<BR>
      <DD>As far as I could interprete, Ylva presented a first exploration of a 
      kind of tangibles that allow children to both embody and be in the millieu 
      of a phenomenon which clearly is in the domain of complex systems and 
      ecology. Being the basis to children activities a "computational world", 
      this goes in parallel with the work of Abelson and DiSessa when they were 
      exploring virtual worlds with Logo back in the 1980's (although in 
      different time and distance of the technology resources available by that 
      time) . The added value of the line Ylva is following now, is that it 
      brings together new ways of looking at learning and cognition (see for 
      example the way Francisco Varela discusses this in his book Principles of 
      Biological Autonomy bringing in the concept of "autopoiesis"; the way 
      Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela go in Ch. 5 the natural drift of 
      living beings in The Tree of Knowledge; the forms the discussion of Terry 
      Winograd and Fernando Flores assume in Ch.3 and 4 into cognition as 
      biological phenomena on Understanding Computers and Cognition-new 
      frontiers for design; the way Boohan suggest creating worlds from objects 
      and events in Ogborn et al. Learning with Articial Worlds-Computer bases 
      Modelling; etc).<BR>
      <DD>Flying from Genoa to Paris I got from the French newspaper Liberation 
      of 10 May an article on how scientists are trying to fight Homalodisca 
      Coagulata (a small fly that is terrible for several kinds of fruit) with 
      another fly, La microguepe. This is a rather important problem in the 
      field of ecology as the scientists are not sure if there is some further 
      implication of the action they are taking to combat the bad fly although 
      the probablity is low acoording to the report (see how natural is puting 
      together randomness and eco-modelling). A decision was taken to make a 
      controled experiment in Polinesia and then to decide if the problem can be 
      addressed in the same way in the US. It is a simple real and important 
      problem that children can model when being exposed to the story of what is 
      happening in those countries, and in doing so, deal with relevant issues 
      in ecoliteracy, science and mathematics. But this has to make sense in the 
      particular context of the Swedish school (or any other country) in order 
      to be fully appreciated by teachers and children.<BR>
      <DD>Certainly one needs to ask relevant and powerful research questions 
      when looking at the experiments Ylva is doing with the tangibles. Let me 
      offer a few suggestions:<BR>
      <DD>- how do children decide what behaviours to assign to each character 
      and why?&nbsp; what is their alignment (i.e. what do they aim for, what is 
      the expected outcome of the model built)?<BR>
      <DD>- what steps can we identify in children's discussion and dialogue 
      (e.g. reflecting + identifying variables and behaviours -- assigning 
      behaviours -- defining quantities of characters -- putting the model in 
      action -- observing the global behaviour of the population of characters 
      -- telling stories (i.e. constructing narratives to make sense of the 
      phenomena) -- refining the model (i.e. changing the behaviours -- 
etc).<BR>
      <DD>- how do children relate the local to the global (i.e. the local 
      definition of each character to the global population)? how is locality 
      addressed by children? how do they formulate (in their repertoire) those 
      relationships? how do they deal with this dimention of complexity?<BR>
      <DD>- how do children "project" themselves in the field of the characters 
      they build? what is specific of their location in that field (of 
      characters) -- as "part of the system" in the sense of Varela or within 
      the system -- that becomes visible in the way they collaborate in the 
      production of the global system?<BR>
      <DD>- what is the nature of the ressonance of this activity of children in 
      the way they address problems such as the example I got from 
      Liberation?<BR>
      <DD>- in the methodological dimension, would it be helpful to make a 
      collective interview of the group following guidelines that allow the 
      researcher to have detailed evidence of the ways they appropriate powerful 
      ideas in eco-modelling?<BR></FONT>
      <DD><BR>&nbsp;
      <DD><FONT size=2>I hope this is helpful. It is the way I found to support 
      Ylva here.<BR>
      <DD>All the best,<BR>
      <DD>Joao Filipe<BR></FONT>
      <DD><BR>&nbsp;
      <DD><FONT size=2><A 
      href="http://www.educ.fc.ul.pt/docentes/jfmatos">http://www.educ.fc.ul.pt/docentes/jfmatos</A><BR></FONT>
      <DD><BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>&nbsp;
      <DD><BR><BR>
      <HR>

      <DD><TT>Yahoo! Groups Links</B> </DD></DL>
    <UL>
      <LI>To visit your group on the web, go to: 
      <LI><A 
      href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/weblabs-general/">http://groups.yahoo.com/group/weblabs-general/</A> 

      <LI> 
      <LI>To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: 
      <LI><A 
      href="mailto:[email protected]?subject=Unsubscribe">[email protected]</A> 

      <LI> 
      <LI>Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the <A 
      href="http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/">Yahoo! Terms of Service</A>. 
      </TT></LI></UL></BLOCKQUOTE><X-SIGSEP>
  <P></X-SIGSEP><BR><BR>------<BR>phone + 46 8 674 74 79<BR>mobile + 46 70 482 
  12 51<BR><A href="http://www.dsv.su.se/research/kids" 
  eudora="autourl">www.dsv.su.se/research/kids</A> </P></BLOCKQUOTE>





</BODY></HTML>

------=_NextPart_000_003F_01C5571B.9765ECA0--