Subject: Looking for Systems Stories and other inputs

Posted by Kapil Aggarwal on 5/20/2009

Message:

Dear friends,

Hi ! I have been a member of this group for over a year now, though I have never written in.Since this is the first time I am writing so I will first take the courtesy of introducing myself.
My name is Kapil Aggarwal, I stay in Mumbai, India. By education I am a Electronics Engineer and MBA(Rural Management). I worked for 2 years in the IT industry but did not find it to be satisfying. I love children and teaching and hence have been teaching for the past 6 months. I am currently engaged with a Waldorf School (Steiner Education) that is following the CIE, UK certification. Am teaching grades 7,8,9,10 physics and chemistry. I was introduced to systems thinking during my post graduation and since then have been trying to educate myself through books, roadmaps and other online resources. Am looking to introduce my students this year to some thinking tools like SemMaps, Stella, Ladder of Inference (am using the Diana Fischer Bookset & Schools that Change Fieldbook) in their physics and chemistry courses. Since I have been doing this on my own and am not aware of any practitioners of the same in my city was wondering for some guidance from the community.
Are there any systems practitioners on the group who are from Mumbai?

I wanted to connect with people who have been teaching physics and chemistry and have been able to incorporate ST/SD. If they have developed their own curriculum ideas which I could share into and experiment with here ( I have been using resources from the Waters Foundation website)

Also I am on a fellowship at the Homi Bhabha Center for Science Education (@ Tata Institute of Fundamental Research) and along with my faculty guide am designing a 10 hour, 2 day workshop on Systems Thinking and Modeling for grades 9 students. This is the first such workshop for us. With the usual introduction to basic building blocks, archetypes and stock and flow diagrams I was very keen to effectively introduce them to causal loop diagrams. I have been trying to search the internet for effective stories that can then be modeled by CLDs, however I have been unable to find any. We want to introduce students to various systems around them (natural, finance, personal life, social, pollution, crime), get them to read stories about these systems and then based on their understanding help them to model CLDs and SFDs. Finally trying out some simulations on Stella.

Would anyone have any idea where I could find such stories ( I would ideally like stories which would have at least 6 or more interacting loops)? Am having difficulty in trying to model Stocks-Flow as Causal loops!

Thank you for the patient listening

Regards
Kapil Aggarwal

Follow Ups:

Looking for Systems Stories and other inputs - Sharon Villines 5/30/2009 
Looking for Systems Stories and other inputs - Lees N. Stuntz 5/30/2009 
Looking for Systems Stories and other inputs - Paul Newton 5/23/2009 
Looking for Systems Stories and other inputs - Clelia Scott 5/24/2009
Looking for Systems Stories and other inputs - Gene Bellinger 5/25/2009
Looking for Systems Stories and other inputs - Lees N. Stuntz 5/25/2009
Looking for Systems Stories and other inputs - William Costello 5/25/2009
Looking for Systems Stories and other inputs - Linda Booth Sweeney 5/25/2009
Looking for Systems Stories and other inputs - Sam Mostafa 5/28/2009
Looking for Systems Stories and other inputs - John F. Heinbokel 5/23/2009