Subject: Looking for a systems makeover

Posted by John F. Heinbokel on 10/6/2009
In Reply To:Looking for a systems makeover Posted by Tim Joy on 10/5/2009

Message:

Good Morning, All.

I’m afraid I can’t help with Tony’s question about teacher exchange programs, but Tim’s inquiry about middle grade examples opened an avenue for this response. Jeff Potash and I have been working under the auspices of the Creative Learning Exchange, with support from an individual contributor and the Gordon Brown Fund, to begin crafting a set of materials on Personal Finance issues and opportunities, targeted at grades 4-8. It’s an ambitious project that may someday extend as well into more formal micro- and macro-economics, but for the moment we have drafted a first Module that focuses on ‘Savings,’ or the accumulation of capital. The Module has 5 Units that collectively focus, in its SD objectives, on developing the concepts of stocks and flows and introducing the idea of reinforcing feedback loops in the form of compound interest. Those 5 Units are:
Unit 1 - Saving Toward a Goal: Is There A “Right” Answer?
Unit 2 - Managing Expenditures: Thinking About “Spending”
Unit 3 - Saving and Spending: Managing Simultaneous In- and Out-flows
Unit 4 - The “Power” of Compound Interest: Revisiting Savings
Unit 5 - So You Want to Be a Millionaire!
Collectively they utilize a total of 9 STELLA models that will be provided as either RunTime or NetSim applications.

The purpose of this note is two-fold:
1. Alert you all to the development of these materials. We are about to move into classroom testing and assessment of their utility and hope to have revised/improved materials in hand before too long in 2010. Their availability will be announced by the CLE.
2. Solicit a small number of teachers (grades 4-8, ideally) who would be willing and able to test these materials with REAL students (who we expect will react differently to them than do Jeff or I). We are not looking for lots of curiosity seekers at this point, but for a small, manageable number of teachers who would be willing and able to commit to using the materials AND providing us timely and significant feedback on what works well and, probably more importantly, what needs improvement. Anyone interested in exploring that in greater depth is welcome to contact me directly; I don’t imagine those conversations will be interesting to or appropriate for this whole list.

Thanks!

John (and Jeff)