Ready, steady...go!

We're now in the position of having a model and potential game idea which we'd like students at Leicester to test (ideally in the Physics Department but do let us know if you're interested and from elsewhere).

We've set a competition where the winners each get 100 pounds and everyone who takes part gets 50 pounds. We need 5 teams of 3 really. You can send Tim an email with the subject line 's4s competition' indicating your willingness to take part and the names and emails of your three team mates!

You may also notice we have a newsletter which we've call Mikasa where you can quickly get up-to-speed with where we are with the project.

Thanks for everyone's interest so far and best of luck with your own efforts for sustainability!

Big Chief!

Here's D and Eddie playing the s4s game 'Big Chief'. The egg boxes contain various counters such as seeds and sweets. The central box represents parameters in the environment and we each have our own box representing our village. We then work through the game rules to see how our choices, such as how much land and fertiliser to use for crops, cascade around the environment.

We had a bit of fun but since we were also working out the order of the rules and other such game mechanics it was quite tiring. We managed just three years in about an hour and a half!

Next we'll be asking students at Leicester to develop their own games, based on the videos and other learning materials. Then these games will hopefully be used in local schools.

Help!

Dear friends,

As part of Science for Sustainability we've been working on a model loosely based upon Lake Naivasha, as shown in the videos below. The model is simply an Excel spreadsheet, a trick I picked up at NECSI. Its to be used as the basis for a game design and shows chiefs and their villagers plus various aspects of the 'environment' such as fish in a lake and neighbouring eagles. The idea then is that all these parameters are interlinked thus demonstrating the complexity of 'ecosystems' (in the broadest sense).

So I have a version for MS Excel which I'm fairly happy with - at least it demonstrates the approach (it will be down to local groups to develop their own model and subsequent game) - and I have a version which works in Documents to Go on Palm OS.

We are hoping that the learning materials we develop will now feed into TESSA, at least we are talking about this. However, we cannot assume that everyone in Sub-Saharan Africa has access to MS Excel as its cost may be prohibitive.

Hence, we'd like to convert Big Chief to Open Office format. Which is where we would like you to help please?

I tried last night but couldn't get the charts making sense. I also removed circular references where the first year's "plants" for instance take their value from the last years - this was throwing up an error (523 I think).

Charts which would be useful include:

• chiefs populations - of the 3 villages
• environmental populations - eagles, fish, fertiliser and bank
• crops - for the 3 villages
• 'external' variables - sun, rain, war and disease

If anyone is a whiz at Open Office or just has some spare time to take a look we'd appreciate it. If you do get something reasonable then please just post a comment here and we'll sort out how to add it to the project.

Cheers,

Tim

A Lake on the Edge: The Future of Lake Naivasha

Here's an index to each of the short films about Lake Naivasha on YouTube. They are all around 5-6 minutes duration.

Part 1: The Heart of the Lake.

Part 2: The Aliens Are Coming!

Part 3: People and Pollution.

Part 4: What Can We Do?

Part 5: Our Planet Earth.

A Lake on the Edge: The Future of Lake Naivasha, Part 1

This is the first of a series of short videos we are planning to use for our project. The original film was written by Dr. David Harper, an ecologist at the University of Leicester with around 25 years experience in Kenya.

The whole of the series is now available on YouTube, see the 'playlist'.

Further learning materials are currently being evaluated, such as a simple computer model of Lake Naivasha and a game based upon this.

Our intention is that all these materials will form part of a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) scenario, something which we have some expertise in at the University of Leicester.

I hope you enjoy the videos - please do leave comments on YouTube!

Cheers,

Tim

"Very likely"

So we are probably contributing to Global Warming through our combined effects upon the planet since Industrialisation according to the IPCC.

There's a nice piece on the BBC website by a lady from the MET Office about computer models.

Complexity of Sustainable Development

I was fortunate enough to attend the NESCI Winter School over the past couple of weeks in Cambridge, MA in the U.S. It was a very informative and productive 2 weeks as well as being a lot of fun! The way I've seen it for some time now the number of systems which interrelate when one considers Sustainable Development leads to a great deal of complexity. Complexity Science therefore, we may assume, would give us some handle on how to deal with this complexity.

So, it turns out, the science of Complexity does indeed provide a number of tools and methods of analysis. Examples of the former would include modelling and examples of the latter would include networks. To illustrate, aside from the classes at NECSI from 9 to 5 each day every evening was spent on group work.

Our group in week 1 investigated issues concerning social capital and intervention strategies to alleviate 'social exclusion' (another interest of mine and also of some interest to this project). We developed a model and wrote a paper on the theoretical background.

However, of more relevance here, our group in week 2 investigated Global Warming. So, getting back to Complexity Science methods:


Firstly we realised that it is important to manage knowledge in Education for Sustainable Development. Hence, we developed a semantic network (as a form of ontology) of the knowledge we were researching and integrating into the NECSI Wiki. It is called Global Warming Ecosystem Brain or G-WEB.

Secondly, we developed a model, named atmosmodel, which helped us to develop our theories resulting from our newly researched knowledge of Global Warming. I likened this to the process of acquisition, argumentation and application I talk about in my PhD thesis.

We did not have long at all to carry out this work so it is all in its early stages. However, the whole course proved to be useful for 'Science for Sustainability'. In fact, as a means of developing the game tool kit which we are proposing will be the centrepiece of this project, I would like to explore the development of a simple model.

All in all this was two weeks well spent with a whole host of ideas gained in a very short space of time. Furthermore, some intelligent and quite dedicated people got to cross-fertilise their varying ideas about Complexity Science which in itself made the whole trip incredibly worthwhile.