Masters students
Eynat Leikin | |
Hana Almog | |
Goren Elharar | Understanding and learning rhythm in a technology-based learning environment |
Hagai Reuveni | Characterizing and identifying frustration in puzzle like computer games |
Sigal Samon | Reasoning and learning about chemical systems via exploring models and simulations among junior-high students |
| Oshri Raicher | Learning about complex systems among students who are blind with a sonified model |
| Zarifa (Zizi) Ukal | Learning about health and contagion among students who are mentally retarded |
Alon Hirsch | Understanding drafting among triathlon athletes. |
Salam Kodsi | Relationship between constructive play and sociodramatic play among children in an anthroposophic kindergarten |
| Tzvi Bodenheimer (co-supervision with Dorit Tubin, Ben-Gurion) | Neighboring schools with sustained excellence in robot competitions: A social networks theory and institutional theory perspective case study |
PhD students
Reuven Lerner (co-supervision, Uri Wilensky as main advisor) | |
Undergraduate students (computer science projects)
Lior Zlotnick & Shalomi Eldar. Rebellion. A computerized participatory simulation to support students’ learning about civil disobedience and the spatiotemporal structure of rebellion as a complex system. Based on Joshua Epstein’s work on civil violence (Epstein, 2002). Students participate via computer clients in a collaborative simulation, playing citizens in a society with fluctuating levels of turmoil and decide whether or not to rebel based on general and personal grievance and local danger. Developed for the project: Cross-Domain Learning about Complex Systems.
Avishai Linyevsky & Snir Rotem. TrafficJams. Participants drive their car through a common highway. Traffic patterns are explored - friction, jams, phases of traffic. A computerized participatory simulation to support learners’ understanding of traffic patterns and how they are impacted by individual behaviors, explicating counter-intuitive ideas such as “slow is fast” (Treiber, & Helbing, 2001) and phantom jams (Nagel & Schreckenberg, 1992; Bando et all, 1995).
Aviad Itzkovich, Saaed Awwad & Wissam Rafeaoh. Dancing with Molecules. A computerized participatory simulation to support students’ learning of global warming as a complex system. Students participate via computer clients in a collaborative simulation, playing molecules interacting with photons and with other molecules. Following research, the environment is currently under a second round of development to break down the basic concepts into a sequence of simpler activities, building up to the final simulation.
Yossif Shalabi. Ants. Each participant is an ant searching for food. Together they form ant lines through pheromone communication. Local and global information are varied. Content: formation of ant lines; ecology. Systems: decentralized systems, swarm behavior. Based on a pre-existing model; its design as a participatory simulation is original. Planned research involves varying the relative weights of global and local information: how does the degree of access to global and local information impact students’ abilities to distinguish and coordinate between levels in a system?
Tal Yaacobovitz, Naomi Shtetman, Ran Drori, Maor. Systems toys for tots. Construction- and manipulation-based toys for learning about simple systems’ basic patterns among preschool children. Systems: nonlinear growth and self-organization. Based on six existing complexity models. Innovation: (1) adaptation for very young children, i.e. manual manipulation of objects, access to underlying rules and appropriate numerosity and size of objects; (b) combination of three models into one, so that broader ideas shared by these models can be approached. These tools are geared for research into young children’s understanding and learning about “simple” complex systems through interacting with the models.
Yonatan Bacalo, Asher Kakoon, Lital Zar, Ariel Asaf. Drafting. Exploratory model for triathlon athletes in training: Learning about human/matter interactions among group members while running in formation, or “drafting”; physical education. Content: human/matter interactions in formations of bodies in motion through the atmosphere and resulting energetic gains; physical education. Systems: Self organization of global patterns as a function of interactions in space. Based on previous models of gas particles; some ab intio rules are an innovation. Geared for research with a Masters student who specializes in training triathlon athletes and plans to research their perception of learning about drafting.
Evgehni Roller, Gal Peri. Me Particle, We Matter. Participatory simulation for learning about phases of matter by being a molecule.