Pinon Elementary (101)/Interim Report

Interim Report
http://mode.lanl.k12.nm.us/get_interim1112.php?team_id=101

Problem Statement
Our topic is bullying. It is important because it happens at schools, on the playgrounds and if continues, then it can lead to bullying workers and co-workers, or it can lead to abusing someone else like family members. A bully can affect the school environment in a negative way. If you have a positive leader at the same place they could reduce the negative impact of a bully. Bullying can feel upsetting, offensive, hurtful, revengeful, or if you are at work or school, you may not be able to concentrate as well, or you might not give as much effort as you can. It can affect your self-esteem for life. The purpose of the project is to show the effects of bullying on people and we are trying to lower the number of bullying situations. We hope that by educating people on the effects of bullying, they can see how harmful it can be. “The Bully Project” estimates that 3 million students are absent each month because they feel unsafe at school. We plan to do a tree computer model or an epidemic type model using StarLogo. We plan to show the negative impact a bully can have on others, but we also hope to show how a positive person can have a good impact on others. We created a simulation of our model at our school with our classmates. We plan to talk with Mrs. Cort, our school counselor, and Dr. Csanadi, a pediatrician, about bullying.

Problem Solutions
Our plan will model the effects of bullying using StarLogo TNG. In this program, we will track the positive or negative energy of people who are bullies or those who are being nice to people. We created a game with real people to help us build the computer epidemic model. We ran the game with twelve 6th grade students. We ran the test 7 times. In the StarLogo epidemic model, we will have 60 students with different energy levels and when they run into each other, they will infect the other students and the person’s energy levels. We will run the simulation several times and we will plot the trends using Excel.

Progress to Date
We learned how to use StarLogo at the Supercomputing kick-off on in Socorro. Since then, we have come up with interview questions for our mentors, Mrs. Cort and Dr. Csanadi. We are scheduling some meetings with them to ask them these questions and find out the answers. On StarLogo, we also made an experimental epidemic model similar to the one that we will complete for this project. Basically, in the experimental model, we made it so that there were 60 green dots, and 1 red dot. The dots represent people. When you run the model, the green dots and the red dots will run into each other randomly, and when the red dot hits a green, it turns red and transfers it’s negative energy. The model shows that when you or someone else is bullied, it can really affect others in a negative way. We are also going to model it the opposite way to show how it affects people in a positive way.

Expected Results
We hope that our model will show how bullies need to be taken seriously. We think that a bully can cause a positive person to have a bad experience at school. According to dosomething.org, “1 in 4 teachers see nothing wrong with bullying and will only intervene 4% percent of the time.” We think our model will help teachers understand how important it is to stop bullies from impacting other people’s attitudes. We also want to find the number of positive people it takes to counteract the negative impact a bully can have on the environment

Interim Comments
Hello!

My name is Aaron Soto. I teach computer security in Baltimore, Maryland. I went to school in Las Cruces where I was a Challenge participant in 2000. The Challenge team have asked me to look over your interim report to help you stay on track for the finals in April. Here are my comments and questions. You don't need to reply to me, but hopefully these questions will help you with your face-to-face evaluation in April and also when presenting your final project during the Challenge Expo in April.

First off, I'd like to say that you have a very nice proposal and a thorough interim report. You've done a great job with your problem statement and your report includes an excellent use of citations. Nice work!

I'm excited that you've chosen StarLogo. You've talked about your model briefly, but I had a couple of questions: It sounds like negative energy spreads from a bully to others. Do those negative feelings wear off after a while? Is there a way for positive energy to spread? Can someone who is a bully be turned into a non-bully?

I would like to know more about the tests you've already run. How did you come up with these tests? What were the rules? What were your observations? Did you notice any patterns?

Since you've chosen StarLogo, you can easily use a lot of visuals when showing off your project to the judges. You should definitely have as many visuals as possible when you're presenting. I would try to watch for patterns in your simulations. How long does it take for a bully to start affecting people? How quickly does it spread? Does that negative energy eventually take over everyone? How long does it take before everyone is a bully?

Overall, I think you're doing great work! I am eager to see the final results of your project.

Good luck!

-- Aaron (Aaron Soto 19:57, 7 February 2012 (PST))