What’s so confusing about Chaos? A foray into lighting an eternal, learning flame. Ali Korosy Foreign Languages

--from Einstein “No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it.”

What’s the outcome? It’s a long way to Barcelona What’s your Christmas list? What’s my Christmas list? Communication Teamwork Critical Thinking The piéce de resistance – passion

Using the Self-Organizing Classroom for Real Learning Open-ended instructions with a CLEAR GOAL IN MIND. Airline ticket, open-ended, $$ is not an object. Must eat in one restaurant at each stop (avoid McDonald’s and Burger King) Must speak with one inhabitant at each stop. Students must arrive in a predetermined restaurant in Barcelona by noon, seven days from now. Eating in Barcelona

Periodic vs. Aperiodic A periodic system uniformly repeats its previous pattern at predictable, repetitive intervals. A fulcrum An aperiodic system occurs when the variables in the system do not exactly repeat themselves. Water down a drain

The Butterfly Effect Ray Bradbury Edward Lorenz lazy ways or.506 instead of Caltech demo It was Brazil and Texas!

Where’s Charley going? An unstable, aperiodic system does not repeat itself and is affected by any small perturbation. Weather (Edward Lorenz) History The butterfly and the tornado.

Distinguishing characteristic of all Chaotic systems A minute change in the feedback of the system can and does produce drastically divergent results. Lorenz’s weather model 12 variables The results of.506 and or when a butterfly flaps its wings

More thoughts on Chaos in the classroom Students as fractals Students as self-organizing systems Students as unstable aperiodic systems Students as unguided missiles

--from Eudora Welty My continuing passion is to part a curtain, That invisible shadow that falls between people, The veil of indifference to each other’s presence, Each other’s wonder, Each other’s human plight.

A couple of references: Capra, Fritjof. The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living. Doubleday, New York Wheatley, Margaret. Leadership and the New Sciences: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World. Berrett-Keller Publishers, San Francisco Zukav, Gary. The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Phyics. HarperCollins, New York Chaos: A pictorial introduction. Chaos and Complexity Theory.