A Microworld is a term coined at the MIT Media Lab Learning and Common Sense Group . It means, literally, a tiny world inside which a student can explore alternatives, test hypotheses, and discover facts that are true about that world. It differs from a simulation in that the student is encouraged to think about it as a "real" world, and not simply as a simulation of another world (for example, the one in which we physically move about in).

Starlogo is a programming language/modeling tool/microworld construction tool developed at the MIT Media Lab by Mitchel Resnick , and is described in his book, "Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams: An Exploration in Massively Parallel Microworlds" . Through the language a student can populate a world with large numbers of autonomous "creatures", each given a set of simply rules to follow. The creatures are then set loose to interact with each other, leading to complex and fascinating emergent behavior.

The following are examples of microworld experiments, some developed at the MIT Media Lab , and some developed at the University of Maine Computer Science Department . These are only a small sampling of microworlds under development, and some (the fractal examples in particular) might not be appropriate for K-8 students. They do, however, give a feel for the breadth of problems that can be modeled using Starlogo:

Rabbits eating grass

A simple model of rabbits eating grass, propagating like mad, starving, dieing off, and rebounding when the grass grows again; a nice example of two co-dependent populations.

Termites piling Woodchips

Another simple model of termites piling woodchips into piles, with some interesting "emergent" behavior.

Fractal Turtles

An example of 200 turtles strolling around a complex plane, computing iterations of a mandlebrot set calculation as they pass over each point.

Fractal Hill Climbers

An example of those same 200 turtles, still strolling around that complex plane, still computing iterations of the mandlebrot set calculation, but this time attempting to "climb" toward the center on the "steps" they're building.

Bees and Blueberries

A example of a very real problem in the State of Maine: how do different strains of bees cross-pollinate blueberry fields?

To Main project page , or Maine Math and Science Alliance Proposal page .