Finding News Articles Containing Feedback

Kim Kastens

Kim Kastens is a geophysicist and Research Professor at Columbia University’s Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory, known for her contributions to marine geology and geoscience education. After studying geology and geophysics at Yale, she completed her PhD at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and later joined Lamont–Doherty, where her research has advanced understanding of the tectonic evolution of the Mediterranean region through deep-sea drilling and seafloor mapping. She has also played a key role in strengthening geoscience communication and education, including collaborative work with Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. Her contributions have been recognized with the American Geophysical Union’s Excellence in Earth and Space Science Education Award (2009) and election as an AGU Fellow (2021).

Presentation summary: Loops behind the News is a blog and newsletter that uses current events and popular media to reveal how reinforcing and balancing feedback loops shape issues affecting people, society, and the planet. By drawing on quotes from diverse news sources and illustrating reasoning with causal loop diagrams, it highlights clues that point to underlying loops and explains their systemic implications. Created by Kim, a retired geoscientist, and Tim, a psychology professor, the project blends perspectives from the natural world and the mind. Their collaboration, active since 2011, has focused on feedback loop thinking since 2017.

Steven Roderick

Steven Roderick is a retired high school biology teacher from the United States. He was introduced to system dynamics as an undergraduate and used it in his classrooms throughout a 40+ year career. Since retirement he has been working with the Concord Consortium, an educational research non-profit that focuses on the use of technology in STEM classrooms. Steve’s interest in SD at the pre-college level has grown out of his own history with system dynamics as well as the deep and creative thinking he has seen in his students who have been through the process of building models. At the Concord Consortium his work has been primarily with development of the SageModeler software and surrounding curriculum. Funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, SageModeler was created as an “on-ramp” to more complex modeling and as a vehicle for encouraging dynamic thinking, without the need to understand and write algebraic equations.

Presentation summary: Students love to offer their opinions about issues relevant to their lives, but often their arguments use linear, cause and effect thinking. Using AI, teachers can quickly locate current news stories that contain feedback, allowing them to bring dynamic thinking and the links between system structure and behavior into their classes. In this presentation Steve will demonstrate how appropriate AI prompting can help teachers find relevant news stories and use them to stimulate student causal loop diagramming and deeper class discussions.

Alan Ticotsky

Alan Ticotsky has worked as an educator since 1972. As a classroom teacher, he taught in grades 1 – 6. He also served as a K-8 Curriculum Coordinator and as a systems thinking mentor for grades 5 – 12. Since the 1990s, Alan has employed systems thinking and system dynamics tools with students and in adult workshops. His most recent book, Now What? A Call to Action, contains environmental systems lessons. He is coauthor, with Rob Quaden, of The Shape of Change, a book that engages students in games and simulations that teach basic system dynamics concepts and encourages students to transfer this learning across the curriculum. Alan has also written four science activity and instructional books – Science Giants, a trilogy of science books on physical science, life science, Earth and space and Who Says You Can’t Teach Science. Alan has led workshops, designed curriculum, and been a consultant for many organizations, including multiple public schools, NASA, Boeing, New England League of Middle Schools, and the National Science Teachers Association.

Presentation summary: Discussing current events with students is vital to producing active, informed citizens. But fitting lessons into already crowded classroom schedules presents many challenges. Systems thinking and system dynamics can help address many of the roadblocks teachers and students encounter, including:

• interdisciplinary topics
• complex and controversial issues
• difficult text levels
• lack of background knowledge

Alan will briefly demonstrate how systems tools can be used to break down stories in the news and find feedback loops that drive the behaviors making the news every day.