Assignment (by midnight Sunday)

Part I
1. Review the Volcano Scenario, the responses you posted in Week 2, and the volcano samples provided for you in Week 3. To review your Week 2 responses, go to the Classroom, then click on Volcanoes and locate your posting for the week.

2. Find your problem statement, then continue gathering information to answer your questions with evidence from experience, research, and reading to support or refute your ideas. You will gather, organize, analyze, and interpret information from multiple sources. Examine ideas; think about solutions; weigh alternatives; and consider the pros and cons of potential courses of action (PBL Step 7). As new information comes to light, analyze it for its reliability and usefulness and also for its impact on the direction that the problem is taking, as well as for its effect on the very nature of the problem. Therefore, you may need to revise or modify your problem statement (PBL Step 6).

3. Then, using the Volcano Scenario and building from your responses, the samples, and most importantly a problem statement, you will individually complete PBL Steps 7 and 8, just like you did in the team Week B: Teacher as Model Builder assignment. The difference now, however, is that you will complete these steps by yourself instead of with your team.

Build an ESS model that includes:

• Your findings as they relate to the problem statement: a brief opening summary of supportable ideas and conclusions (recommendations, solutions, or alternatives) based on the information you have collected, particularly for your ESS analysis (PBL Step 8).
• Statements about the relationships: detailed accounts of all the changes and impacts (revealing your understanding of interrelationships of the spheres and the event in the Earth System Diagram) that led you to the conclusions put forth in your recommendations or solutions (findings). Make sure that you include the systemic relationships, called casual chains, where multiple spheres and/or the event are involved in complex and interrelated changes. In a system, nothing occurs in isolation. Each causal chain should include S > S > S interactions.
• Evidence: For evidence that your thinking is accurate, consider information, examples, and corroboration from readings, web sites, CD ROMs, and experts that lend credence to your relationship statements. Discuss what you learned and make statements you can support with evidence from multiple sources, including observation, expert opinion, analogy, or experimental results.

Part II

1. Do the Reflective Learner Assignment for volcanoes to see how your learning has evolved. This assignment will be assessed according to the Reflective Learner Rubric, so you may want to refer to it while you are doing your assignment.