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Making Sense of Change:
Summer Institute on Hands-On Science
Throughout the Curriculum
(July 25-August 5, 2005)

Day Nine:
Making "Cents" of Change

What is change?
Anne: A measure of learning.

This morning's assignment:
(to the tune of Sam Cooke singing "A Change is Gonna Come")
calculate the sum total of change we made yesterday morning.
Please record your findings in the forum.
(Summary of activity on the account reported below.)

Don: I took out 5 dimes and 2 quarters and put in 1 dollar bill. I'm not sure that this is "making change"... but at least it was a transformation... how one form of metal can be EQUAL to a piece of paper with green ink markings on it.

Wil : put in two dollars, took out eight quarters.

julie : This morning I found a dollar in my bag and changed it for 4 quarters. Then I thought about changing my seat, but I did not want to impose change on someone else...

J. : I made change of $1.00, in which I had to borrow from Wil. I took two quarters, five nickels, 2 dimes, and five pennies. I really think change can be simple, changing a dollar or change can be difficult, changing the way we as teachers teach. I have made two changes today!

Teresa : I put in a dollar and took four quarters, old quarters that is. The newspaper machines do not accept the newer quarters. I conducted an exchange, but nothing was changed, actually.

Randal : Why am I doing this, I wondered? Let me leave that thought alone, I don't want to strongly influence my actions. What change do I need? I do only have one single dollar bill and I want to keep that. I got it. I will get enough change to fill up my coin dispenser in the cubby of my car. I always need change there, so I will get two bucks worth. There I killed two birds with one stone. By the way, has anyway ever actually done that?

?: If I had $1.00, I would exchange 3 quarters and 2 dimes and 1 nickel.

Miss T. : Today I changed a $1.00 bill into 4 quaters.

Antoinette : I put in four ones and four quarters and took a five dollar bill. I actually didn't make change, I ended up with a larger bill.

Saroja: With the theme of the Summer Institute,I am in tune with so much, I think it to make a change in my student population through my teaching. i did put 5 dollar bill and took 4 one dollr bill and left the change for a dollar there, thinking that if it going to be used for a charity, even hough it is not much it would make a smal change for the cause it is used. Literally, it made a change in reducing the number of coins and increasing th number of paper money.

Kate : I wanted to be creative, but I also just wanted to be boring and put a dollar in and take four quarters out so I would have change for my laundry (the machines don't take anything less than quarters). Then I noticed that I got a South Carolina and a Virginia quarter and I thought maybe I could try to get 4 different Southern quarters...even though now I realize Virginia is pretty much in the middle, the same as Kansas. Anyway, I found a Mississippi quarter but then I couldn't find any more. Then I found a $2 peso and I figured Mexico is REALLY southern so I took that. I have no idea if it is worth more or less than 25 cents, but it fit my pattern.

CYNTHIA: My 'knee jerk' reaction was to just give as Ann had istructed.I THEN CHANGED MY MIND AND TOOK CHANGE BACK.

Did I gain or lose by performing this experiment?

Change Is Gonna Come...
and we can give it a shove (or can we?)
Gradually/Suddenly,
Naturally/Unnaturally
Across Thresholds,
To Tipping Points....
Until we reach Paradigm Shifts...?
Or....?

The story of the "mobile"

Our own bodies are like The Mississippi River--changing but always still .... coherent in some way....:
Whatever your age, your body is many years younger. In fact, even if you're middle aged, most of you may be just 10 years old or less...most of the body's tissues are under constant renewal....But...people behave their birth age, not the physical age of their cells: a few of the body's cell types endure from birth to death without renewal, and this special minority includes some or all of the cells of the cerebral cortex. (The New York Times Science Times 8/02/05).

The same "constancy built on change" holds

• In science as storytelling: from hypotheses to summaries of observations, from conclusions to implications
• In cosmology: from an earth-centered to a heliocentric view of the galaxy
• In chemistry: from alchemy (attempting to convert one metal to another) to chemistry (separating, mixing, purifying....).
• In psychology: from behavorism to "overlapping waves" (gradual change)
• In biology: from directed to random change
• In literature: from Ovid to ...Andrea Friedman?
• In geology: from a static earth to evidence of drift
• In ecology: from caterpillars to humans, from reflexive to reflective
• And in computing ...

Warren French: "The Internet is the biggest change in my lifetime."

Serendip's Evolving Web Principles:

• The Web provides, to anyone having access to it, a wealth of information, ideas, and perspectives orders of magnitude greater than was previously available to even the richest and most powerful human beings.

• The disorder of the Web is one of its greatest virtues. As a fundamentally decentralized system of information exchange, it makes available, to a much greater degree than any prior human institution, the widest possible array of information/ideas/perspectives in a diversity of forms which, for the first time, approximates the diversity of human users.

• The Web makes possible a revolution in "education" in the broadest sense, by making available to all human beings not only information/ ideas/perspectives, but also "experiences", of a kind which individuals can themselves learn from, rather than being told about.

• The interactivity of the Web is perhaps its most important characteristic. For the first time in human history, it is becoming possible for all humans to play an active role in world-wide cultural and intellectual interchange. This means not only that everybody's ideas/perspective can be made available, but also that people can develop their ideas and perspectives in extensive interaction with other people.

J.D. Dougherty: The Impact of Internet Technology

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