Modeling

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What’s The Big Idea? CEP 818 Dimensional Thinking & Modeling Definition and examples Dimensional thinking reflects the ability to reinterpret objects in formats other than the ones in which they are currently represented. A common format conversion would be from two-dimensional representations to three-dimensional representations and vice versa, although converting to and from other multidimensional representations is also highly possible. Someone trying to figure out what car could have left a given set of tracks on the mud would be using dimensional thinking. They would be visualizing a 3-D object (the car) from a 2-D object (the tracks on the mud).

This may be considered a 3-D representation of tire tracks, but they are also a 2-D representation of a car.

Someone trying to reconstruct the animal whose shadow is cast on a plane surface would be using dimensional thinking as well.

You may guess this is not a real rabbit because of the rugged edges…

… but wouldn’t you truly believe that was the shadow of a real hand?!

Created by: Jean-Claude Aura

Date: November 2010

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What’s The Big Idea? CEP 818 Modeling involves scaling up or down an object to make obvious the unobvious. An architect needs to scale down a house or building to a size small enough to see the entire structure of the house or building in ‘one spot’. Otherwise, they won’t be able to tell if the proportions of the different rooms are right, or if the room allocation is appropriate.

This size of the floating house helps see the appropriateness of the design. Try to zoom in (enlarge the house to its life-like size) and see how difficult it is to relate the different rooms.

Click on the picture of the floating house above to see the different effects of zooming in (scaling up) and zooming out (scaling down). Although modeling is a crucial initial stage in almost any profession, it cannot replace the lifesized model. After all, one has to experience the real house to find out how appropriate it is. A final product that doesn’t live up to its model’s expectations underlies the bitter truth of a poorly-designed model, which can in turn be used as a lesson for further enhancements.

Impact on my own personal life When I was little, I used to buy reconstructible tanks and planes. I enjoyed every bit of assembling the parts, and I definitely gained an important insight into the relative size of objects around me. As I grew older, I found this a bit time consuming and started modeling in my mind. Now I always visualize things in their real size and model them so that they would look in my mind exactly the same way they would if modeled physically. When I was decorating one wall in my living room, I had to visualize all the masks on the wall. But that wasn’t enough as I had to see to whole wall ‘in front of me’. For that, I modeled the entire wall in my mind while still visualizing the masks on it. This ability granted me the household right to decorate the whole apartment. 

Created by: Jean-Claude Aura

Date: November 2010

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What’s The Big Idea? CEP 818

It may seem simple at first glance, but I had to model the wall in my mind before putting up the masks, or else I would have had hundreds of holes in the wall before figuring out how to best position them. The clock was also part of the model, and that’s why I decided to give the masks a half-circular shape.

Impact on my ability to teach creatively I find modeling very useful when teaching writing. For example, I show students a fullydeveloped essay before I ask them to write one. It’s pretty much like an architect making a model of a house before it is built. An overall look at the final product, through a model, is important if the final product is to replicate the model. The model essay consists of the basic parts which students will need to change and expand to come up with their own essay. Most people think of modeling as a physical process. Another form of modeling I constantly adopt is spatial. Take the curriculum for instance. Before I start the year, I take the entire curriculum that stretches throughout the year and put it on a single sheet of paper. The year becomes a line, the semesters become segments, the months become dashes, and the weeks and days become dots on the time line. This helps me to effectively organize my lessons to include projects, field trips, and other intra-curricular activities. Without this miniature timeline, it would be impossible to visualize when it would be appropriate to have activities that supplement the curriculum.

Timeline Model

Created by: Jean-Claude Aura

Date: November 2010

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