Software Tools
Programmable modeling environments for building and exploring multi-level systems.
NetLogo
NetLogo is a multi-agent programmable modeling environment. It is used by tens of thousands of students, teachers and researchers worldwide. It also powers HubNet participatory simulations. It is authored by Uri Wilensky and developed at the CCL. You can download it free of charge.
What can you do with NetLogo? Read more here. Click here to watch videos, or here to view example models.
HubNet
HubNet is a technology that lets you use NetLogo to run participatory simulations in the classroom. In a participatory simulation, a whole class takes part in enacting the behavior of a system as each student controls a part of the system by using an individual device, such as a networked computer or Texas Instruments graphing calculator. For example, in the Gridlock simulation, each student controls a traffic light in a simulated city. The class as a whole tries to make traffic flow efficiently through the city. As the simulation runs, data is collected which can afterwards be analyzed on a computer or calculator.
Frog Pond Evolution
Explore evolution concepts with this simulation of natural selection. Write simple blocks-based computer programs to control brightly colored frogs in a lily pond habitat.
DeltaTick
DeltaTick is a simple, visual block-based programming environment that is designed to support students' construction of agent-based models by emphasizing the structural, levels-based, and behavioral aspects of those systems, and the ways they contribute to quantitative change.
Behavior Search
BehaviorSearch is a software tool to help with automating the exploration of agent-based models (ABMs), by using genetic algorithms and other heuristic techniques to search the parameter-space.
NetTango Web
NetTango Web consists of the NetTango Builder, an interface for defining blocks and linking them to a NetLogo Web model using NetLogo code and procedures. There is also a corresponding NetTango player page that displays a constructed NetTango Web model in a ready-to-use interface where modelers can experiment with the defined blocks to create programs and see how the model behavior is changed. NetTango Web is developed as a collaboration between the Center for Connected Learning and the TIDAL lab, both at Northwestern University. The original version of NetTango was also created as a collaboration between the CCL and TIDAL Lab, it enabled bespoke blocks-based progamming such as the frog pond model, also using NetLogo as the backing compiler and runtime engine. That inspired the design of the NetTango Web builder to make it easier to create those domain-driven blocks-based programming experiences. Read more here
Previous Tools
- StarLogoT (Mac Only)
- StarLogoT Connected Models
