Students will spend time in class presenting their "Plan A Trip" Projects to the group. Students will be asked to show the Problem Solving Steps, and how they were used to create a plan for a class trip.
Plan a Trip Project
Students will need to work online for this problem to use Google Maps - Website or some other tool that will allow them to plan a road trip.
Demonstrate: Move the class on to the Plan a Trip problem. Each member of the group will individually be developing a plan for a trip that follows criteria they'll develop as a team. Before sending groups off you'll want to demonstrate how the tool they're using will work. A good set of steps to show them might be.
- Find your school on the map.
- Search for something familiar to students close to the school.
- Generate directions from the school to the other location, choosing the method of travel (walking/bus/car/etc.)
- Highlight where the tool shows the total time of the trip
Integrating the Problem Solving Process: This problem is intentionally very open-ended and in fact has students develop the criteria they'll use to measure success. This problem does the best job of highlighting all 4 steps of the process and walks students more intentionally through the Define, Prepare, Try, and Reflect stages.
CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards
AP - Algorithms & Programming
- 1B-AP-08 - Compare and refine multiple algorithms for the same task and determine which is the most appropriate.
- 1B-AP-11 - Decompose (break down) problems into smaller, manageable subproblems to facilitate the program development process.
- 1B-AP-13 - Take on varying roles, with teacher guidance, when collaborating with peers during the design, implementation and review stages of program development.
