'15-'16 Practice PT-- Encode an Experince

I think that this lesson can be harder like people were saying. It is a difficult task and I think the students will really need some guiding. I also appreciate that people posted examples.

My biggest obstacle was looking at the student activity guide and saying ā€œAm I creating a database?ā€. Maybe the whole task will be clearer when there are examples to look at and say ā€œOh, thatā€™s what I am going for here ā€¦ā€

I went with a simple baseball game, 14 innings and 18 players.

Until we see some more examples and some additional feedback, I donā€™t know how well I am grasping the spirit of the task ā€¦

I agree with others that this assignment is kind of challenging to get started on. The examples that others have submitted have helped me realize what I need to do. I did mine on making a to do list which I donā€™t think had enough components to this assignment. I donā€™t know how to upload my tables, so Iā€™m sorry that I donā€™t have an example for you.

I had two tables, one for the list which contained the name of the list and items, and the second table was of the items which contained name, date, completion, priority and description.

Iā€™m glad that Iā€™m reading the other suggestions, because I was drawing a blank as to what to encode!

Glad others are having trouble with this. It sounds like a good idea, but I canā€™t grasp how to really make an encoding/protocol. I guess my biggest issues are the columns ā€œhow many/copiesā€ and ā€œ# of bitsā€. If I am abstracting, then, from the description, I am supposed to be starting at a large idea, and working to more details later. So, to me, a large idea is going to have billions of bits, since it is composed of smaller things later, as I break it down into more components. So Iā€™m not sure that I am thinking about this properly.

I am thinking of how to encode with animation in a program like blender, Maya, or 3D S max. I would like to encode a cube with one vertex at the origin and a length of one on the x, y, z coordinate plane. It will have 8 vertices, 8 planes, and 12 segments connecting each vertex. I would like to encode the color of the planes and texture for each plane. I would like to encode the side length.

Vertex 1 in the form of (x,y, z) , binary number, 1 bit, location of vertex 1
Vertex 2 in the form of (x,y, z) , binary number, 1 bit, location of vertex2
and so on until
Vertex 8 in the form of (x,y, z) , binary number, 1 bit, location of vertex 8
Plane 1-8 in the form of an algorithm, binary number, 1 bit, location of plane 1-8
Color of plane 1-8, in the form of bits representing colors

I know for this lesson I will probably have students quick write on all the methods of encoding before jumping into the details of the task. This way, they will synthesize information on encoding and ideas will be fresh in their minds before taking on the task.

Putting a table together makes what weā€™re doing seem simple enough on the surface, but obviously there is much more to this. I did one on how to encode an MP3 file, which included the ā€œcomponentsā€ of artist, title, length, and bit rate, the ā€œdescriptionsā€ of which are self explanatory (and can be customized according to preference). However, I feel like all Iā€™ve done is created a ā€œpropertiesā€ box, such as what you see when you look at the properties of an MP3 file. Iā€™m sure if I had some programming background, which I donā€™t, I would be able to better imagine the potential implications of this data, such as how it might be used/called out in the context of a specific app, or something along those lines. Lacking that schema, I feel a little frustrated that this is as far as I can go for now. I think it would be nice to be able to see (and show my students) a basic flowchart or something that demonstrates how this data can be used/made meaningful by an app, which would be a nice way to foreshadow some of what (Iā€™m guessing) is covered in Unit 3.

Thanks to the folks who put their examples up. They helped me build my encoding. I encoded a country by breaking the locations in the country into latitudes and longitudes. Each country can have a maximum of 255 different locations. The latitudes range from 0 to 90 degrees and hence need 7 bits. One bit is needed to indicate the position north or south of the equator. The longitudes range from 0 to 180 degrees and hence need 8 bits. An additional bit is needed to indicate east or west of the international date line. Hence a total of 17 bits would be needed to store the latitude and longitude values of different locations in a country.

I am glad to see that I wasnā€™t the only one who was confused with this lesson. Thanks for the examples posted - it does help a lot. My protocol was to categorize fly fishing flies by type and materials used, but adding get much further than that. Sorry

I agree with ā€˜ tschlotterbackā€™! I also chime in that in this forum, we did not get into as much depth as we will in the classroom or in a PD. This might be a good thing to end the 5 day PD with to get a good feel for what is required and how to explain this to the students.

However after reading through the forum, I can see the varied ways that others have approached the problem. That is what these are for - right?

I chose encoding the music of a brass quartet, because I have played in brass quartets, and I have also enjoyed editing recorded music. The items that I chose to encode for each of four instruments were: Time, a number representing the place in the song, where 0 is the beginning and each number represents a unit of time such as 1/10 of a second; Frequency, a number from 20 to 20,000 representing Hz; Decibels, a number representing the loudness of the sound; and Tone, a number that would represent different tones produced by different instruments. Iā€™m well aware that the tone would be difficult to quantify, and may have to represent something like the sound of an instrument as made by a synthesizer. I did have some trouble getting started, and would have to take way more than an hour to create the tables as shown in the lesson. As I scrolled down these replies, I have seen some good examples that probably would have helped me if I had thought to look in the forum first. But, I suppose that itā€™s a good lesson in terms of going into the forums to get good ideas from other teachers!

I imagine my students will behave similarly to how we have mostly behaved and create something that fits into to example template. Iā€™ll be trying to find a way to reduce that tendency. Donā€™t have much hope though. This is a difficult task for adults, and will be much more so for 10th graders.

I took the one-hour limit seriously, so I didnā€™t finish, but the idea did become clearer as I worked on the problem. I was trying to encode the components of a story, with a further breakdown of the component ā€˜charactersā€™. It turned out to be a lot of text.

I will choose to do a project on School!
School will be broken down into Math, Social studies, English, PE, and Science.
Furthermore each of these can be broken down into four separate components. (example Math can be broken up into Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2, and Precalculus)
Now each of these categories will be broken up into two things
1: What a student thinks there grade should be!
2. What a studentā€™s grade actually is!

Ecoding for School subjects are Ascii code 5 componentsā€¦and 7 bits (Science, math etc.)
Encoding for each ā€œspecific subjectā€ are numbersā€¦4 componentsā€¦15 bits (Precalc, algebra 1 etc.)
Encoding for Studentā€™s desired grade are Ascii code with 5 componentsā€¦1 bit (A or B or Cā€¦etc.)
Encoding for Studentā€™s actual grade are Ascii code with 5 componentsā€¦1 bit (A or B or Cā€¦etc.)

This will definitely be a difficult lesson for the kidsā€¦need to find a good way to present this!

I used VB.net as I was short on time and already familiar with it. My goal will be to give student options and choices on what they will be able to use.

I chose to encode the details of a song ( Beautiful Eulogy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gz09EF4obYQ )

Below is the data that will be sent:
Send the bitrate of the song.
Send the length of the song.
Send the tempo of the song.
Send the instruments used in song.
Send the metadata: artist, album title, song title, website, track number, etc.

I havenā€™t yet determined a specific protocol for sending the data.

I still donā€™t know if I fully grasp the full understanding of this lesson. I guess when I go over the lessons in detail prior to this then I will fully understand some of the concepts. I did my protocol on clothing and then I broke that table down into sub catergories by types of clothig. I think my protocol was to broad a subject area by types maybe if I choose by sizes and then broke that down. I am still trying to grasp the method for the second table. The examples above did help but I think that coming up with a protocol that you understand to encode will be a bit difficult for students and then breaking it down will definitely be challenging. I wish this was explained a little more in the PD.