How do you incorporate CSD in a Science class? Tips, tricks, and suggestions welcome!

At our regional Q2 workshop, some of our science teachers brought up the topic of how can they go about incorporating CSD into their Science classes. In this case, the CSD curriculum is allowed as supplementary material to the approved science curriculum.

Are you a science teacher adding in pieces of CSD that can share your experience?
Have you used the Game or App lab to create virtual science simulations that your students can then adjust variables on to conduct a virtual lab?

Please share your tips, tricks, suggestions, and experiences here.

I think that whatever the case may be, that teaching the students some part of the course in a science class would take some time to implement. That is, time away from the science content. Some quick thoughts would be:

Unit 2
They could make web pages about what they are studying and have some kind of research component.
They could do lab write ups as web pages.
They could have a website that would act like a digital journal to keep track of experiments and their results.

Unit 3 - I think that the game lab would be more difficult to implement for the reason stated above.
Physics: Some kind of simulation using basic linear motion equations. The basic projectile motion comes to mind.
They could make animations that were mini lessons on a topic. Like a tutorial video.

This is a really interesting idea and it would be amazing to see some people come up with a more detailed plan to implement in the classroom. Maybe some starter projects to get students going. Hopefully some other will chime in and we can crowdsource this.

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hi @natalier

Another thing to consider could be using the Project GUTS curriculum instead of CSD in a science class. It was meant to meet science standards.

Best,

Dani

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Let me second Project GUTS as probably the right move if your primary focus is teaching science in with programming. Students use programming in that course to develop models and simulations of phenoma such as disease spread, chemical reactions, and predator-prey relationships. You could develop these kinds of models in Game Lab, but because we’ve haven’t designed the curriculum around that require you to teach students some topics that aren’t covered at all in unit 3 (such as sprite groups). You could also consider asking students to develop simpler models and simulations that don’t rely on large groups of sprites interacting.

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