Post-Exam Projects

Starting next week, I only have five 80-minute days left with the seniors in my AP classes (8 with non-seniors). I can’t do anything this week, because most of my students are taking other AP exams. We don’t really have enough time to do the Post-AP Code.org unit. Any ideas for a clever, fun project? They are all burnt out on building apps (we participated in a state-wide app challenge in addition to the PTs). I tried CodeSpells, which was advertised in CSTA’s publications, but ran into too many bugs to make it usable for my purposes.

Movies: Snowden, Imitation Game
We are also going to do a music project with Pencil Code. https://gym.pencilcode.net/jam/#/jam/random.html

I also plan to do a computer dissection where they can take apart a old desktop, but you need a bunch of old desktops that are going to be thrown away.

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Check this thread for some ideas:

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My class watched “Code: Debugging the Gender Gap” which I recommend, but I work at an all-girls school, so it was very appropriate. Some bad language in the middle, just beware of how sensitive your school/students are.

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I am doing a short unit on Virtual Reality. Our school has an Oculus Rift, but you can use Google Cardboard to introduce the concept. From there, I did a series of lessons on A-Frame (aframe.io) so that the kids could create some of their own worlds. I used some custom lessons I created on codehs.com as the platform for the lessons.

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My students watched Hidden Figures. It talks about Fortran and the what it took to program during the cold war and space race. Plus, it is very inspirational for girls. It also brings in the ethics issue of computers replacing human beings.

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