U1L11 - Packets Unplugged

We had some internet outages recently, forcing me to rethink some lessons, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the whole lesson can be done unplugged, if you have to, using a large number of notecards. The notecards are the packets, of course, and you simply have to make the rule that each card can only hold 8 characters. Then, put students in groups of 3, with the third person representing “The Internet”. These students have a brief conference with you before the activity to lay down some ground rules:

  • Packets being sent between the other two group members must be passed by “The Internet”
  • “The Internet” often delivers packets in a different order than they were sent
  • Sometimes “The Internet” just throws a packet or two away.

And other than that, you run the same activity as in the lesson plan using the Simulator. It was a great fix in a time of technical difficulties!

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