Unit 5 - Data and Society forum?

Is there a forum for Unit 5 - Data and Society? I can’t find it.
I am specifically looking for a lesson that teaches students how to create an app similar to the sample app in Lesson 16: Project - Make a Recommendation. Students never really learned how to create this recommendation coding-wise.
Any thoughts or help would be appreciated!

1 Like

Hi @mriley!

The forum covers all units of CSD- if you’re not finding what you’re looking for, you may want to try doing a search using the search button in the top right corner of the forum, whereby you can also filter your search to get what you’re looking for. Here’s a link as an example for the screenshot below.

Related to your question, definitely take a look at the Lesson Plan for the project for Unit 5 (Lesson 15) as I think it will give you exactly what you’re looking for. The second teaching tip (orange part on the right) discusses the code and If you look toward the bottom where it says “Programming Extension”, it gives you instructions for helping students to create an actual recommendation app if you have students that are interesting in extending their learning from this project. Obviously, creating something from scratch would take much longer, but they could also remix the example app (which is suggested in the extension directions) and make it their own, which would still get them working with the code and applying what they’ve already learned in Unit 4.

Let me know if that helps!
Wendy

:wave: I’ll also add - the AI/ML unit (Unit 7) does introduce coding so students can create a recommendation app. The context is slightly different though - Unit 5 has students look at data and notice patterns themselves to brainstorm an app; Unit 7 asks “how could a computer do something similar?” and introduces machine learning as the tool to analyze data and find patterns, then they learn to import their machine learning models into App Lab to create their apps.

It’s a whole other unit, and it introduces some of our new Machine Learning programming commands, which are definitely big things to consider. But that’s also an option for having students actually code a recommendation app.

Cheers,
Dan - Code.org Curriculum Writer

1 Like

Wendy, Thank you! I am having one of those weeks and couldn’t find what you were referring to. If you have a moment could you link to it?
I have the sample app and remixed it, but the students are asking how it was coded in a clearer way than I explained.

Thanks Dan,
I actually looked at level 7 before posting here. That looks awesome and students really did enjoy the intro to AI in unit 5. Students are asking for more explanation for how the sample apps are coded so they could apply that logic to other app ideas.
We spent a lot of time learning about the data, and we learned how we could create the algorithm for a computer to figure out the data, but there is no level to show students how to take what they wrote out and make a computer do it. That is the piece that students are asking for. How can they take what they wrote out on the Lesson 13: Automating Data Decisions activity guide, and translate it code-wise in code studio

@mriley,

I think Wendy may be referring to the 2020 lesson plan which can be found here: Project - Make a Recommendation. It does have a few instructions in the programming extension tip she refers to that could help in creating the app, but since the focus of unit 5 is on data (and not on programming), I don’t believe there are specific instructions on creating the app other than remixing.

I like @Dan 's suggestion of using unit 7 if you have time.

They will also get more experience creating apps in unit 6 if you move to that unit.

If you choose to go out on your own and give them more time to create apps in App Lab, I think this resource is invaluable: App Lab | Code.org

There are some demo videos including one where a young woman shows how she created her own app, step by step in app lab.

There are other tutorials and lessons to help the students get more experience so they can understand apps and get ideas for making their own.

Hope some of this helps.

Mike

1 Like

After doing the Data and Society unit with my students we then used the remixed version of the Make a Recommendation app from the 2020 lessons and students were able to make their own version of the Recommendation App from their data research. We did a Intro to App Lab lesson before we started, and then retrofitted the recommendation app for their needs. Here is an example of one project.

1 Like