Directions/ Instructions Unit
Strategy Games
In the begining of this unit, we explored how a computer processes information. In connection to this, we were assigned to play games that require a solid stategy to win with another classmate. My partner and I played battleship and checkers. My favorite game of the two was battleship because it required a bit more strategic thinking than checkers. My strategy for battleship was to only guess every other coordinate. This allowed me to have a higher chance of guessing a correct coordinate since I only had half the coordinates to choose from. For checkers my strategy was to keep my peices in the last row there as long as possible so that my opponent would not be able to promote any of their peices to king until near the end of the game. You can play my favorite game, battleship, against a computer below!
Binary
After exploring how a computer processes information, we learned a type of code called binary. We learned that binary code is made up of only "1"'s and "0"'s. We got cards to help us understand how to translate binary. The first card had 1 dot, the second card had 2 dots, the 3rd card had 4 dots, the fourth card had 8 dots and so on. When the card was flipped over, the binary and decimal number was a 0 but when it was flipped upside the binary number was 1 and the decimal number was the number of dots on the card. For example 101 is 5 since the 3rd card has 4 dots, the middle card has 0 dots, and the first card has 1 dot (4+1=5). Below are some activities I completed pretaining to binary code.
How To Tie Your Shoe
Later in the unit, we got a basic understanding of how a computer processes directions.We learned that when processing data, a computer cannot not take any short-cuts or else it may not do what the user wants it to do. Instead, a computer takes all the steps to achieve what the user desires. In relation to our learning, a group of 3 other students and I were assigned to write out the exact instructions needed to complete a simple, every-day task. For our task, my group and I chose "How to Tie Your Shoe". We wrote out our directions as percisely as possible to that a person who does not know how to tie their shoe could follow the instructions and end up with tied shoe laces. Our directions slideshow is posted below.
How To Tie Your Shoe-2
The next part of the unit was to edit our slide show so that we had pictures to help the reader understand how to tie his or her shoe. We went ourside the classroom and divided up the steps between the 4 of us so that we would each have an equal amount of pictures to take. After taking the pictures, we simply inserted the pictures onto the corresponding slides. Since we were just adding pictures to our slide show, we did not learn anything knew. But, we did find this project extremeley fun!
How To Tie Your Shoe-3
The final part of the "How to Tie Your Shoe" project was to add videos to our slideshow. To do this, we went outside the classroom and filmed videos of us preforming each step using the Webcamera website. When filming the videos, we alternated between the person tying their shoe and the video narrator. Then we uploaded our videos to youtube so that we could insert them in our google slides presentation. Over the course of the project, we learn that explaining how to preform a simple task is harder that it seems.
Directions from Period 0 to Period 1
Our final project in this unit was to create a slideshow with directions on how to get to our first period classroom from our zero period classroom, which is ECS. I started off by taking pictures with my chromebook of each step of my journey. Later, I filmed a video of me starting from my zero period classroom and walking to my first period classroom using the Webcamera website. Then I used a free video editing website called WeVideo to cut the video into the different steps and add background music and narration to each step. Finally, uploaded each video to youtube so I could insert them into my slideshow. To finish off my project, I simply wrote out each step on a slide, added a picture and inserted the final edited video onto the slide. The final product is shown below.