Embedded Files
Activity Description
Activity Description
50 min.
50 min.
Girls will watch the SciGirls episode The Awesome App Race and talk about computational thinking practices and how they might pertain to creating applications. They will also discuss the design process involved in creating an app.
Objectives
Objectives
By completing this activity girls will
- demonstrate their understanding of computational thinking practices by applying them to an everyday problem.
How to Implement
How to Implement
- Introduce the episode by telling the girls that they will be watching a team of girls create a mobile app using a tool call ARIS. Ask girls to carefully observe the process that the SciGirls go through to create their app.
- Watch: SciGirls Episode: The Awesome App Race (28:26).
- Discuss the steps that the SciGirls went through. Have the girls list them in their design journals, or list them as a group on a whiteboard. Connect this process to computational thinking (CT).
- Introduce computational thinking, a set of concepts, practices, and perspectives used to solve problems. Computer scientists use computational thinking practices to create solutions with computers.
- Explain what the four practices are (experimenting and iterating, testing and debugging, reusing and remixing, abstracting and modularizing) and ask the girls if they can think of ways the SciGirls in the episode use computational thinking practices to solve the problem.
- Tell the girls that they will learn about CT concepts and use CT practices throughout SciGirls Code to solve a variety of problems.
- In addition to CT practices, software engineers use a design process. Ask the girls to explain the overall process the SciGirls used in the episode to solve the problem and build their app. Explain that they will use different design processes in each of the three strands of the SciGirls Code program. You can explain that these design processes are similar, but different fields sometimes have different approaches.
- Continue discussing mobile app development in a way that is relevant for the girls by asking them what some of their favorite mobile apps are and what apps they use on a regular basis. Can they describe any design flaws that frustrate them? How might they improve them?
- Have the girls respond to the following prompt in their design journals: What is an everyday problem you’ve encountered that might be easier if you had an app to help you? Make a list of app ideas that could help you with this problem (sketch one out if you’d like).
Resources & Materials
Resources & Materials
Notes to Educators
Notes to Educators
Standards Alignment
Standards Alignment
Interim CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards: 1B-A-2-1, 1B-A-5-3, 2-A-6-10, 2-I-7-19
Next Generation Science Standards: 3-5-ETS1-1
Common Core Standards for English Language Arts: W.5.2d, W.5.6, SL.5.1, L.5.6, SL.6.1, SL.6.6, RST.6.3, RST.6.4
Attribution
Attribution
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