Traffic Manager
A Game to Motivate Computer Science Teachers
A Game to Motivate Computer Science Teachers
Traffic Manager is a game right at the intersection of life and algorithms.
Players of two will compete on who will make the best traffic light algorithm and minimize traffic congestion. Learn Algorithms in practice and enjoy the competition with your friends!
The computer classes in K-12 often fail to convey a larger realization of how computational thinking can be used to create experiences and to solve problems in the real world. Where we know that computing potential range from automating simple repetitive tasks to running large scale systems and services. Inspiration about the potential of computing to create experiences and to solve problems in the world is a fundamental need in early computer education.
“Teachers know how to put the computing knowledge together to solve problems, but they don’t know what problems they can solve.”
The following chart represents verify that most schools don't teach computer programming, a very basic skill in computing.
Resource: Code.org. Although this statistic is tailored for the US, Qatar has a smaller set of schools who teach programming.
Secondary school computer teachers in Qatar with ICT (Information and Computer Technology) background who will be trained to teach computational thinking. Teachers in Qatar inevitably face traffic congestion peak time caused by simultaneous trips in and out of schools around the country. Where it is worth mentioning that traffic jam is so serious that it recently caused significant rise in the overall economic cost, estimated by 0.6 billion Qatari Riyals.
Players randomly gets a set of cars on two sides of the intersection and take turns determining the lights algorithm. But be careful, there is a limited number of cars that can move at each point of time. While there Players keep getting scores on each turn, the game average out the final score to determine the winner!