Design Challenge: Algorithms

This week we were taught how to use Microsoft Word to complete the Abstraction exercise. To be completely honest, I found this process a bit challenging and time consuming. I think it would be best for the older years and you would have to complete a whole lesson in walking them through the process so they have a clear understanding of the procedure to follow.

I completed the task about the tuck shop, however I don't think this is the best example to try and get students to complete because I even found it tricky wording the sentence myself.

 

After looking at the curriculum for my year level, I can see how this activity covers nearly all of the content descriptions outlined. The curriculum links that could be connected to this activity are as follows:

Links to Curriculum:

Aims and Rationale:

The subject helps students to become innovative creators of digital solutions, effective users of digital systems and critical consumers of information conveyed by digital systems.

• design, create, manage and evaluate sustainable and innovative digital solutions to meet and redefine current and future needs
• use computational thinking and the key concepts of abstraction; data collection, representation and interpretation; specification, algorithms and implementation to create digital solutions

Band Descriptions:

Digital Technologies Knowledge and Understanding

Explore and use a range of digital systems with peripheral devices for different purposes, and transmit different types of data (ACTDIK007)

Recognise different types of data and explore how the same data can be represented in different ways (ACTDIK008)

Digital Technologies Processes and Production Skills

Collect, access and present different types of data using simple software to create information and solve problems

Define simple problems, and describe and follow a sequence of steps and decisions (algorithms) needed to solve them

Implement simple digital solutions as visual programs with algorithms involving branching (decisions) and user input 

Work with others to plan the creation and communication of ideas and information safely, applying agreed ethical and social protocols

I can see that if the students are working in groups, this activity will produce unique templates for each group but could possibly still come up with similar data and conclusions. At the end of the completed session, you could bring all the data together and create a tally of the similarities and differences of the data collected.