Monday, August 4, 2014

Reviewing the Results of the Regional Competition


Today's Agenda:
  1. 15 minutes: Welcome & Overview
    • Welcome. Review a few notes:
      • Mr. T is at a funeral, but will be back tomorrow. Ms. A (Aliah) will cover today.
      • We will still meet regularly this week: Mon/Tues/Wed/Fri (not Thurs) from 1:30-5:00 PM at the Buchanan YMCA.
      • Camp ends this Friday, but we have our final field trip to NASA Ames on Friday, August 15th. We will learn more details about the trip this week.
    • Teambuilding Game: Human Knot (or Ms. A's choice)
    • Review today's agenda and answer questions.
  2. 15 minutes: Review Results of Regional Competition
    • Review other teams' simulations.
      • What can we learn from their performances?
      • Are there questions we need to investigate?
    • If the results are not available, we will use Scratch to program a moving cartoon. (Otherwise, we will save this for Tuesday.)
  3. 60 minutes: Revise the Winning Strategy (or Your Own): Work to make changes that will improve the score even more!
    • You may want to refer back to these resources: 
      • the Introduction to Game Mode tutorial, in which you will learn to use the game mode (as opposed to the free mode that you have been using up to this point). 
      • the game manual with very detailed information about the competition and rules of the game 
      • the game overview slideshow, with directions for how to complete most advanced functions of the game (it's a review of the skills challenges) 
      • the results of the regional competitions 
    • If you are finished early, explore the activities at the bottom of this site.
    • 15 minutes: Break
    • 45 minutes: How Bright Will Your Future Be?
    • 10 minutesBreak
    • 25 minutes: Career Posters & Presentations
      • Create a poster to describe one of the careers that interests you. Include:
        • Describe the career. What do these people do? 
        • What interests you in this career?
        • What skills do you have that relate to this career?
        • What education/training do you need to do this career?
        • What middle or high school classes could you take to prepare you for this career?
        • Include a drawing related to the career.
      • Present your poster to the group in about 1-2 minutes.
    • 25 minutes: NOVA's Meteor Strike (Part 3 of 3): start around 28:00

    • 5 minutes: Wrap-Up, & Close-Out

    Here's a preview to our schedule:
    • This Week (Week #5):
      • review results of actual regional competition
      • work time to revise code of winning team
      • learn more about space exploration and applications of STEM
      • improving bottle rocket design
    • Friday, August 15th:
      • field trip to NASA Ames for the final competition


    Finished Early? Here are some activities and resources to explore: