Here is a collection of great Curriculum Scenarios that have been passed on to us by our members.

They are great examples of rich. open ended learning scenarios that help provide students with the opportunities to demonstrate a wide range of outcomes. Feel free to use and modify them with appropriate recognition to the author.

Enjoy

1. Cross Curriculum
2. Programming Principles

Rather than teaching Programming Principles in the typical bottom up style eg Let's write a program to write "This is my first program" on the screen" how about this scenario.

The Lonely Planet tourism guide company has commissioned your small software development business to write some software for the PALM pilot personal organizer.
The software will be distributed with their travel guide books with a commission going to your company for every copy sold.

The software must be modular and extensible incorporating the following capabilities:

1. A currency conversion module
2. A language phrase translation module
3. A sight seer module
4. A travel planner module.

Students work in teams of three including Project Manager, Interface Designer and Code Cruncher. Job rotation ensures all have a go at each section.

Using Visual Basic and a simple graphic of a Palm hand held the students can create simple programs that let them demonstrate levels 1 to 6 of the Technology Process, Information and Systems outcomes by:

1. Investigating hand held devices and their software
2. Designing the interface layout to fit in such a small screen space.
3. Producing the forms and code to make the programs operate correctly
4. Testing and evaluating the programs with their target audience and marketing strategies in mind.
5. Identifying and describing the system components that let the Palm Pilot work and allow the software to be delivered over the net.
6. Describing how the information to create such software undergoes a variety of format changes eg Pseudocode, 3rd generation Code, Binary and a proprietary format for the Palm OS.

This is a very rich and open ended scenario that allows students at all skill levels to have some fun and demonstrate a variety of real-world relevant skills including an entrepreneurial angle ie selling software (shareware) over the net).

Resources:

1. Lonely Planet
2. Palm.com
2. Pocketsensei.com
3. ambicstore.com
4. Currency converters (Babel Fish)
5. Sample Currency converter form design

Mark Stephens