Assignments With RelevanceAssignments With RelevanceGary Hull – Spotswood High Schoolghull@spotswood.k12.nj.us

Background

Where I teach• Spotswood High School

• Approximately 700 students• Many students involved in extracurricular activities

What I teach• Computer Applications and Programming I and II• Honors Programming• Honors Networking• Advanced Placement Computer Science

Mr. Spotswood Pageant

Overview• Pageant for Senior guys• 12 compete in four different events

Problem encountered• Scoring was paper-based and was tabulated manually

• 576 scores had to be tabulated• Long wait between competition end and winner

announcement

Mr. Spotswood Programming Competition AssignmentGoals

• To make the score calculation more efficient and accurate through the use of a scoring application

• Introduce students to real-world application development skills

Overview• Teams of 3 Honors Programming students compete against one

another• Use Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 to create a scoring application

Deliverables• Application Proposal• Mr. Spotswood Application• Application Presentation

Incentive• Winning team members receive gift certificate to local electronics

store

Mr. Spotswood Programming Competition Assignment – Student IntroductionBefore work is started

• As a class, we go through the Mr. Spotswood Application Requirements/Deadline document

This document gives students• An overview of the Mr. Spotswood pageant• The basic requirements of the application

• Students are expected to gather all requirements through interviews with key stakeholders

• A description/timeframe for all deliverables required• An idea of how their grade is calculated• A description of the incentive

Deliverable #1 – Application Proposal

Description• The proposal details

• The application requirements• How the system will meet those requirements

• Encourages students to prototype their application quickly using VB

• Allows me to ensure that students are off to a good start

Timeline• Due ~1.5 weeks after the assignment is discussed

Format• Word document incorporating Visual Basic screenshots

Deliverable #2 – Mr. Spotswood Application

Description• Students spend the bulk of their time on this deliverable• What does it do?

• The application is used by a judge to enter in all contestant scores• The application then tallies and sorts the scores in order to create

the winner lists• Ultimate goal is to reduce score compilation time to 0

• New features of the programming language (VB) are introduced on a daily basis

• Introduced within the context of the assignment• Helps the material become more relevant to the students

Timeline• Due 4-5 weeks after the assignment is initially discussed

Format• VB Project/standalone executable

Deliverable #3 – Application Presentation

Description• Students present and try to “sell” their application to a

team of judges• Judges use a pre-designed scoring rubric to “grade” the

applications

Timeline• Due at the end of the assignment

Format• Oral presentation using PowerPoint

Outcome

High degree of student involvement• Study halls, lunches, after hours spent programming

Skills Built• Programming/Application development

• Greatly enhanced skill set

• Teamwork• Sales/persuasiveness

Future Enhancements

Partner with local electronics store (Best Buy)Database interactionDistributed processing

• Palm Pilots for judges• Web front-end