OVERVIEW

Activity Overview:

• Students will assume the role of tour guide and need to come up with a tour that gets a tourist from their hotel to all the city shifts and back to their hotel at the end of the day.

The activity is designed to be an example of creating an algorithm that is a simple sequence of instructions to do in order. It shows that if there is a written solution to a problem in the form of an algorithm, then future tours can be done just by following the steps. Writing down the algorithm allows students to then follow them step-by-step to ensure functionality.

Meta description

• Subject Area: Computer Science, Mathematics, Technology
• Grade Level : 6-8
• Computer Science Domains:
  • Algorithms and Programming
• Computer Science Principles:
  • Fostering an Inclusive Computing Culture
  • Recognizing and Defining Computational Problems
  • Developing and Using Abstractions
  • Communicating About Computing
• Considerations:
  • Slow the lesson down and spend more time being sure the students understand each step. In addition, give students more processing time and ask them more questions.

Lesson Plan

Overview

• Students will assume the role of tour guide and need to come up with a tour that gets a tourist from their hotel to all the city shifts and back to their hotel at the end of the day.

The activity is designed to be an example of creating an algorithm that is a simple sequence of instructions to do in order. It shows that if there is a written solution to a problem in the form of an algorithm, then future tours can be done just by following the steps. Writing down the algorithm allows students to then follow them step-by-step to ensure functionality.

ASSESSMENT PRE/POST-TEST

1. What is an algorithm?
2. Describe computational thinking?

OBJECTIVES

• Students will work through the Tour Guide Puzzle as created by Queen Mary, University of London • Students will use abstract thinking and problem solving to explain their rationale • Students will develop an algorithm

CATCH/HOOK

• Talking about finite state machines, how they work, and asking students where these can be found in the real world

ACTIVITY INSTRUCTIONS

• Every student gets a copy of the city subway map, a game piece, and route recording sheet to record their answers. • “You are a hotel tour guide. Tourists staying in your hotel expect to be taken on a tour visiting all the city’s attractions. You have been given a special subway map that shows all the locations of the attractions and how they are linked within the subway lines.” • Students will work out a route that starts from the hotel and visits every tourist site exactly once. They can only go one direction at a time (finite state) and will use the game piece, placing it in one location and then another following the lines, searching for a route that works. • Once students have worked out a route, they will record it as a series of instructions (steps) on the route recording sheet. (These instructions are an algorithm.) • Students will then check that they definitely have a correct solution. To do this they will do a dry run or trace of their algorithm by doing the following:  Start at the hotel  Visit every location  Do not pass through a location already visited  End at the hotel

Supplements

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REVIEW

• The route students create is a sequence of instructions that can be followed to visit every tourist attraction exactly once and get back to the starting point. It is a simple algorithm and there is more than one solution.

Once the algorithm is recorded students will evaluate it (check that it works).

This problem is made more manageable because the data are represented as a special kind of diagram called a graph. For computer scientists, a graph is a series of dots (called nodes) and lines that join them (called edges).

The edges show which nodes are linked in some way that is of interest. In this case, we are interested in the tourist attraction (the nodes) and the underground connections (the edges).

STANDARDS