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Module 1 Lesson 3 - Conditionals with Trailblazer and Bumper Turtles

Posted November 17, 2019 by wellina

In this lesson students will participate in two activities. In the first they will
learn about conditionals, logic, and Boolean expressions as they guide an
agent through a puzzle. They also consider the best path / solution and the degree of universality of their solution. In the second activity, students will learn a few simple commands and then starting with a basic project, implement a Bumper Turtles program in which agents respond to their environment.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology video - image of birds flocking

Complex Adaptive Systems Modeling Video

Posted July 27, 2018 by turtle

This short video (3:13 minutes) introduces complex adaptive systems and agent-based modeling concepts to middle-school students. It shows beautiful footage of birds flocking as an example of a complex adaptive system.

Photo of participants playing 27 Blind Mice

Alternate activities to introduce Project GUTS

Posted July 27, 2018 by turtle

Sometimes, teachers have a students who have already participated in Project GUTS introductory activities, and want to use something different, or want another activity to expand a lesson. Below are links to some alternate activities, both hands-on and on-line, for you to explore.

Screen shot of rubric

Sample rubric for ecosystem module

Posted August 4, 2018 by sgibbs

This rubric was previously posted on the Code.org site and many teachers have found it to be helpful. You can save a copy and modify as fits your curriculum.

Screenshot of an activity sheet

What's Represented?

Posted June 12, 2019 by ilee

These exercises ask the learner to identify abstractions in the computer model as compared to a diagram or image of a natural phenomenon.

Skill building lawnmower spiral

Skill Building Deck

Posted June 12, 2019 by ilee

A slide deck of exercises to build CS and decoding skills

Flower Turtles

Module 1 Lesson 2 - Introduction to StarLogo Nova and Building Flower Turtles

Posted November 3, 2019 by wellina

In this lesson students will participate in two activities. The first activity is a guided introduction to the StarLogo Nova simulation environment. In the second activity, students will learn a few simple commands and then create their first computer program. Students will progress from single turtle explorations to instructing many turtles to follow their commands in parallel.

Screen capture of Code.org pair programming video

Pair Programming video

Posted July 27, 2018 by turtle

This short video (2:51 minutes) features two middle school girls describing and practicing pair programming. It is a great introduction to this method of learning programming and creating models.

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Unless otherwise licensed, all works accessible here are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Teachers with GUTS is partially funded by the National Science Foundation.