Teaching Kit

Appmaker for Storytellers Kit

Participants will brainstorm to identify problems and design opportunities based on real world circumstances while they learn about the basics of mobile devices and working openly.

Made by Laura.

Description

Decision trees are useful conceptual tools for applying logic to decision making and identifying likely outcomes. Their construction helps a learner use operational and systematic thinking to arrive at a particular decision. With this kit, you'll guide learners to make a Choose Your Own Adventure story, a fun kind of decision tree, in the form of a mobile app.

Appmaker is an online tool that lets you add "Bricks" to easily build fun and useful mobile apps. A brick is a piece of code that allows a user to cause an interaction. You can add bricks to your app by clicking on them. To learn more about each brick, hover over the ? icon to the right of each brick.

Appmaker is the newest tool in the Webmaker collection, and we're eager for feedback!

Big Ideas

  • decision trees are useful to apply logic to problems, and can be used to make interactive stories.
  • conditionals lead a user to make decisions based on the conditions of a story arc
  • IF/THEN statements are statements that return a value
  • working together will help develop ideas
  • paper prototyping a Choose Your Own Adventure app will help you understand decision trees
  • we can create an interactive stories using Appmaker

Agenda

  1. [15 mins] Introductions
  2. [1 hour] Making a Decision Tree
  3. [30 mins] Work through the Pages Demo
  4. [15 mins] Take a look at the Choose Your Own Adventure story
  5. [1.5 hours] Remix to make your decision tree into an app
  6. [15 mins] Closing Circle and Reflections

Learning objectives

  • Understand what decision trees are
  • Formulate conditional statements
  • Explore a variety of methodologies for creative thinking
  • Develop confidence around idea sharing and reflection
  • Learn to collaborate around ideas and prototypes
  • Use Appmaker to build interactive story apps

The concrete Web Literacy skills that will be developed are in the domains of Building and Connecting

Essential Questions

  • How do conditional statements work? Can you give an example?
  • What is an IF/THEN statement? How might this translate to a programming language?
  • Did your paper decision tree translate into a mobile application?

Assessment and review

You can get an idea of whether learners have gained from this session by noticing if a learner:

  • Demonstrates knowledge gained through hands-on activities, games or discussion.
  • Works collaboratively and openly with others to complete activities or tasks.
  • Uses creative methods to build ideas and plans in novel and unexpected ways.