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ArchiTech simulates computer-aided design tools used by
real-life architects. Using ArchiTech, students create
and analyzing floor plans
of a one- to three-story buildings.
The software maintains information about the scale of the drawing,
which students must apply in order to make decisions about the
sizes of the rooms they are building and the furniture objects
they are creating on the screen.
Parameters can be manipulated that affect
the costs to build and heat the proposed design,
such as the internal and external temperatures, and the thickness
of the insulation in the walls, windows, and roof, along with
the area, perimeter, and volume of the building itself.
Architech is a major tool for 2 significant curriculum projects:
The Antarctica Project
Designing a Dream Home
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HabiTech is a population modeling software environment.
Simulations can be created to model a single population over
time, such as guppies in a fish tank, as well as a more complex
relationship between multiple populations, such as wolves and
caribou in Alaska. Functions which might cause a population
to increase or decrease are births, deaths, immigration, emmigration,
or some other student-defined function. In the model, these
changes in population occur at certain predictable frequencies,
such as every year, every season, or perhaps even every minute,
depending on what the model is representing. The changes in
population over time can be tracked in "animation"
mode, which allows the students to follow along as values are
substituted into their equations, in a tabular format, which
lists the values (total number, births, deaths, etc.) at each
time interval, or on a line graph, which vividly displays the
differences between linear and exponential growth.
Habitech is featured in the following projects:
Guppies
Wolves and Caribou
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Coding Toolbox allows students to use shift cipher, function,
matrix, analysis, and compression tools to develop and test
privacy and efficiency codes.
Coding Toolbox is used in these projects:
Compression Codes
Privacy Codes
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Mapper is
kid-friendly Geographic Information System (GIS), a software
tool combining computer mapping, databases, spreadsheets,
graphing, and statistical analysis. Mapper layers geographic
information on top of PICT files. For example, students can
scan in a PICT of a map of their town and build a layer of
points for schools, lines for streets and regions for parks.
The map has a scale which relates distances on the map (in
inches or centimeters) to "real-world" distances
(feet, miles, meters, or kilometers). The map also has a coordinate
grid system for locating points on the map. The Mapper database
maintains attribute information about each of the objects
drawn on each layer of the map. By classifying data and building
queries, students can solve problems using different visual
representations of data on the map
Mapper software is used in the completion of the following
projects:
Excursions
Environmental Justice
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