Growin'GEERS Lesson Plans — Growin'GEERS

Tech Talk

Adventure: Tribal Trials

Quest: Tech Talk

Engineering Concept: Binary Coding

Challenge Level: Average

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What is the problem?

Flynn is traveling in Nigeria with her parents. She’s making new friends with children in the village where they are staying but, because of the language barrier, they can’t communicate. Flynn has an electronic translation device, but it’s malfunctioning and displaying the translated messages in binary instead of English. She needs help decoding binary to English and encoding English to binary so she can communicate with her new friends.

How will the students help?

In the first segment, Flynn will ask the participants to creatively solve the problem by planning out how they will use the household materials required to build a solution. Students are encouraged to build a prototype in this segment.

In the second segment, students will research binary coding to understand how it relates to the problem Flynn is facing. They will be asked to answer open-ended research questions using research links provided by Growin’GEERS and additional research they do on their own.

In the third segment, students will rebuild their initial design based on what they learned in the second segment. They will be asked to create a new plan for how they will use their materials. Once their solution is complete, there will be a Test for Success to see if their solution passes.

What will the participants learn?

  • Binary coding

  • ASCII table

  • How computer engineers apply those concepts

  • What computer engineers do

  • Nigerian geography

  • Nigerian fun facts

  • Why teamwork is important

  • Why it is okay to fail

What do I need to complete the quest?

  1. Access to a computer to watch the videos and research the concepts

  2. Ability to print the GEERling worksheets for students to plan their design and answer the research questions

  3. Household materials needed to complete the hands-on component


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