Lessons Developed by SusanBoone © June 1995

These pages were developed through GirlTECH '95, a teachertraining and student technology council program sponsored bythe Center for Research onParallel Computation (CRPC), a NationalScience Foundation Science and Technology Center.

Lesson Titles

AFunctional Housing Market

Students will access theInternet to search for housing prices in Houston, Texas,(the location canbe changed to accommodate any location) and compare the prices to thenumber of square feet found in the living area of a house. A linearequation will be derived from this data on a coordinate plane using the"best- fit" method. Using information from the graph of the dataand the equations of the function, students will answer questions abouthousing prices.

Students will create their own pizza usingchoices of toppings. They will be able to "order" theircreation from the Internet and see their creation. They will use theirorder to calculate the area of various size pizzas, determine the"better buy", cost per topping. Students will also have to useresearch skills to answer questions pertaining to the Pizza HomePage.

Students will review the census site on the Internetand gather data regarding trends in population. They will studythis data and make predictions on future populations and comparetheir results with the information available on the Internet.

INDY 500

Students will find the mean and median speedfor the Indianapolis 500. Rates per lap will be calculated aswell as the length of each lap. Students will need to researchinformation via the Internet.

Houston Area Real-Time Traffic Report

Students will calculate the time needed to travela certain distance given the rate of speed. This is an ongoingproject. Their data will be collected using "real-time"traffic maps of the greater Houston area. Over a period of oneweek, one month, and one school year, traffic patterns will bestudied at various times of the day. At the completion of thisstudy students will write a report and send their results viaemail to the Greater Houston Transportation and Emergency Management Center. Students also have an opportunity to volunteer to collect travel data on major Houston freeways.

This lesson is designed to improve navigation skills on the Internet. Participants are directed to various sites on the Web. A variety of information is presented--from the informative aspects that the web offers, to the absolutely mundane resources that are available. Winners are posted on this site periodically. ENJOY!!!

Send comments or suggestions to: sboone@cs.rice.edu