Alexis Flanders

A look into my MAET experience

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Category: CEP 814

  • 814 Final Project: Navigating Our World Through Computational Thinking

    For my final project, I designed a third-grade social studies unit that weaves computational thinking into map skills and navigation. What began as a simple idea about teaching directions became something much bigger. It turned into a five-lesson sequence integrating decomposition, abstraction, algorithms, debugging, and digital creation. At first glance, it looks like a social…

  • Automation — When “Almost” Isn’t Quite

    Automation felt straightforward at first. Systems follow rules. They remove repetitive work. They free up time and mental energy. Simple enough…or so I thought. For my automation creation, I created an unplugged classroom activity where students act as robots. Partners give step-by-step instructions to complete a task. If the directions are unclear, the “robot” fails.…

  • Jedi, Debugging, and the Reality of Automation

    If there is one constant in this course, it’s this: MakeCode Arcade is my favorite part of every unit! For this creation, I built a Jedi-themed game. The concept sounds simple. A character runs across space collecting stars and dodging asteroids. Stars add points. Asteroids subtract them. A countdown runs. The Star Wars–inspired theme plays…

  • Automation: Making Thinking Visible

    Unit 6 shifted my focus to automation, and it immediately felt relevant to students’ everyday lives. In my first activity, I brainstormed examples of automation my students already experience. Their computers log them in automatically when they scan a QR code. Math platforms adjust difficulty levels without a teacher intervening. Google Classroom surfaces commonly used…

  • Seeing What Matters: Abstraction in Art and Computer Science

    For my final creation in Unit 5, I designed a lesson titled Seeing What Matters: Abstraction in Art and Computer Science. My key takeaway from this unit is that abstraction is about identifying what truly matters and setting aside the rest. When we understand the essential features of something, the bigger idea becomes clearer. The…

  • When Abstraction Breaks…and Then Works

    This MakeCode project was focused on abstraction… and it humbled me. I went into it thinking it would be a quick build. My plan felt simple: instead of donuts subtracting points, I wanted them to add points. I also wanted one type of donut to be worth more than the other. Conceptually, it made sense.…

  • Abstraction, AI, and Seeing Patterns in Real Time

    This week, I explored several AI tools through the lens of abstraction and computational thinking, and I had an absolute blast! I started with Quick, Draw! and immediately went down a rabbit hole. After a few normal rounds, I began testing the limits. I tried drawing the most abstract versions of objects I could, just…

  • Abstraction Through a Mad Lib

    For this activity, I started with a detailed story about a doe and her two fawns. It was specific. It had setting, tone, personality, and imagery. Then I abstracted it. I used the WordLibs generator from The Word Finder to build and test the abstracted version of my story. I removed the specific nouns, adjectives,…

  • What Abstraction Reveals…and What It Hides

    My next unit focused on abstraction, and it pushed my thinking in a different direction. In our first activity, I examined everyday examples of abstraction and identified what each one highlights and what it hides. That framing helped make abstraction clear. A graph of a knight’s tour highlights possible moves but hides physical proximity. ORF…

  • Iterating Through Pattern Matching

    This week, I created a game in MakeCode Arcade focused on pattern matching. While I enjoyed building the mechanics, what stood out most to me was the music. In my previous projects, I had only discovered how to create custom sounds using solfege. I thought that was the extent of the music features available. In…