Travis R. Martin, CPA, MBA » Computer Applications

Spreadsheet Project: Black Friday Blues

travisrmartin — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 15:30:00 +0000

If you’re looking for a nice little spreadsheet project that ties into the Holiday Season, you might like this. Students use spreadsheets to analyze prices of popular gifts of their choice before, during, and after Black Friday. They then analyze the data to make a recommendation as to when the best time to shop would be.

The project covers Spreadsheet Formatting, Formulas, and Chart Creation.

Posted below is the video to introduce the project.

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Class Project: Opening Pandora’s Box

travisrmartin — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 01:44:55 +0000

Pandora Internet Radio

In honor of Pandora’s recent IPO (P), here’s a project that my Computer Apps classes worked on this past school year.

If you are not familiar with Pandora, it’s a website (and App) that allows you to create personalized radio stations. The stations play music matching your individual tastes by selecting songs that share musical attributes with other songs you like.

Pandora’s educated guesses on the music you will like are the result of a massive recommendation engine dubbed “The Music Genome Project.”

In this project, students gather data (Yes, they listen to the songs during class…gasp!) and test the accuracy of Pandora’s Music Genome Project. They also compare and contrast Pandora’s engine with similar (but different) systems used by Netflix, Amazon, and Facebook.

Once students have completed their research, they present their findings to the class in the form of a Keynote/PowerPoint presentation. I require my students to include audio clips in their presentation, in order to show they understand how to insert and time multimedia files.

After the in-class presentation, the students record narration for their PowerPoint and upload their finished product to YouTube.

All of the files for the project are included in the PDF portfolio below. If you have any questions about implementing this project in your class, let me know – travis@travisrmartin.com. Enjoy!

Project Files: Opening Pandora’s Box – Travis R Martin

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Computer Applications Lesson: My Travel Agent

travisrmartin — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 03:48:02 +0000

Lesson Background

Still Waiting to Find that Illusive Free Hotel Room

After four long months of winter, Spring Break is finally here. To celebrate the occasion, I thought I would share a Spring Break-related classroom activity.

My wife and I usually travel to Clearwater, Florida for Spring Break. The first year we went, we spent hours searching the internet for the perfect hotel along the beach. The end result of all the searching was a run-down room at the Red Roof Inn in Clearwater, which was only perfect in the sense that we could afford to stay there without taking a second mortgage out on our house.

Since the trip to Clearwater from Southern Indiana is 15 hours, we decided to reserve rooms for the drive down and back. Rather than spend another hour of my life on travelocity.com, I enlisted the help of my students – and the activity Mr. Martin’s Travel Agent was born.

The premise is pretty simple: the students research and recommend hotels to me based on a set of criteria I give them. The students then pitch their hotel ideas to me using a PowerPoint presentation. From these presentations, I pick my hotel room. The winning student (or group), gets a “mystery gift bag” from the hotel, which consists of everything I can take from the room and lobby without going to jail (tourist brochures, newspapers, shampoos, soaps, shower caps, pens, paper, etc.).

I’ve done this activity in my Computer Applications classes and in a Travel & Tourism Marketing class. The students seem to enjoy it, but more importantly, I believe it challenges them to exercise their problem solving skills. It also gives them the opportunity to practice selling an idea, as opposed to regurgitating facts from a slide.

Lesson Resources
Instructions: Travel Agent Activity (Word File)

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Computer Applications Activity: Concert Poster

travisrmartin — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:40:41 +0000

Activity Background

Student Concert Poster Created in Microsoft Word

There are precious few things that universally appeal to teenagers. In fact, the only thing I can think of is music. Kids may not agree on what kind of music is best, but generally speaking, nearly all teens are into tunes (some so much that they stay tethered to their iPod 24/7).

With this in mind, I like to work a few music-related activities into my classes, especially in Computer Applications.

Our study of Microsoft Word includes a unit on making flyers (we use the Shelly Cashman books). At the conclusion of the unit, the students apply the skills they’ve learned, including inserting graphics and manipulating text, to create a concert poster for a band of their choice. The posters include information like tour cities, dates, and opening acts. The students may make up their own tours or use a website like www.pollstar.com to get real information about their favorite acts.

While programs like Publisher and Adobe InDesign are more geared towards creating posters, completing this project in Word helps the students understand the limitations of the program. It also helps me understand how far out of the music loop I am (you mean, nobody listens to the Counting Crows anymore??).

When the posters are completed, I have the students upload their documents to a Workshop link on my Moodle website, so that they can be critiqued by others in the class.

This project can also be expanded to Excel (have the students budget and

Student Concert Poster, Created in Microsoft Word

plan an entire tour for their band), PowerPoint (have the students create a video slideshow featuring one of their band’s songs), and Access (have the students catalog the band’s CDs in a database). I will share those activities later on!

Lesson Resources
Instructions: Microsoft Word Concert Poster

Website: www.pollstar.com

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