Spring Break Project
Welcome to Spring Break
I know that Spring Break is still a few months out, but this gives us the perfect chance to use some of our skills to plan for our virtual vacations. You will begin by using the "Spring Break Initial Information Gathering Worksheet" to start collecting some important information about the location you are planning to visit. This information will be vital to planning and preparing your vacation. This is how most adults plan for trips. You will have a limited amount of money to spend on this vacation, so just keep in mind that you will have to watch what you are spending...don't go crazy. Your monetary limit will be $3000.00 for the entire 7 days which will include any round trip airplane tickets, hotels, meals, vehicle rentals, admission tickets, cab fare, gas, and all other expenses. You will take the initial information that you gather and start planning your trip. This will allow you to build your budget, plan stops, look for interesting and educational places to visit as well as prepare your presentations and journals. Work hard and be sure that you learn something as you go.
This project is about learning something so make sure that you are visiting the websites of all of the places you say you are going to and learn as much as you can about them. You must look for and eat at local restaurants and be sure to find their menus and prices online. The more you learn, the better your presentation will be.
Programs to Use:
Since we are limited on programs to use, we will do everything in Google. Use Google Slides for your presentation, use Google Sheets for your budget, and write your journals in Google Docs.
Things to know:
Destinations that are hard to do or are not good choices for this project:
This project is about learning something so make sure that you are visiting the websites of all of the places you say you are going to and learn as much as you can about them. You must look for and eat at local restaurants and be sure to find their menus and prices online. The more you learn, the better your presentation will be.
Programs to Use:
Since we are limited on programs to use, we will do everything in Google. Use Google Slides for your presentation, use Google Sheets for your budget, and write your journals in Google Docs.
Things to know:
- This is an educational vacation, not a beach vacation. You have to plan at least 1-2 places to visit each day where you can learn something. These can be zoos, museums, tourist areas, National or State Parks, Government buildings (like capital buildings). Limit your visits to theme/amusement parks to 1 for the trip.
- You have to account for all expenses.
- You have to eat at least 2 meals everyday that you pay for. Breakfast is usually provided by the hotel you are staying in. You cannot eat at fast food places or at chain restaurants. You have to find local places to eat.
- You can buy groceries for lunches once you are at your destination, but you have to budget for them. Label it groceries in your budget and then spend a minimum of $200 for the trip for those groceries. This means you will then be eating dinners out on your trip and those get budgeted each day. Groceries only needs to go into the budget once for the entire trip. Put it in as a line called Groceries and do not pay sales tax on it.
- You must stay in a hotel, bed and breakfast or hostel. No free rooms at a friends house or staying with relatives.
- You must stay for 6 nights so budget for 6 nights in a hotel. You can change hotels, but you have to have 6 nights at least planned for your vacation. Your trip will be 7 days and 6 nights long.
- No staying in camp grounds, staying with relatives or staying with friends.
- You are probably going to have to rent a car.
- You can drive instead of fly, but you need to pay for the gas to and from home and to all events. Use Google maps to get the miles you are going to drive. Go to maps.google.com for that.
- You cannot win the lottery and have more money...you cannot find money...you cannot steal more money...you only get $3,000...that is it, there is no more.
- Use the "Are your Driving" information below to figure out how much you spend in gas. I realize that the cost is higher than the current gas prices, but this will cover any toll bridges, toll roads or other expenses you run into while you drive to and from your destinations so you do not have to try and figure out those.
- Make sure you are looking for and keeping maps of some of the places you are going...20 points of this projects is for providing maps.
Destinations that are hard to do or are not good choices for this project:
- Camping trips
- Hunting Trips
- Fishing Trips
- Beach Trips
- Shopping Trips
- Disney or other amusement park trips
Project Pieces
This is a 4 part project:
- Presentation--show me what you did on your trip
- Journals--tell me what you did on your trip
- Budget--show me where you spent your money on this trip.
- Citations
Presentation
You are going to be creating a Google Slide Show that will show me the places that you visited and the things that you saw. This should be mostly pictures with maybe a small sentence about what the picture is. A label is fine too. No more than 1 sentence per picture. You will present this to the class. If you need to, you can create note cards to explain what is on the slides.
Journals
You will be using Google Docs to journal for me what you did, saw and learned each day. There will be 7 journals total. The first day will describe your travel and arrival at your destination. This first journal does NOT have to be 1/2 page in length, but it should accurately describe when you left, how you got to your destination, where you are going and where you are staying.
The final 6 journals must be 1/2 page (Ariel or Calibri font, 12 point font size and normal margins). Each journal will tell me what you did that day, where you ate, what you saw, who you interacted with, what you learned and how you got around to everything (at a minimum). This is a story, so be a little creative but more importantly be descriptive by telling me details for everything. Your journals should demonstrate that you researched and learned about the places that you said you were going to.
Budget
You will use Google Sheets for keeping track of the money that you spend on this trip. Remember, you only have $3000 for this trip. You must keep track of everything that you spend. Here are some of the major expenses:
- Airfare
- Rental Car
- Gas used
- Meals (at least dinner every day for 6 days, lunch can be packed but only if you have groceries in your budget
- Admission to events and places
- Souvenirs
- Groceries (if you are doing that in place of lunch each day)
I will post a video on how to set up your spreadsheet soon.
Citations:
Do not forget to collect citations for all of the websites you visit. You need a minimum of 20 for the entire project. This should be easy since you will have image citations from your presentation and citations from all of the research you do. Remember that just because you did not use information from a website in your project, if you visited a site and read it, it can go on your citation page.
Final Thoughts
This is an extensive project, but it should be fun. I will set up a discussion board in Schoology for answering questions about the project. Be sure to read through those since someone might have already asked a question that you had and it has been answered.
One of the points of this project is to use multiple forms of media to put together a project. The second is about learning to manage a large project and juggle all of the pieces. I expect you to have questions and struggle with some things. If we have questions that need larger answers or if you need resources, I will try to provide them as we go. Do your best, ask your parents for help as I am sure they have planned vacations before.
The information gathering sheet is not mandatory and you will not turn it in. It is there to help you organize your trip and collect information. It is available below for download. It will help.
There is also a grade sheet available for download to help you.
Have fun and learn something new.
One of the points of this project is to use multiple forms of media to put together a project. The second is about learning to manage a large project and juggle all of the pieces. I expect you to have questions and struggle with some things. If we have questions that need larger answers or if you need resources, I will try to provide them as we go. Do your best, ask your parents for help as I am sure they have planned vacations before.
The information gathering sheet is not mandatory and you will not turn it in. It is there to help you organize your trip and collect information. It is available below for download. It will help.
There is also a grade sheet available for download to help you.
Have fun and learn something new.
Are You DRIVING???
You will use the following information to calculate the cost of gas for your trip:
Price of gas will be set at $2.90 per gallon
Miles per gallon will be set at 25 miles per gallon.
Price of gas will be set at $2.90 per gallon
Miles per gallon will be set at 25 miles per gallon.
![](http://education.weebly.com/weebly/images/file_icons/rtf.png)
spring_break_initial_information_gathering_worksheet.docx | |
File Size: | 12 kb |
File Type: | docx |
![](http://education.weebly.com/weebly/images/file_icons/rtf.png)
spring_break_grading_sheets_2013.docx | |
File Size: | 16 kb |
File Type: | docx |