For this project, you will propose, design, and implement a project of your own design. To receive a score of Proficient in the Computational Thinking category this project must meet all of the requirements to receive 6 points as an AP Computer Science Principles project submission.
- Student Handout for AP Project: LINK
- Grading Rubric for AP Project: LINK
- Several example projects and their scores are available at the bottom of this page: LINK
Before starting, you should create a repository for your project. If you're not sure how to do this, you can follow the steps here: LINK
Here are the high level steps:
- Create a new repository (may be private)
- Add Mx. Collard as a Collaborator
- Clone the repository
- Create a development branch
- Initialize your project
- Commit and push your initialized project
- Create a pull request from
developtomainbranch - Add Mx. Collard as a reviewer
First, you will propose a project and create a design document to help you think through all of the components that you will need to implement. It is very easy to over scope and start working on a project that is too large to finish. I recommend starting small, maybe implement a portion of a bigger project and then, if there is extra time, add more onto it.
- Wordle, a word guessing game: LINK
- High Score Tracker: LINK
- Random Name Generator: LINK
- Personality Quiz: LINK
To help you meet the proficient requirement, I've provided a list of additional requirements that, if done properly should get you very close to a full 6 points.
Your project should meet all of these requirements:
- Uses a list to store an arbitrary number of elements
- Accepts user input
- Has at least one method that:
- Requires at least 1 parameter
- Validates the input
- Throws an exception if the input is not valid
- Contains a loop that iterates (no
while(false)loops) - Is a significant part of your overall program
- Iterates over the list from #1. This can be done in your method for #3.
- Alternatively, you can randomly select items from the list
In your proposal, you must come up with one or more advanced features for approval. The aim of these features should be to learn something new and challenge yourself to learn and grow.
Your proposal will have 3 main sections: Overview, High Level Flowchart, and Methods. Below you will find an overview of each section:
Write 3 - 5 sentences explaining your programs purpose and describing the user's inputs and program's outputs. This will become a guide for the first section of your written response.
Think about what your program must do to accomplish its goal. Draw a high level flowchart of the entire process from start to finish. In this flowchart, you may gloss over hard to implement details that you're not sure how to write. This flowchart should be a high level overview showing how the program transitions from one part of your program to the next. This will start as a draft and you will likely make revisions throughout the project to match any changes you make during implementation.
After you have a high level flowchart of your project, find the complex sections and break these out to create sub flowcharts. These will be your methods. You should get as detailed as possible in each of these flowcharts breaking down the process to the simplest commands. If you find the flowchart becoming complex, consider breaking it into two or more sub flowcharts that are used to complete the goal.
For each method flowchart, come up with a method signature and a comment. Use the following questions as a guide:
- What data do I need to pass to this method?
- What are valid inputs?
- What does the method accomplish?
- What (if any) does this method return (produce)?
- At a high level, what does this method do?
- Based on #5, what is a short name I can give this method?
Finally, in English, write a step-by-step detailed explanation describing how this method will be implemented.
You will receive roughly 4 block periods over the course of 3 weeks of in class time to work on this project (about 5 hours). This will almost certainly not be enough time to complete the entire project without coming prepared to class with questions / specific goals for progress. This is where your student log will become incredibly important: The expectation is that during these two weeks, you are spending at least 2 hours of time outside of class each week on your project.
For your personal project, you should follow this work flow:
After you have finished your project. You will complete a written response which matches the format of an AP Project submission. This includes recording a short, less than 1 minute, video. The response template can be found here: LINK
If you're having trouble coming up with a project idea, you can use any of the following project ideas. Note: Each of the projects could range greatly in difficulty depending on how it is implemented. However, an attempt to sort them into difficulty categories was made. You should however take this with a grain of salt as a Level 1 project could easily become a Level 3+ project without properly scoping the project. Be sure to talk it through with Mx. Collard to get a solid idea of how to meet the proficient requirements.
- A guessing game like Mastermind or Wordle: LINK
- A High Score tracker
- A Random Name Generator: LINK
- A Personality Quiz: LINK
- A binary to hex and hex to binary quiz program
- Extend the Cipher assignment to use a dictionary to determine the correct message
- A program that prints text one character at a time (Dialogue System)
- A program that prints color text based on the words in the string (Dialogue System)
- A shopping cart / store in a video game
- A To Do List
- A hacker simulator: LINK
- A Loot Generator
- Inspirational quote generator
- ATM / Bank Account Simulator
- Prime Number Generator
- Conway's Game of Life: LINK
- A turn based combat system
- A MadLibs game
- A text based adventure
- A program that predicts the Weather using historical data: LINK
- A flash card program for studying
- A program that counts the number of occurrence of a word / words in a text file
- A memory game like Simon or Bop-it: LINK
- A Point and Click adventure / Escape Room game
- An asteroids clone
- A text template filler (Email Newsletter)
- Snake game clone
- Stock Market ticker: LINK
- A Graphing Calculator to show what a function with a single variable looks like
- Convert a CSV file to a line / bar / pie chart
- A Scrabble score calculator
- A top down 2D game that stores maps as a text file
- An app that displays the local Weather Forecast by getting live information from the internet: (https://openweathermap.org/api)
- A Tower Defense Game Tutorial
- A black jack game
- Breakout clone
- Sports Statistics App: LINK