⬢ FACILITATOR’S GUIDE · SW6 ⬢
Facilitator’s Guide: Tech for Good Capstone
Everything you need to run the last project of the year.
📅 2 weeks · ~10 class days✅ 1 project chosen from 6 options🌐 Topic: a cause the student cares about
The unit at a glance
| Module item | What happens | ~Time |
|---|---|---|
| Tech for Good Capstone — two weeks, student-chosen project, student-chosen topic | ||
| Tech for Good Capstone | The project itself. Students pick one of six builds — MakeCode Arcade game, ThingLink 360 tour, TinkerCAD 3D print, Adobe Express or Canva campaign, Delightex AR experience, or Piskel pixel animation — copy the matching portfolio Google Doc, and work through it. Days 1–2 research, 3–4 plan, 5–8 build, 9 polish, 10 reflect and submit. | ~10 days |
| Capstone Research Helper | Used during the project, not before it. Send students here on Days 1–2. It holds the source rules, the general-purpose starting sites, and curated links for each of the eight suggested topics. | Days 1–2 |
| Closing | ||
| Xello Check-in: Scholarship Profile | Complete the Scholarship profile in Goals & Plans, filter matches by grade, screenshot and upload. Runs last, and it reads off every Xello check-in they have done this year. | ~20 min |
Materials + prep
- Decide which of the six options you can actually support before you show students the menu. The 3D print option needs printer time and a queue; the AR option needs Delightex and cubes; the ThingLink option needs accounts. It is fair to take an option off the table — it is not fair to take it off on Day 6.
- Tool access confirmed for whatever you keep: MakeCode Arcade, ThingLink, TinkerCAD plus a working 3D printer, Adobe Express and Canva, Delightex, Piskel.
- The portfolio Google Doc copy links, one per option, tested. That doc is the student’s instructions and the graded artifact at once.
- Newsela and Britannica School logins working before Day 1 — the Research Helper leans on them.
- Xello through ClassLink for the check-in.
- Presentation or booth space for Day 10, plus the time to use it. Book it in week one.
Watch-fors
- This is the last piece of a thread that started in Week 0. The project body says so: what students build here is the final addition to the portfolio they opened in Starting our Portfolio and grew in Portfolio Part 2. Open the capstone by walking that thread backward with them, so the two weeks read as an ending rather than one more assignment.
- Day 10 echoes the Career Fair Expo. Students already know how to stand at a booth and pitch, because they did it in SW2. Run the showcase the same way and say that out loud — it is the second time, not the first.
- Approve topics and projects by end of Day 2. A student still deciding on Day 4 will not finish, and the 3D print option in particular has to be in the printer queue with days to spare.
- The Research Helper exists because of the AI Overview problem. It rules out chatbots, Google’s AI summary box and Wikipedia as sources, and shows students how to mine Wikipedia’s reference list instead. Read those rules with the class rather than linking past them — that page is doing real work.
Grading
Tech for Good Capstone is the unit’s Major grade, at 100 points. The portfolio Google Doc comes back through Google Docs and holds all five parts plus the reflection, so that doc is what you grade. The Xello Check-in: Scholarship Profile is a Minor grade worth 5 points, submitted as a screenshot — 105 points in the module. The Capstone Research Helper is a page and is not graded.