Students enrolled in the Exploring Computer Science class at both Conard and Hall high schools learned from West Hartford Town Engineer Greg Sommer how computer science was used to design and implement the North Main Street Road Diet trial.

Exploring Computer Sciences participate in a virtual presentation on the North Main Street Road Diet trial with West Hartford Town Engineer Greg Sommer. Courtesy photo

By Jackie Corricelli

On Thursday, March 3, Exploring Computer Science classes taught by Monique Albani-Ethier, Corrine Byrne, Sophie Gocheva, Ann Marie Houlihan, Christina Hunter, and Gayle Levine met with West Hartford Town Engineer Gregory Sommer to understand the key problem solving decisions and computer science that went into the design and implementation of the North Main Street Road Diet project.

This meeting is the result of the efforts of Exploring Computer Science teachers Byrne and Albani-Ethier. They have been working together all year to redesign Exploring Computer Science, a computer science course available to students at Conard High School, Hall High School, and Reach. This half-year introductory class tackles several aspects of computer science and computational thinking including data, programming, robotics, and more broadly, problem solving. Students in these classes consider real-world problems and think about how to break them down into key variables, decisions, and how to work together with others to model and solve them. 

Teachers Monique Albani-Ethier (left) and Corrine Byrne planned the event for the Exploring Computer Science classes. Courtesy photo

Sommer’s virtual conference served as a way to prepare students for a project that they will be completing that is focused on traffic flow analysis. We are grateful to Sommer for sharing his time and expertise with us.

Key takeaways:

• There were many steps over several years required to make the Road Diet a reality for North Main Street
• Time planning for a problem is time well spent
• Computer science played a key role in this problem from planning, to simulating, to executing, and even in controlling traffic light timing

Do you use computer science directly or indirectly in your job? Would you like to be a guest speaker? Reach out to [email protected]. Want to know more about how computer science is everywhere? Check out our website featuring video recordings of prior guest speakers for our evening webinar series: https://sites.google.com/whps.org/csiseverywhere. 

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