Teachers and courses involved:

• Adrienne Sentowski, Math
• MonaLin Solan, Synergistic/BST 

Description of the Project

• Students are to imagine taking a cross country trip after school is out with 2-3 friends (peers in class) for 14 days on a budget of $4000. They have to decide on a vehicle to drive, not purchase, yet they will be responsible for purchasing their gas (price set at $3.00 a gallon). They get to experience the novelty of choosing a large vehicle if they want; then when the reality of how much the gas will cost at the low MPG, they often go back and change their car. 
  
  They begin with looking over a U.S. map and choosing five different cities to visit as well as their final destination out on the west coast.  We came up with several questions for them to answer individually to help determine the best way to group the students so they had say in where they were going and who they wanted to travel with. 
  
  They use Word Art to create a coversheet for their travel log which is used to kept track of everything they do, what city they stop at for the night, the name of the hotel and cost, five historical sites they plan to visit along the way, the cost of their meals each day, cost of gas each time they fill up, and any incidental costs they might incur. We encourage them to write feedback of what they liked or didn’t like about each day of planning.    
  
  Groups that have mixed genders or four people received an extra $500 for the added expenses of food and lodging. Once they have plotted their trip on their maps, they use various search engines on the internet for research. They collect and save all information such as: pictures of hotels, attractions, historical sites they’ll see along the way in an assigned group folder.  All of this information will culminate in the making of a PowerPoint presentation they’ll put together as a group, highlighting their travel experiences. 
  
  The PowerPoint presentation will include a spreadsheet of expenses already created in Excel to show how they spent their money.  The PowerPoint presentation will include approximately 20 slides telling their story with pictures/sound to enhance the finished project.
  
  A rubric will be created by the class to evaluate each group’s project along with the individual work involved (documented in each student’s travel journal).
  
  This project covers a gambit of integrated curriculums/academics: Math, Technology, Social Studies (especially Geography), not forgetting the writing required in creating the text on each slide and in the personal journals. Students will be working in cooperative groups, problem solving day to day issues, learning to be open to their peers opinions and input, compromising and realizing they’re having fun while accomplishing a great adventure to places unknown. As they “learn to think outside the box,” they will be working in a synergized setting.

Student Involvement, Reaction, Benefits

• At the end of each session, each student is asked to reflect on what he/she liked and disliked about the day’s activity, and each student was encouraged to give feedback of how he/she would do it differently. No matter how the project is modified, students gain not only real life experience, but also an appreciation for the dollar and the amount of time needed to plan even the simplest of vacation trips, an understanding of the need to work cooperatively, and the necessity of sharpening research/computer skills.

Plans for Future Continuation/Modification

•  A scaled down version of this cross country trip could encompass traveling in our state of Florida on a smaller budget or even changing things a bit so they can experience renting a vehicle. The possibilities are truly endless.