have your students look into distributed computing, and pick a project, then run work units and compete against each other, or join each class as a team and have thoes teams compete. BOINC comes to mind. I would get them to learn a little about distributed computation, pick some task that would take one student a day to complete, then have them break it down into N-1 student chunks of work, and have the last student act as the co-ordinator, moving data back and forth and compiling the complete and final answer. https://computing.llnl.gov/tutorials/parallel_comp/ LLNL has a nice introduction. you could also show how different living organisms like bees and ants work together. An example of a large project that would take one student a long time would be to build a model of the International Space Station. Building each single peice wouldn't take a student that long, and then they can put all the peices together in class, and now you have some more artwork to hang in the class room too.
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have your students look into distributed computing, and pick a project, then run work units and compete against each other, or join each class as a team and have thoes teams compete. BOINC comes to mind. I would get them to learn a little about distributed computation, pick some task that would take one student a day to complete, then have them break it down into N-1 student chunks of work, and have the last student act as the co-ordinator, moving data back and forth and compiling the complete and final answer. https://computing.llnl.gov/tutorials/parallel_comp/ LLNL has a nice introduction. you could also show how different living organisms like bees and ants work together. An example of a large project that would take one student a long time would be to build a model of the International Space Station. Building each single peice wouldn't take a student that long, and then they can put all the peices together in class, and now you have some more artwork to hang in the class room too.