Welcome to AP Computer Science Principles




This week we are going to be working on the following:

AP Computer Science Class – Unit 2 – Digital Information

To Think; To Develop Problem-Solving Skills; To Discover; and To Create;

Learning to Compute and Computing to Learn

Classroom Protocol:

 

This is where you will come every day to find out what we are going to do in class for that day. Every day you are to come to your Quia class web page upon arriving to class, go to your class web page, and follow the directions for today.

 

Homework Policy:

 

All assignments will be due on the deadline date given. It is the responsibility for all students to complete their assignments on time. Any assignments received late will not be accepted and a grade will not be given for that assignment.

Accessing your Class Weekly Agenda:

Each week’s agenda and assignments will be updated and posted on your Quia class web page on a weekly basis.  Previous weeks Assignments/Agendas will be provided with a link at the end of the current week’s Class Web Page in case you need to revisit due to an absence, or you’re required to make up, or catch up on your course assignments.

Homework Assignment: Daily homework assignments may be found at the end of each day’s agenda.

F Day – Lunch 11:35 – 11:59

IMPORTANT DATES:     Saturday December 10  (8 – 12) Grafton - AP Study Session

                                      Saturday March 4 (8 – 12) Millbury - AP Study Session

In class Explore Performance Task and Submission Dates:

Task Begins: Monday December 5, 2016 (Total 9.5 Classes)

This Week’s Agenda:

Continuation to UNIT 2: Digital Information: This unit further explores the ways that digital information is encoded, represented and manipulated. Being able to digitally manipulate data, visualize it, and identify patterns, trends and possible meanings are important practical skills that computer scientists do every day. Understanding where data comes from, having intuitions about what could be learned or extracted from it, and being able to use computational tools to manipulate data and communicate about it are the primary skills addressed in the unit.

Chapter 1: Encoding and Compressing Complex Information

Big Questions

 

·         Are the ways in which digital information is encoded more laws of nature or man made?

·         What kinds of limitations does the binary encoding of information impose on what can be represented inside a computer?

·         How accurately can human experience and perception be captured or reflected in digital information?

 

Enduring Understandings

 

·         1.1 Creative development can be an essential process for creating computational artifacts.

·         1.3 Computing can extend traditional forms of human expression and experience.

·         2.1 A variety of abstractions built upon binary sequences can be used to represent all digital data.

·         3.3 There are trade offs when representing information as digital data.

Vocabulary

AND

Programming and Cell Phone Apps Continued

AND

Continued preparation for AP CSP Final Exam and Completion of the Explore Performance Task

 

Monday 11-28-16 – Day F

Standard:

Demonstrate proficiency in the use of computers and applications, as well as an understanding of the concepts underlying hardware, software, and connectivity.

Objective:

 

Introduction to computers and technology in relation to the 21st Century Skills and Financial and Technology literacy necessary to be successful in today’s technology oriented society.

 

Activator: Open up your Engineering Journal and review what you entered last class

Direct Instruction and Guided Practice:

Ř  As a class we will continue going through and discuss the AP CSP Practice Exam Questions

Ř  If you haven’t completed setting up your Digital Portfolio for this class online please do so as homework by following the directions and guide found within you AP CSP Week 12 Agenda class web page whose link may be found at the bottom of this week’s Agenda.  Thanks.

Summarizer:

Mr. PC will review each day what each student accomplished and the focus of tomorrow.

Assessment for/of learning: No Class

Ticket to Leave:

In order to prepare you for your two AP CSP college-board performance tasks we need to get use to reflecting on our daily work and experiences. This is a skill that will prove to be useful when you go on to college, enter the workforce, and even in every aspect of your everyday life.  Every day at the end of class you should save your work, open up your journal, put down today’s date, and provide the following information.

1.   Provide at least on new thing that you learned today – Refer to today’s Objectives

2.   What did you accomplish today?

3.   Indicate any problems or obstacles you experienced

4.   How did you solve the problems or obstacles that you experienced?

Feel free to provide screen shots of your daily work in order to illustrate your day’s activities. Windows provides a Snipping Tool within its provided Accessories that may be used for this purpose.

Homework:

 

Preparation for Explore Performane Task:

 

Ř  Look for a computing innovation that will allow you to meet all requirements of the Explore Performance Task. Begin thinking about the digital tools you will use to create your innovation artifact.

Explore Performance Task Rubric

Ř  Every day for the next couple of weeks please do the following as part of our chapter on Data Collection:

 

Fill out this form EVERY DAY, or as frequently as possible over the next few weeks.  We will look at the results more fully later on in this unit  

 

Data Tracker Link

 

AND

 

Ř  Complete your ticket to leave journal entry.

Tuesday 11-29-2016 – Day G – No Class

 

Standards Alignment

CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards

CT - Computational Thinking

Computer Science Principles

2.1 - A variety of abstractions built upon binary sequences can be used to represent all digital data.

2.1.1 - Describe the variety of abstractions used to represent data. [P3]

2.1.2 - Explain how binary sequences are used to represent digital data. [P5]

3.3 - There are trade offs when representing information as digital data.

 

Objectives

Students will be able to:

Activator: Open up your Engineering Journal and review what you entered last class. Review the Standards, Objectives, above, for today’s lesson. Click on https://studio.code.org/ and log in. Locate the Unit 2: The ‘Digital Information’ tile and click ‘View course’.

Direct Instruction and Guided Instruction: No Class

Ticket to Leave:

In order to prepare you for your two AP CSP college-board performance tasks we need to get use to reflecting on our daily work and experiences. This is a skill that will prove to be useful when you go on to college, enter the workforce, and even in every aspect of your everyday life.  Every day at the end of class you should save your work, open up your journal, put down today’s date, and provide the following information.

1.   Provide at least on new thing that you learned today – Refer to today’s Objectives

2.   What did you accomplish today?

3.   Indicate any problems or obstacles you experienced

4.   How did you solve the problems or obstacles that you experienced?

Feel free to provide screen shots of your daily work in order to illustrate your day’s activities. Windows provides a Snipping Tool within its provided Accessories that may be used for this purpose.

 

Homework:

 

Preparation for Explore Performane Task:

 

Ř  Look for a computing innovation that will allow you to meet all requirements of the Explore Performance Task. Begin thinking about the digital tools you will use to create your innovation artifact.

Explore Performance Task Rubric

Ř  Every day for the next couple of weeks please do the following as part of our chapter on Data Collection:

 

Fill out this form EVERY DAY, or as frequently as possible over the next few weeks.  We will look at the results more fully later on in this unit  

 

Data Tracker Link

 

AND

 

Ř  Complete your ticket to leave journal entry.

Wednesday 11-30-16 – Day H

Standards Alignment

CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards

CT - Computational Thinking

Computer Science Principles

3.1 - People use computer programs to process information to gain insight and knowledge.

            3.1.1 - Use computers to process information, find patterns, and test hypotheses about digitally processed information to gain insight and knowledge. [P4]

3.1.2 - Collaborate when processing information to gain insight and knowledge. [P6]

3.2 - Computing facilitates exploration and the discovery of connections in information.

3.2.1 - Extract information from data to discover and explain connections, patterns, or trends.

7.4 - Computing innovations influence and are influenced by the economic, social, and cultural contexts in which they are designed and used.

7.4.1 - Explain the connections between computing and economic, social, and cultural contexts. [P1]

Objectives

Students will be able to:

Activator: Open up your Engineering Journal and review what you entered last class. Review the Standards, Objectives, above, for today’s lesson. Click on https://studio.code.org/ and log in. Locate the Unit 2: The ‘Digital Information’ tile and click ‘View course’.

Direct Instruction and Guided Instruction:

Lesson 9: Check Your Assumptions

 

Purpose

In this lesson we look deeper into why we separate the what from the why when looking at data. The main purpose here is to raise awareness of the assumptions that we (all people) make when looking at data and try to call them out. Some of these assumptions lie hidden beneath the surface and we want to shed some light on them by looking at some examples from the news. This is a useful mode of reflection that will serve students well when doing reflective writing on the performance tasks.

Analyzing and interpreting data will typically require some assumptions to be made about the accuracy of the data and the cause of the relationships observed within it. When decisions are made based on a collection of data, they will often rest just as much on that set of assumptions about the data as the data itself. Identifying and validating (or disproving) assumptions is therefore an important part of data analysis. Furthermore, clear communication about how data was interpreted should also include an account of the assumptions made along the way.

Google Trends Video - Video

Thinking Prompt and Class Discussion: 

What are the potential beneficial effects of using a tool like Google Flu Trends?

Assign articles to students to read:

Thinking Prompt:

“Why did Google Flu Trends eventually fail? What assumptions did they make about their data or their model that ultimately proved not to be true?“

 

Activity:

The Digital Divide and Checking Your Assumptions

Digital Divide and Checking Assumptions - Activity Guide

Part 1: The digital Divide

This activity guide begins with a link to a report from Pew Research which examines the “digital divide.” Students should look through the visualizations in this report and record responses to the questions found in the activity guide.

Discuss:

In small groups or as a class, students should discuss the answers they have recorded in their activity guides.

Part 2: Checking Your Assumptions

Students should complete the second half of the activity guide. They are presented a set of scenarios in which data was used to make a decision. Students will be asked to examine and critique the assumptions used to make these decisions. Then they will suggest additional data they would like to collect or other ways their decision could be made more reliably.

 

Log into code.org and complete the Multiple Choice questions for Lesson 9

 

Summarizer:

Mr. PC will review each day what each student accomplished and the focus of tomorrow.

Assessment for/of learning:

Students are to be assessed on the Lesson 9 Activity Guide and classroom discussion.

Ticket to Leave:

In order to prepare you for your two AP CSP college-board performance tasks we need to get use to reflecting on our daily work and experiences. This is a skill that will prove to be useful when you go on to college, enter the workforce, and even in every aspect of your everyday life.  Every day at the end of class you should save your work, open up your journal, put down today’s date, and provide the following information.

1.   Provide at least on new thing that you learned today – Refer to today’s Objectives

2.   What did you accomplish today?

3.   Indicate any problems or obstacles you experienced

4.   How did you solve the problems or obstacles that you experienced?

Feel free to provide screen shots of your daily work in order to illustrate your day’s activities. Windows provides a Snipping Tool within its provided Accessories that may be used for this purpose.

 

Homework:

 

Preparation for Explore Performane Task:

 

Ř  Look for a computing innovation that will allow you to meet all requirements of the Explore Performance Task. Begin thinking about the digital tools you will use to create your innovation artifact.

Explore Performance Task Rubric

Ř  Every day for the next couple of weeks please do the following as part of our chapter on Data Collection:

 

Fill out this form EVERY DAY, or as frequently as possible over the next few weeks.  We will look at the results more fully later on in this unit  

 

Data Tracker Link

 

AND

 

Ř  Complete your ticket to leave journal entry.

Thursday 12-1-16 – Day A

Standard: Demonstrate the ability to use technology for research, critical thinking, problem solving, decision-making, communication, collaboration, creativity and innovation.

 

Topic: Research, Problem-Solving, and Communications Research

3.1 Devise and demonstrate strategies for efficiently collecting and organizing information from electronic sources.

Problem Solving

3.5 Explain and demonstrate how specialized technology tools can be used for problem solving, decision making, and creativity.

 

Objective:

 

Evaluate the importance of learning about computer systems in terms of relevant professions

Identify general computer systems/programming terms

Deduce the skills and knowledge about computer systems needed to be successful in an authentic project

Demonstrate the ability to enter and modify source code statements using editing capabilities

Develop a simple graphics program

Demonstrate the ability to debug statements, distinguishing between syntax and semantic errors

Identify input, process, and output in a program

 

Activator: Open up your Engineering Journal and review what you entered last class. Review the Standards, Objectives, above, for today’s lesson.

Direct Instruction and Guided Practice: Complete our discussion from Tuesday

Then: Complete the cell phone app below if not already completed:

Click Here to Access Your Development Environment

 

 

1) Click on the Tutorial Link below and choose a new Intermediate Tutorial app to implement and test:

Tutorial Cell Phone App Link

Choose an App from a category which you have not tried or experienced yet.

Summarizer:

Mr. PC will review each day what each student accomplished and the focus of tomorrow.

Assessment for/of learning:

Students are to be assessed on the design of their chosen App and installing it on their phone. 

Ticket to Leave:

In order to prepare you for your two AP CSP college-board performance tasks we need to get use to reflecting on our daily work and experiences. This is a skill that will prove to be useful when you go on to college, enter the workforce, and even in every aspect of your everyday life.  Every day at the end of class you should save your work, open up your journal, put down today’s date, and provide the following information.

1.   Provide at least on new thing that you learned today – Refer to today’s Objectives

2.   What did you accomplish today?

3.   Indicate any problems or obstacles you experienced

4.   How did you solve the problems or obstacles that you experienced?

Feel free to provide screen shots of your daily work in order to illustrate your day’s activities. Windows provides a Snipping Tool within its provided Accessories that may be used for this purpose.

 

Homework:

 

Preparation for Explore Performane Task:

 

Ř  Look for a computing innovation that will allow you to meet all requirements of the Explore Performance Task. Begin thinking about the digital tools you will use to create your innovation artifact.

Explore Performance Task Rubric

Ř  Every day for the next couple of weeks please do the following as part of our chapter on Data Collection:

 

Fill out this form EVERY DAY, or as frequently as possible over the next few weeks.  We will look at the results more fully later on in this unit  

 

Data Tracker Link

 

AND

 

Ř  Complete your ticket to leave journal entry.

 

Friday 12-2-16 – Day B

Standards Alignment

CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards

CT - Computational Thinking

Computer Science Principles