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

This Week’s Agenda:

Introduction 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

• Heuristic - a problem solving approach (algorithm) to find a satisfactory solution where finding an optimal or exact solution is impractical or impossible.
• Lossless Compression - a data compression algorithm that allows the original data to be perfectly reconstructed from the compressed data.
• Image - A type of data used for graphics or pictures.
• metadata - is data that describes other data. For example, a digital image my include metadata that describe the size of the image, number of colors, or resolution.
• pixel - short for "picture element" it is the fundamental unit of a digital image, typically a tiny square or dot which contains a single point of color of a larger image.
• RGB - the RGB color model uses varying intensities of (R)ed, (G)reen, and (B)lue light are added together in to reproduce a broad array of colors.
• Lossy Compression - (or irreversible compression) a data compression method that uses inexact approximations, discarding some data to represent the content. Most commonly seen in image formats like .jpg.
• Abstraction - Pulling out specific differences to make one solution work for multiple problems.

AND

Introduction to Programming

Monday 10-31-16 – 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:

• Use appropriate terminology when describing the size of digital files.
• Identify and compare the size of familiar digital media.
• Solve small word problems that require reasoning about file sizes.

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: and click ‘View course’.

Assessment for/of learning: Completion of today’s class assignment.

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

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:

·         Complete your ticket to leave journal entry.

·         Now that you have more artifact tools go to www.ted.com/talks and choose a Computing Innovation which we have not discussed thus far. Explore the computing innovation according to the requirements of the Explore Performance Task. Using a new tool(s) to build your computing artifact, create your artifact and be prepared to present to the rest of the class next week.

·         Make sure that you meet all requirements found in the Explore Performance Task (link provided after this week’s agenda), and provide all information requested within your written responses.

·         This practice is important in order to do well on your college board task that we will be submitting prior to the end of the year so please do a good job, and remember if you find a computing innovation that will work well for the task you need to submit, take notes and put it on your back burner. And as always have fun!

Tuesday 11-1-2016 – Day G  

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:

• Use appropriate terminology when describing the size of digital files.
• Identify and compare the size of familiar digital media.
• Solve small word problems that require reasoning about file sizes.

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 Internet tile and click ‘View course’.

Direct Instruction and Guided Instruction:

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

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: Due Thursday 

NOTE: Next Tuesday No School – Teacher Professional Development Day and Election Day

·         Complete your ticket to leave journal entry.

·         Now that you have more artifact tools go to www.ted.com/talks and choose a Computing Innovation which we have not discussed thus far. Explore the computing innovation according to the requirements of the Explore Performance Task. Using a new tool(s) to build your computing artifact, create your artifact and be prepared to present to the rest of the class next week.

·         Make sure that you meet all requirements found in the Explore Performance Task (link provided after this week’s agenda), and provide all information requested within your written responses.

This practice is important in order to do well on your college board task that we will be submitting prior to the end of the year so please do a good job, and remember if you find a computing innovation that will work well for the task you need to submit, take notes and put it on your back burner. And as always have fun!

Wednesday 11-2-2016 – Day A

Lesson 4: Encoding Color Images

Standards Alignment

CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards

CL – Collaboration

Computer Science Principles

Objectives

Students will be able to:

• Collaborate with a peer to find a solution to a text compression problem using the Text Compression Widget (lossless compression scheme).
• Explain why the optimal amount of compression is impossible or “hard” to identify.
• Explain some factors that make compression challenging.
• Develop a strategy (heuristic algorithm) for compressing text.
• Describe the purpose and rationale for lossless compression.

Students will be able to:

• Use the Pixelation Tool to encode small color images with varying bits-per-pixel settings.
• Explain the color encoding scheme for digital images.
• Use the Pixelation Tool to encode an image of the student’s design.
• Explain the benefits of using hexadecimal numbers for representing long streams of bits.

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: and click ‘View course’.

Direct Instruction:

The way color is represented in a computer is different from the ways we represented text or numbers. With text, we just made a list of characters and assigned a number to each one. As you are about to see, with color, we actually use binary to encode the physical phenomenon of LIGHT. Today we will see how to make colors by mixing different amounts of colored light.

A Little Bit about Pixels - Video

Color Pixelation widget tutorial video - Part 1 - Video:

Color Pixelation widget tutorial video - Part 2 - Video

Color Pixelation widget tutorial video - Part 3 - Video

Guided Instruction:

1)    Personal Favicon Project - Activity Guide 

2)   Create a personal 16x16 favicon and encode it using the Pixelation Widget on the final level of this lesson in Code Studio.

3)   The image you make should represent your personality in some distinctive way. You will be using this favicon in future lessons and web sites that you make, so be creative and thoughtful.

4)   After you have finished your favicon, share it with others in the class by sending them the bits with the Internet Simulator Widget!

Requirements:

• The icon must be 16x16 pixels.
• You must use the Pixelation Widget to encode the bits of color information.
• The image must be encoded with at least 12 bits per pixel.

Things to think about

• A simple design with a few basic colors is probably the best solution. How could you use more colors?
• Plan ahead: Sketch your design before starting to encode the bits. You might want to use a tool to help you draw small images. Suggestions:
• Favicon & App Icon Generator: http://favicon-generator.org/editor/
• Make Pixel Art: http://makepixelart.com/free/

Assessment for/of learning:

Questions: Please answer within your Engineering Notebook

• How many bits (or bytes) are required to encode an image that is 25 pixels wide and 50 pixels tall, if you encode it with 24 bits per pixel?
• Imagine that you have an image that is too dark or too bright. Describe how you would alter the RGB settings to brighten or darken it. Give an example.

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

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: Due Tomorrow 

NOTE: Next Tuesday No School – Teacher Professional Development Day and Election Day

·         Complete your ticket to leave journal entry.

·         Now that you have more artifact tools go to www.ted.com/talks and choose a Computing Innovation which we have not discussed thus far. Explore the computing innovation according to the requirements of the Explore Performance Task. Using a new tool(s) to build your computing artifact, create your artifact and be prepared to present to the rest of the class next week.

·         Make sure that you meet all requirements found in the Explore Performance Task (link provided after this week’s agenda), and provide all information requested within your written responses.

This practice is important in order to do well on your college board task that we will be submitting prior to the end of the year so please do a good job, and remember if you find a computing innovation that will work well for the task you need to submit, take notes and put it on your back burner. And as always have fun!

Thursday 11-3-2016 – Day B

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 21^st 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

Students will present their Explore Performance Task and will discuss as a class (collaboration) to determine how we can improve in moving forward.

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 their Explore Performance Task presentation and group 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:  

Lesson 5: Lossy Compression and File Formats – Go into code.org and complete Stage 5 – Lesson 5 on your own.  Make sure to answer the questions at the end of the lesson within code.org

Friday 11-4-2016 – Day C – No Class

Standards Alignment

CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards

CL – Collaboration

CPP - Computing Practice & Programming

CT - Computational Thinking

Computer Science Principles

• Explain the difference between lossy and lossless compression.
• Identify common computer file types and whether they are compressed or not, and whether compression is lossy or lossless.
• Read a technical article on the web and sift its contents for targeted information.

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 1: The Internet 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:  

Lesson 5: Lossy Compression and File Formats – Go into code.org and complete Stage 5 – Lesson 5 on your own.  Make sure to answer the questions at the end of the lesson within code.org

Thanks for a great week!

Mr. PC 

Explore Performance Task Rubric

More Resources for finding computing innovations:

http://www.ted.com/talks

www.digg.com

http://www.teachersdomain.org

http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/

www.paper.li

Tools for building computing artifacts:

http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/

To Due: Create Digital Portfolios for Performance Tasks Submissions. Our goal is to complete our Explore Performance Task before the end of 2016.

·         Begin preparing for the May 5th Exam with practice exam questions from AP training google drive and the career board. Use online student response system for class review and discussion.

Unit 1 Vocabulary

Vocabulary

• Innovation - A novel or improved idea, device, product, etc, or the development thereof.
• Binary - A way of representing information using only two options.
• Bit - A contraction of "Binary Digit". A bit is the single unit of information in a computer, typically represented as a 0 or 1.
• Bandwidth - Transmission capacity measure by bit rate
• Bit - A contraction of "Binary Digit". A bit is the single unit of information in a computer, typically represented as a 0 or 1.
• Bit rate - (sometimes written bitrate) the number of bits that are conveyed or processed per unit of time. e.g. 8 bits/sec.
• Latency - Time it takes for a bit to travel from its sender to its receiver.
• Protocol - A set of rules governing the exchange or transmission of data between devices.
• ASCII - ASCII - American Standard Code for Information Interchange. ASCII is the universally recognized raw text format that any computer can understand.
• code - (v) to write code, or to write instructions for a computer.
• IETF - Internet Engineering Task Force - develops and promotes voluntary Internet standards and protocols, in particular the standards that comprise the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP).
• Internet - A group of computers and servers that are connected to each other.
• Net Neutrality - the principle that all Internet traffic should be treated equally by Internet Service Providers
• IP Address - A number assigned to any item that is connected to the Internet.
• Packets - Small chunks of information that have been carefully formed from larger chunks of information
• DNS - The service that translates URLs to IP addresses.
• HTTP - HyperText Transfer Protocol - the protocol used for transmitting web pages over the Internet
• Net Neutrality - the principle that all Internet traffic should be treated equally by Internet Service Providers.
• TCP - Transmission Control Protocol - provides reliable, ordered, and error-checked delivery of a stream of packets on the internet. TCP is tightly linked with IP and usually seen as TCP/IP in writing.