Welcome to
AP Computer Science Principles
Great
job on your Completion of Unit 2!
This week we are going to be working on the following:
Introduction
to Unit 3: Intro to Programming
Introduction
to Unit 4: Big Data and Privacy
Unit
6: Explore Performance Task - Ongoing
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. Daily Journal Entries as seen in Daily Ticket to Leave are to be
entered as part of your daily homework. All students will receive a homework
grade on a weekly basis, and your journal will receive a project grade each
mid-term and final semester.
IMPORTANT
DATES: Explore
Performance Task: 8 hours
To
Be Completed by December 22, 2017
This
Week’s Agenda:
Introduction
to Unit 3: Into to Programming
And
Introduction
to Unit 4: Big Data and Privacy
Introduction to UNIT 3: Algorithms
and Programming:
This
unit introduces the foundational concepts of computer programming, which unlocks
the ability to make rich, interactive apps. This course uses JavaScript as the
programming language, and App Lab as the programming environment to build apps,
but the concepts learned in these lessons span all programming languages and
tools.
Chapter
1: Programming Languages and Algorithms
Big
Questions
Enduring
Understandings
Introduction to UNIT 4: Big
Data and Privacy:
The
data rich world we live in also introduces many complex questions related to
public policy, law, ethics and societal impact. In many ways this unit acts as a
unit on current events. It is highly likely that there will be something related
to big data, privacy and security going on in the news at any point in time. The
major goals of the unit are:
1)
for students to develop a well-rounded and balanced view about data in the world
around them and both the positive and negative effects of it and
2)
to understand the basics of how and why modern encryption works.
Chapter
1: The World of Big Data and Encryption
Big
Questions
Enduring
Understandings
Week 11: Tuesday Day B -
11-14-17 – Friday Day E – 11-17-17
Period 7
Lesson
4: Using Simple Commands
CL -
Collaboration
CPP -
Computing Practice & Programming
CT -
Computational Thinking
5.1 -
Programs can be developed for creative expression, to satisfy personal
curiosity, to create new knowledge, or to solve problems (to help people,
organizations, or society).
5.1.2 -
Develop a correct program to solve problems. [P2]
5.1.3 -
Collaborate to develop a program. [P6]
5.2 -
People write programs to execute algorithms.
5.2.1 -
Explain how programs implement algorithms. [P3]
5.4 -
Programs are developed, maintained, and used by people for different purposes.
5.4.1 -
Evaluate the correctness of a program. [P4]
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 3: The ‘Intro to Programming’ tile and click
‘View course’.
Direct Instruction:
On
to programming! How we will learn.
In this course, and in
computer science in general, all of the complexity we see on a computer is
actually just the composition (the combining and recombining) of a few simple
elements.
We
start this journey today.
Guided
Instruction:
App Lab is the programming environment we’re going to use for
the rest of the course to write programs and apps. App Lab is embedded into Code
Studio for many lessons and usually presents you with a series of problems to
solve to learn the basic concepts. As you get better and better at coding, App
Lab will show you more and more things you can do. But to start, we’re going
to keep things simple and build up the complexity.
1)
Log
into code.org and go to Unit 3: Lesson 4.
2)
Complete
all of the programming challenges. When you have successfully completed a
challenge take a screen shot using the Snipping tool, and add to your
Engineering Notebook.
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 completion of Lesson 4
challenges.
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 College Board Explore Performance Task:
Ø
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.
Ø
Complete
your ticket to leave journal entry.
Teacher * Parent Conferences: 6 – 8 PM
Period 6 and Period 7
Lesson
5: Creating Functions
CL -
Collaboration
CPP -
Computing Practice & Programming
CT -
Computational Thinking
2.2 -
Multiple levels of abstraction are used to write programs or create other
computational artifacts
2.2.1 -
Develop an abstraction when writing a program or creating other computational
artifacts. [P2]
2.2.2 -
Use multiple levels of abstraction to write programs. [P3]
5.3 -
Programming is facilitated by appropriate abstractions.
5.3.1 -
Use abstraction to manage complexity in programs. [P3]
5.4 -
Programs are developed, maintained, and used by people for different purposes.
5.4.1 -
Evaluate the correctness of a program. [P4]
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 3: The ‘Intro to Programming’ tile and click
‘View course’.
Direct Instruction:
Quick Review of the
Create Performance Task Requirements:
Assessment
Overview and Performance Task Directions for Students.
We will review pages 9-11 which introduces the Create PT Components (Digital
copy linked to from student resource section for this lesson on code studio)
Programming languages must necessarily define the meaning of a
set of commands which are generally useful and applicable. In order to extend
their functionality, nearly all programming languages provide a means for
defining and calling new commands which programmers design to fit the needs of
the problems they are trying to solve. Defining functions is an example of how
computer scientists use abstraction to solve problems. A programmer will design
a solution to a small, well-defined portion of the task and then give a name to
the associated code. Whenever that problem arises again, the programmer can
invoke the new function by name, without having to solve the problem again. This
ability to refer to complex functionality by simple, meaningful names allows for
programs to be written in more intuitive ways that reflect the relationships
between different blocks of code.
Programming languages will always have some commands that are
already defined, but there will be many instances when the exact command we want
isn’t available. Today we’re going to start exploring a powerful feature of
most programming languages that will allow us to overcome this issue and create
commands of our own.
Intro
to Functions Tutorial - Video
Guided
Instruction:
1)
Log
into code.org and go to Unit 3: Lesson 5.
2)
Complete
all of the programming challenges. When you have successfully completed a
challenge take a screen shot using the Snipping tool, and add to your
Engineering Notebook.
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 completion of Lesson 5
challenges.
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 College Board Explore Performance Task:
Ø
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.
Ø
Complete
your ticket to leave journal entry.
Don’t forget the Student * Faculty Basketball Game Thursday Night
Lesson 1: What is Big Data?
3.2 -
Computing facilitates exploration and the discovery of connections in
information.
3.2.2 -
Use large data sets to explore and discover information and knowledge. [P3]
7.2 -
Computing enables innovation in nearly every field.7.2.1 -
Explain how computing has impacted innovations in other fields. [P1]
7.5 -
An investigative process is aided by effective organization and selection of
resources. Appropriate technologies and tools facilitate the accessing of
information and enable the ability to evaluate the credibility of sources.7.5.2 -
Evaluate online and print sources for appropriateness and credibility [P5]
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 4: The ‘Big Data and Privacy’ tile and click
‘View course’.
Direct Instruction and
Guided Instruction:
Big data is a big deal right now, both in the field of
computer science and more broadly across fields and industries. Understanding
the types of things that can be captured in data and anticipating the types of
innovations or new knowledge that can be built upon this data is increasingly
the role of the computer scientist. A first step toward understanding big data
is a survey of how big data is already being used to learn and solve problems
across numerous disciplines. The scale of big data makes it hard to “see”
sometimes, and techniques for looking at, working with, and understanding data
change once the data is “big.” Everything, from how it’s stored to how
it’s processed to how it's visualized, is a little different once you enter
the realm of big data.
Video: Big
data is better data - TED talk - Video
Prompt: Based
on what you saw in the video, what is big data?
Part of what contributes to data being "big" is the
sheer growth of the amount of data in the world. Let’s have a look at a graph
that shows us just how large big data is.
http://www.emc.com/collateral/analyst-reports/idc-the-digital-universe-in-2020.pdf
There is a principle in computer science known as Moore's Law.
It is not a law of
nature or mathematics but simply a surprisingly accurate prediction that was
made a long time ago.
In 1965, a computer
chip designer named Gordon Moore predicted that the number of transistors one
could fit on a chip would double every 18 months or so.
Amazingly, that
prediction has more or less held true to the present day!
The result is that
since about 1970, computers have gotten twice as fast, at half the cost, roughly
every 1.5-2 years.
With some small
differences, the same is true for data storage capacity.
This is
extraordinarily fast growth - we call it exponential growth. With more and more
machines that are faster and faster, the amount of data being pushed around,
saved, and processed is growing exponentially.
This is so fast that
it's hard to fathom and even harder to plan for. For example:
Activity:
Big data surrounds us but it is sometimes surprisingly
challenging to get access to it, use it, or see it. Much of the data out there
is in the “wild.” Even when the data is “available,” it can sometimes be
challenging to figure out where it came from, or how to use it.
1)
Log into Unit 4: Lesson 1, open the Activity Guide - Big
Data Sleuth Card - Activity Guide.
, follow
the directions, complete the activity and attach to the assignment found on your
Google Classroom.
2)
Answer the following questions within your engineering notebooks:
i.
What
kinds of data are out there?
ii.
What
format does it come it?
iii.
Where
does it come from?
iv.
Did
anyone find a link to an actual data source?
v.
Did
anyone find an API? What’s an API?
Summarizer:
Mr. PC will review each day what each student accomplished and the focus of tomorrow. Wikipedia: Big Data
Assessment for/of
learning:
Students are to be assessed on the completion of this Lesson 1
activity.
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 College Board Explore Performance Task:
Ø
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.
Ø
Complete
your ticket to leave journal entry.
Thanks for a great
week!
Mr. PC
An Introduction
to Programming with the MIT App Inventor
Vocabulary:
Software Development
Environment (SDE)
Computer Programming Environment (CPE)
Programming
Language
Components
Software
Objects
Instructions
Processes
Program
Project
Built in Functions
Recursive
Commands
Repeat
Syntax
Test
Procedures
Debug
Functions
Software Bugs (Errors)
Arguments
Run or Execute
Variables
Problem Solving
Logical Thinking
Direct Instruction: Introduction to Cell Phone App Design
Setting up the APP Inventor and Emulator for Testing
You can set up App Inventor and start building apps in minutes.
The Designer and Blocks Editor now run completely in the browser (aka
the cloud). To see your app on a device while you build it (also called
"Live Testing"), you'll need to follow the steps below.
If you are using an Android device and you have
a wireless internet connection, you can
start building apps without downloading any software to your computer. You will
need to install the App Inventor Companion App for your device. Choose Option
One below. This
option is STRONGLY RECOMMENDED
For Class Use this Option: If you do not have an Android
device,
you'll need to install software on your computer so that you can use the
on-screen Android emulator. Choose Option Two below.
If you do not have a wireless internet
connection, you'll need to install software on your computer so that you
can connect to your Android device over USB. Choose Option
Three below. The
USB Connection option can be tricky, especially on Windows. Use this as a last
resort.
If you have
a computer, an Android device, and a WiFi connection, this is the easiest way to
test your apps.
If you don’t have an Android phone or tablet handy, you can
still use App Inventor. Have a class of 30 students? Have them work primarily on
emulators and share a few devices.
Note: Internet Explorer is not supported. We recommend Chrome or Firefox.
2)Check out the Designer and Blocks Editor Overview
3)Setup Review the
following Beginner Tutorials
4)Click on the Beginner Tutorial link above and follow the directions and watch the
video tutorial for the TalkToMe app.
Develop the APP and test using your cell phone Emulator.
5)Click on the Beginner Tutorial link above and follow the directions and watch the
video tutorial for the Extended TalkToMe
Shake app. Develop the APP and test
using your cell phone Emulator.
6)Click
on the Beginner Tutorials link above
and follow the directions and watch the video tutorial for the BallBounce Game app. Develop the APP and test using your cell phone
Emulator.
7)Click
on the Beginner Tutorials link above
and follow the directions and watch the video tutorial for the Digital Doodle app. Develop the APP and test using your cell phone
Emulator.
8)Click
on the Tutorial below and follow the
directions to change your TalkToText
App to the Magic 8 Ball app. Develop
the APP and test using your cell phone Emulator.
Click Here to Access Your Development Environment
Explore
Performance Task Rubric
More Resources for
finding computing innovations:
http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/
Tools
for building computing artifacts:
http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/
To Do: Create Digital
Portfolios for Performance Tasks Submissions. Our goal is to complete our
Explore Performance Task before the end of 2017.
·
Begin
preparing for the May 11th Exam with practice exam questions from AP training
google drive and the career board. Use online student response system for class
review and discussion.
Chapter 1: Representing and Transmitting Information
Big Questions
·
Why do computers use binary to represent
digital information?
·
How does data physically get from one
computer to another?
·
Are the ways data is represented and
transmitted with computers laws of nature or laws of man?
Enduring Understandings
·
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.
·
6.2 Characteristics of the Internet
influence the systems built on it.
·
7.2 Computing enables innovation in nearly
every field.
Chapter 2: Inventing the Internet
·
Who and what is “in charge” of the
Internet and how it functions?
·
How is information transmitted from one
computer to the other when they are not directly connected?
·
How can the Internet keep growing? How
does that work?
Enduring Understandings
·
2.1 A variety of abstractions built upon
binary sequences can be used to represent all digital data.
·
6.1 The Internet is a network of
autonomous systems.
·
6.2 Characteristics of the Internet
influence the systems built on it.
·
7.3 Computing has a global affect -- both
beneficial and harmful -- on people and society.
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.
Chapter 2: Manipulating and Visualizing Data
Big Questions
Enduring Understandings
UNIT 6: AP Performance Tasks
·
This unit contains lessons to help students with
preparation and execution of the AP® Performance Tasks: Create and Explore
·
The lessons in this unit are meant to be taken
piecemeal rather than as a typical unit sequence. Instead of a sequence of
connected lessons, these represent a more modular breakdown of the things you
need to do to:
1) Understand the AP Performance Tasks
2) Make a plan for completing the tasks in the
time allotted and
3) Actually doing the tasks and submitting
Online Explore Performance Task Resources:
AP CSP Course and
Exam Description
Explore
PT Prep: Reviewing the Task
Explore
Performance Task Rubric