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

Continuation of Unit 4: Big Data and Privacy

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:     Saturday November 17th @ Bay Path HS

                                      Saturday February 2nd @ Auburn HS

                                      Saturday April 6th Mock Exam @ your school

Explore Performance Task:  8 hours

To Be Completed by December 22, 2017

This Week’s Agenda:

Unit 4: Big Data and Privacy

Creation of Digital Portfolio Accounts

Unit 4 - Big Data and Privacy

In this unit students explore the technical, legal, and ethical questions that arise from computers enabling the collection and analysis of enormous amounts of data. In the first half of the unit, students learn about both the technological innovations enabled by data and the privacy and security concerns that arise from collecting it. In the second half of the unit, students learn how cryptography can be used to help protect private information in the digital age.

Chapter 1: Big Data and Privacy

Big Questions

Enduring Understandings

Unit 4 Vocabulary

Vocabulary

• Big Data: a broad term for datasets so large or complex that traditional data processing applications are inadequate.
• Moore's Law: a predication made by Gordon Moore in 1965 that computing power will double every 1.5-2 years, it has remained more or less true ever since.
• One-pager: A business/corporate term for a one-page document that summarizes a large issue, topic or plan.
• Caesar Cipher : a technique for encryption that shifts the alphabet by some number of characters
• Cipher: the generic term for a technique (or algorithm) that performs encryption
• Cracking encryption: When you attempt to decode a secret message without knowing all the specifics of the cipher, you are trying to "crack" the encryption.
• Decryption: a process that reverses encryption, taking a secret message and reproducing the original plain text
• Encryption: a process of encoding messages to keep them secret, so only "authorized" parties can read it.
• Random Substitution Cipher: an encryption technique that maps each letter of the alphabet to a randomly chosen other letters of the alphabet.
• Computationally Hard: a "hard' problem for a computer is one in which it cannot arrive at a solution in a reasonable amount of time.
• asymmetric encryption: used in public key encryption, it is scheme in which the key to encrypt data is different from the key to decrypt.
• modulo: a mathematical operation that returns the remainder after integer division. Example: 7 MOD 4 = 3
• Private Key: In an asymmetric encryption scheme the decryption key is kept private and never shared, so only the intended recipient has the ability to decrypt a message that has been encrypted with a public key.
• Public Key Encryption: Used prevalently on the web, it allows for secure messages to be sent between parties without having to agree on, or share, a secret key. It uses an asymmetric encryption scheme in which the encryption key is made public, but the decryption key is kept private.
• Antivirus Software: usually keeps big lists of known viruses and scans your computer looking for the virus programs in order to get rid of them.
• DDoS Attack: Distributed Denial of Service Attack. Typically a virus installed on many computers (thousands) activate at the same time and flood a target with traffic to the point the server becomes overwhelmed.
• Firewall: software that runs on servers (often routers) that only allows traffic through according to some set of security rules.
• Phishing Scam: a thief trying to trick you into sending them sensitive information. Typically these include emails about system updates asking you send your username and password, social security number or other things.
• SSL/TLS: Secure Sockets layer / Transport Layer Security - An encryption layer of HTTP that uses public key cryptography to establish a secure connection.
• Virus: a program that runs on a computer to do something the owner of the computer does not intend.

Explore - AP Performance Task Prep

·         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

Monday Day G - 11-5-18 – Friday Day C – 11-9-18

Monday Day G - 11-5-18

NOTE: Make sure you have attached your one-pager data innovation project to the assignment on your Google Classroom!

Lesson 5: Identifying People with Data

Standards Alignment

CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards

Computer Science Principles

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]

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

3.3.1 - Analyze how data representation, storage, security, and transmission of data involve computational manipulation of information. [P4]

7.3 - Computing has a global affect -- both beneficial and harmful -- on people and society.

7.3.1 - Analyze the beneficial and harmful effects of computing. [P4]

Objectives

Students will be able to:

• Explain privacy concerns that arise through the mass collection of data
• Use online search tools to find and connect information about a person or topic of interest.
• Explain how multiple sources of data can be combined in order to uncover new knowledge or information.
• Analyze the personal privacy and security concerns that arise with any use of computational systems.

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:

While there are many potential benefits associated with the collection and analysis of large amounts of data, these advances pose a constant risk to our collective security and privacy. Large-scale data breaches mean that the details of our personal, professional, and financial lives may be at risk. In order to prevent personal data from being linked to an individual person, personally identifying information, such as name, address, or identification number, is often removed from publicly available data. Nevertheless, through the use of computational analysis, it is often possible to “re-identify” individuals within data, based on seemingly innocuous information. As more of our lives is digitized, questions of security and privacy become ever more prevalent.

1)  Review  World's Biggest Data Breaches Visualization - Web Site 

2)  Within your engineering notebooks take notes about the following:

What kind of data is being lost? And how much?

What kinds of issues could arise from this data getting into the wrong hands?

3)  Share findings with rest of the class.

We’ve spent a lot of time looking at potential benefits of collecting and analyzing data. As we’ve already seen today, however, there are some risks associated with collecting all of this information. If it falls into the wrong hands or is used in ways we didn’t intend, there may be serious risks imposed on our privacy or security. We’re going to start looking more deeply at this problem.

Guided Instruction:

Log into code.org and go to Unit 4: Lesson 5.

Data Privacy Lab: How easily can you be identified?

In the data breaches we just looked at, some fairly important pieces of information were stolen. Credit card numbers, passport information, or government security clearances are obviously not something we’d like to fall into the wrong hands. Other pieces of information, however, don’t seem that bad. So what if people know your ZIP code? So what if people know your birthday? This is information we usually share without a second thought.

• Go to the Data Privacy Lab - Web Site.
• Type in your information (birthday, ZIP code, and gender) to determine how many other people share those characteristics.
• Take a screenshot of the results and add to your engineering notebook then add a response to the following prompt:

Thinking Prompt:

• "Why is it significant that you are one of only a few people with your birthday, gender, and ZIP code? What concerns does this raise?"

4)  Open the following Guide as found on code.org and complete the exercise on researching yourself. Once completed submit to the assignment found on your google classroom:

Activity Guide - Research Yourself - Activity Guide.

5)  On code.org complete the assessment question at the end of lesson 5.

6)  With any time you have left go to Lesson 6: The Cost of Free, and review the information provided.

7)  If you finish and have time you should review the information listed in Homework below in preparation for your EPT for the College Board.

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 all tasks associated with this Lesson.

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:

1)   Complete your ticket to leave journal entry.

2)   Make sure you begin to search for a computing innovation that you will use for your college board Explore Performance task that allows you to meet and be able to submit all requirements of the task.  Make sure data is computed by your computing innovation, that you can identify beneficial and potential harmful effects of the innovation in society, culture, or the economy, and data security and/or storage concerns can be identified.

Tuesday Day H - 11-6-18

Russ DeSimone from Johnson and Wales is coming to visit!

Lesson 7: Simple Encryption

Standards Alignment

CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards

CI - Community, Global, and Ethical Impacts

CL – Collaboration

CPP - Computing Practice & Programming

CT - Computational Thinking

Computer Science Principles

1.2 - Computing enables people to use creative development processes to create computational artifacts for creative expression or to solve a problem.

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

6.3 - Cybersecurity is an important concern for the Internet and the systems built on it.

7.3 - Computing has a global affect -- both beneficial and harmful -- on people and society.

Objectives

Students will be able to:

• Explain why encryption is an important need for everyday life on the Internet.
• Crack a message encrypted with a Caesar cipher using a Caesar Cipher Widget
• Crack a message encrypted with random substitution using Frequency Analysis
• Explain the weaknesses and security flaws of substitution ciphers

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:

Vocabulary

• Caesar Cipher - a technique for encryption that shifts the alphabet by some number of characters
• Cipher - the generic term for a technique (or algorithm) that performs encryption
• Cracking encryption - When you attempt to decode a secret message without knowing all the specifics of the cipher, you are trying to "crack" the encryption.
• Decryption - a process that reverses encryption, taking a secret message and reproducing the original plain text
• Encryption - a process of encoding messages to keep them secret, so only "authorized" parties can read it.
• Random Substitution Cipher - an encryption technique that maps each letter of the alphabet to a randomly chosen other letters of the alphabet.

The critical role of encryption in everyday life

"In your daily life what things do you or other people rely on keeping a secret? Who are these secrets being kept from? How are these things kept secret?"

Secrecy is a critical part of our lives, in ways big and small. As our lives increasingly are conducted on the Internet, we want to be sure we can maintain the privacy of our information and control who has access to privileged information.

Digital commerce, business, government operations, and even social networks all rely on our ability to keep information from falling into the wrong hands.

Recall: As we saw with our activities on the Internet Simulator the internet is NOT secure

• We need a way to send secret messages...
• Packets traveling across the Internet move through many routers, each of which could be owned by different people or organizations.
• So we should assume all information traveling across the Internet to be public, as if written on a postcard and sent through the mail.

Classic Encryption - The Caesar Cipher

Many of the ideas we use to keep secrets in the digital age are far older than the Internet. The process of encoding a plain text message in some secret way is called Encryption

For example in Roman times Julius Caesar is reported to have encrypted messages to his soldiers and generals by using a simple alphabetic shift - every character was encrypted by substituting it with a character that was some fixed number of letters away in the alphabet.

As a result an alphabetic shift is often referred to as the Caesar Cipher.

Prompt:

• This message was encrypted using a Caesar Cipher (an "alphabetic shift").
• Let's see how long it takes you to decode this message (remember it's just a shifting of the alphabet): Put your answer within your Engineering Notebook!

serr cvmmn va gur pnsrgrevn

HINT:

• Find a small word and try alphabetic shifts until it's clear that it's an English word
• Remember the letters aren't randomly substituted - the alphabet is just shifted.
• Once you have found the amount of shift the rest comes easily.

With this simple encryption technique it only took a few minutes to decode a small message. What if the message were longer BUT you had a computational tool to help you?!

Guided Instruction:

1)   Log into code.org and go to Unit 4: Lesson 7.

2)   Complete all the challenges provided in this lesson and enter your work into your engineering notebooks. Attach completed activity guides to the assignment found on your Google Classroom.

3)   Complete the Assessment for this Lesson within Code.org

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 all tasks associated with this Lesson. All work should be provided within your engineering notebook in order to receive credit.

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:

1)   Complete your ticket to leave journal entry.

2)   Make sure you begin to search for a computing innovation that you will use for your college board Explore Performance task that allows you to meet and be able to submit all requirements of the task.  Make sure data is computed by your computing innovation, that you can identify beneficial and potential harmful effects of the innovation in society, culture, or the economy, and data security and/or storage concerns can be identified.

Wednesday Day A - 11-7-18 and Thursday Day B – 11-8-18

Lesson 8: Encryption with Keys and Passwords

Standards Alignment

CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards

CPP - Computing Practice & Programming

CT - Computational Thinking

Computer Science Principles

2.3 - Models and simulations use abstraction to generate new understanding and knowledge.

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

4.2 - Algorithms can solve many but not all computational problems.

6.3 - Cybersecurity is an important concern for the Internet and the systems built on it.

Objectives

Students will be able to:

• Explain the relationship between cryptographic keys and passwords.
• Explain in broad terms what makes a key difficult to “crack.”
• Reason about strong vs. weak passwords using a tool that shows password strength.
• Understand that exponential growth is related to an encryption algorithm’s strength.
• Explain how and why the Vigenère cipher is a stronger form of encryption than plain substitution.
• Explain properties that make for a good key when using the Vigenère Cipher.

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:

Vocabulary

• Computationally Hard - a "hard' problem for a computer is one in which it cannot arrive at a solution in a reasonable amount of time.

In the previous lesson you saw how relatively easy it was to crack a substitution cipher with a computational tool.

Today we’ll try to crack a different code to see what it’s like. Beforehand, however, we should consider why someone might want to crack a cipher in the first place.

"Are there ethical reasons to try to crack secret codes?" – Write your responses within your Engineering Notebook

Today, we will attempt to crack codes, paying particular attention to the processes and algorithms that we use to do so.

So, before starting today we want to make sure that we distinguish between an encryption algorithm and an encryption key

• An Encryption algorithm is some method of doing encryption.
• The Encryption key is a specific input that dictates how to apply the method and can also be used to decrypt the message. Some people might say "What is the key to unlocking this message?"

For example:

• The Caesar Cipher is an encryption algorithm that involves shifting the alphabet
• The amount of alphabetic shift used to encode the message is the key
• When you are cracking the Caesar Cipher you are trying to figure out how much the alphabet was shifted - you are trying to discover the key.

So, There is a difference between the algorithm (how to execute the encryption and decryption) and key (the secret piece of information).

• In encryption you should always assume that your 'enemy' knows the encryption algorithm and has access to the same tools that you do.

• What makes encryption REALLY strong is making it hard to guess or crack the “key,” even if the “enemy” knows the encryption technique you're using.

Today we’ll learn a little more about it and about keys and their relationship to passwords you use every day.

Guided Instruction:

1)   Log into code.org and go to Unit 4: Lesson 8.

2)   Complete all the challenges provided in this lesson and enter your work into your engineering notebooks. Attach completed activity guides to the assignment found on your Google Classroom.

3)   Complete the Assessment for this Lesson within Code.org

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 all tasks associated with this Lesson.

• People in the field of counterterrorism make a living by trying to crack the codes of other nations. Many attribute the success of the Allies in WWII to our ability to crack the Enigma code and uncover the plans of the Germans.
• Others may try to crack more abstract codes that are not written by humans, searching for patterns within DNA models in order to understand their nature and be able to describe the nature of humanity.
• It’s useful to try to crack your own codes to see how strong they really are.
• There are many other reasons related to mathematical exploration, pattern recognition, etc.

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:

1)   Complete your ticket to leave journal entry.

2)   Make sure you begin to search for a computing innovation that you will use for your college board Explore Performance task that allows you to meet and be able to submit all requirements of the task.  Make sure data is computed by your computing innovation, that you can identify beneficial and potential harmful effects of the innovation in society, culture, or the economy, and data security and/or storage concerns can be identified.

Friday Day C – 11-9-18

Make sure to create College Board Digital Portfolio Account

Objectives

Students will be able to:

• Access their AP CSP Digital Portfolios and use the provided tools for submitting their Performance Tasks.

Direct Instruction and Guided Instruction:

1)    Preparation of your AP CSP Digital Portfolios: Click on the link below.

Student Digital Portfolio Guide – Save a copy of the Student Digital Portfolio Guide to your Google Drive

Ø  Please review the Student Digital Portfolio Guide and follow the directions for setting up your digital portfolio for your AP CSP course. Thanks.

2)  Complete all lessons and activities from this week.

3)  Make sure you have a computing innovation ready for the college board Explore Performance Task beginning soon!

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:

1)   Complete your ticket to leave journal entry.

2)   Make sure you begin to search for a computing innovation that you will use for your college board Explore Performance task that allows you to meet and be able to submit all requirements of the task.  Make sure data is computed by your computing innovation, that you can identify beneficial and potential harmful effects of the innovation in society, culture, or the economy, and data security and/or storage concerns can be identified.

Thanks for a great week!

Mr. PC 

Online Explore Performance Task Resources:

• Explore PT Planning Organizer - High Resolution PDF
• Explore PT Survival Guide - Student Guide Make a Copy 
• AP CSP Performance Task Directions for Students - College Board Student Handout
• Explore Performance Task - Scoring Guidelines 2018 - College Board Doc

AP CSP Performance Task Directions for Students - College Board Student Handout

• Explore - Samples

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/

Tools for building computing artifacts:

https://sites.google.com/view/cool-tools-for-schools/home

To Do: Create Digital Portfolios for Performance Tasks Submissions. Our goal is to complete our Explore Performance Task before the end of 2018.

UNIT 1 Overview: The Internet:

This unit explores the technical challenges and questions that arise from the need to represent digital information in computers and transfer it between people and computational devices. The unit then explores the structure and design of the internet and the implications of those design decisions.

In this unit students learn how computers represent all kinds of information and how the Internet allows that information to be shared with millions of people.

The first chapter explores the challenges and questions that arise when representing information in a computer or sending it from one computer to another. It begins by investigating why on-off signals, also known as binary signals, are used to represent information in a computer. It then introduces the way common information types like text and numbers are represented using these binary signals. Finally, it illustrates the importance of establishing shared communication rules, or protocols, for successfully sending and receiving information.

In the second chapter, students learn how the design of the internet allows information to be shared across billions of people and devices. Making frequent use of the Internet Simulator, they explore the problems the original designers of the internet had to solve and then students “invent” solutions. To conclude the unit, students research a modern social dilemma driven by the ubiquity of internet and the way it works.

Chapter 1: Representing and Transmitting Information

Big Questions

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.

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.

Unit 1: Chapter 2: Inventing the Internet

Big Questions

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.

This unit explores the way large and complex pieces of digital information are stored in computers and the associated challenges. Through a mix of online research and interactive widgets, students learn about foundational topics like compression, image representation, and the advantages and disadvantages of different file formats. To conclude the unit, students research the history and characteristics of a real-world file format.

Chapter 1: Digital Information

Big Questions

Enduring Understandings

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 may 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.

Unit 3 - Intro to Programming

In Unit 3, students explore the fundamental topics of programming, algorithms, and abstraction as they learn to programmatically draw pictures in App Lab. An unplugged sequence at the beginning of the unit highlights the need for programming languages as well as the creativity involved in designing algorithms. Students then begin working in App Lab where they use simple commands to draw shapes and images using a virtual “turtle.” As they’re introduced to more complex commands and programming constructs, students learn to break down programming problems into manageable chunks. The unit ends with a collaborative project to design a digital scene.

Chapter 1: Intro to Programming

Big Questions

Enduring Understandings

Unit 3 Vocabulary

Vocabulary

• Algorithm: A precise sequence of instructions for processes that can be executed by a computer
• High Level Programming Language: A programming language with many commands and features designed to make common tasks easier to program. Any high level functionality is encapsulated as combinations of low level commands.
• Low Level Programming Language: A programming language that captures only the most primitive operations available to a machine. Anything that a computer can do can be represented with combinations of low level commands.
• Iterate: To repeat in order to achieve, or get closer to, a desired goal.
• Selection: A generic term for a type of programming statement (usually an if-statement) that uses a Boolean condition to determine, or select, whether or not to run a certain block of statements.
• Sequencing: Putting commands in correct order so computers can read the commands.
• Pair Programming: A method of programming in which two programmers write code using a single computer. One programmer in the "driver" role uses the mouse and keyboard to actually write the code while a second acts as a "navigator", keeping track of the big picture, catching errors, and making suggestions. Programmers switch roles frequently and communicate throughout the process.
• Turtle Programming: a classic method for learning programming with commands to control movement and drawing of an on-screen robot called a "turtle". The turtle hearkens back to early implementations in which children programmed a physical robot whose dome-like shape was reminiscent of a turtle.
• Function: A named group of programming instructions. Functions are reusable abstractions that reduce the complexity of writing and maintaining programs.
• Top Down Design: a problem solving approach (also known as stepwise design) in which you break down a system to gain insight into the sub-systems that make it up.
• API: a collection of commands made available to a programmer
• Documentation: a description of the behavior of a command, function, library, API, etc.
• Hexadecimal: A base-16 number system that uses sixteen distinct symbols 0-9 and A-F to represent numbers from 0 to 15.
• Library: a collection of commands / functions, typically with a shared purpose
• Parameter: An extra piece of information passed to a function to customize it for a specific need
• For Loop: Loops that have a predetermined beginning, end, and increment (step interval).
• Loop: The action of doing something over and over again.