Welcome to
AP Computer Science Principles
Welcome
Back!
Congratulations
on the completion of your Explore Performance Task!
Continuation
of Unit 3: Programming and Algorithms
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 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:
Continuation
of Unit 3: Programming and Algorithms
Engineering
Notebook Daily Entries
Create
Performance Task and College Board Exam Preparation
Wednesday
Day G - 1-2-19 – Friday Day A 1–4-19
Lesson
6: Functions and Top-Down Design
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]
2.2.3 -
Identify multiple levels of abstractions that are used when writing programs.
[P3]
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]
5.3 -
Programming is facilitated by appropriate abstractions.
5.3.1 -
Use abstraction to manage complexity in programs. [P3]
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:
AP CSP 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)
A technique for deciding what functions you should write is to
look at the problem with a "top-down design" perspective. The process
of creating software begins long before the first lines of code are written.
Breaking a problem down into layers of sub-tasks, and writing well-named
functions that solve those tasks is a creative act of abstraction. It also leads
to good code that is more efficient, easier to read, and therefore easier to
debug when problems arise.
In professional settings, teams of people first identify the
problems and sub-problems the particular software will be addressing and how it
will be used. This approach to designing software is critical when facing
large-scale programming tasks. Once the problem is well understood, it can be
broken into parts that teams or individual programmers can begin to work on
solving at the same time. Full software systems take advantage of the power of
abstraction; each programmer in a team can write code, assuming the sub-problems
will be solved and written by other teammates.
Recall:
In the previous lesson we wrote a program that used layers of
functions (functions that called other functions) to get the turtle to draw a
diamond-shaped figure.
Prompt:
"Imagine that you have two programs that drew the
diamond-shaped figure. One program uses functions as we did in the previous
lesson. The other doesn’t use functions; it’s just a long sequence of the
turtle’s primitive commands. Which program is more efficient? Make an argument
for why one is more efficient than the other."
Discuss:
Have students briefly share their arguments for one program over
the other:
Transition: Efficiency
is an interesting thing to think about, but functions also introduce the ability
to leverage the power of abstraction: when we write a function, it solves a
small piece of a bigger problem. Having the small problem solved allows us to
ignore its details and focus on bigger problems or tasks.
Today we’ll get more practice with thinking about how to break
problems down into useful functions.
Review
this Explanation of Top-Down Design
Guided
Instruction:
1)
Log
into code.org and go to Unit 3: Lesson 6.
2)
Open
the Top-Down
Design - Worksheet
a.
Students
should work in pairs.
b.
Read
the first page of the worksheet that describes the top-down problem solving
process.
c.
Design
a solution to the problem on the second page by writing down the functions they
would write to solve the problem.
d.
After
a pair has come up with a solution on paper, compare with another group to see
similarities and differences.
3)
Go
into Code Studio for Lesson 6
4)
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.
5)
Complete
the AP Practice Response exercise after you have completed your programming
challenges.
6)
Mr.
PC will come around to make sure everyone understands the concepts of
abstraction and Top Down Design. Remember! For both programming challenges 2 and
3 you should be able to call one function which completes the programming tasks.
There should be no stand alone commands. Very
important prior to moving on and preparing for our Create Performance Task!
7)
Complete
the lesson assessment
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 6
challenges and assessment exercises. All information should be completed online
within code.org. Thanks
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.
Lesson
7: APIs and Using Functions with Parameters
CL -
Collaboration
AP - Algorithms & Programming
2.2 -
Multiple levels of abstraction are used to write programs or create other
computational artifacts
2.2.2 - Use
multiple levels of abstraction to write programs. [P3]
2.2.3 -
Identify multiple levels of abstractions that are used when writing programs.
[P3]
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]
5.3 -
Programming is facilitated by appropriate abstractions.
5.3.1 - Use
abstraction to manage complexity in programs. [P3]
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:
An API is a reference guide which catalogs and explains the
functionality of a programming language. If a programmer develops the practice
of referencing an API, she can make full use of that functionality without
undergoing the tedium of memorizing every detail of the language. In today’s
lesson, students will need to read through the API in order to find and
understand new commands for moving the turtle, selecting colors, and drawing
different-sized dots and lines on the screen. Students should not necessarily
understand every command in the drawing API in detail, but they should be
familiar with referencing the API as a standard part of the process of writing a
program. This will also be the first time students are given access to drawing
functions that take parameters (e.g., moveForward(40) vs. moveForward()).
So far in this unit we have been exploring programming by drawing
turtle art with only a few commands. It will probably not surprise you to learn
that there are many more commands included in most programming languages,
including the version of JavaScript included in App Lab. In fact, most
programming languages include hundreds if not thousands of commands.
Thinking
Prompt:
"Do you think programmers memorize all of the commands in a
programming language? If not, how is anyone ever able to use an entire
programming language?"
Guided
Instruction:
Programmers weren’t born knowing how a programming language
works, and, like you and me, they don’t have perfect memories. Instead they
rely on written documentation to help them learn new features of a language and
recall how it works. Today we are going to be exploring how useful documentation
can be when learning a programming language or just writing software.
At end of the day we
hope to be much more talented turtle artists, but we’re also going to be
learning another important skill: reading the documentation of a programming
language.
Before you ask me or a
classmate for help today, I want you to read through the documentation, try the
examples, talk with friends, and then talk to me. It may be slower going today,
but in the long term it will make you much more confident programmers.
1)
Log
into code.org and go to Unit 3: Lesson 7.
2)
Complete
all of the programming challenges. Make sure to read all documentation for the
given API before attempting to use. When you have successfully completed a
challenge take a screen shot using the Snipping tool, and add to your
Engineering Notebook.
3)
Complete
the practice written response in order to begin preparing for the Create
Performance Task
4)
Complete
the lesson assessment
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 7
challenges and assessment exercises. All information should be completed online
within code.org. Thanks
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.
Lesson
8: Creating Functions with Parameters
CL -
Collaboration
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:
Writing functions with parameters is a simple idea, but it
traditionally has some devilish details for new learners of programming. The
basic idea is that you often want to write a function that takes some input and
performs some action based on that input. For example, the turtle function
moveForward is much more useful when you can specify how much to move forward
(e.g., moveForward(100)), rather than just a fixed amount every time. It’s
very common to encounter situations where as a programmer you realize that you
basically need a duplicate of some code you’ve already got, but you just want
to change some numbers. That’s a good time to write a function with a
parameter; the parameter just acts as a placeholder for some value that you plug
in at the time you call the function. Just like it’s considered good practice
to give descriptive names to your functions, the same is true for the names of
the parameters themselves. For example: drawSquare(sideLength) is
better than drawSquare(stuff).
In the previous
lesson, we learned to use a lot of new turtle commands. Some of these commands
accept a parameter, or even many parameters, which allow us to pass values to
the function. This allowed us to make much more interesting images by specifying
precisely how far the turtle should move or turn, and introduced the ability to
choose specific pen sizes and colors.
Parameters are a
powerful programming construct.
This is clearly a
useful construct to use in our programs, and in today’s lesson we’re going
to learn how to create functions with parameters for ourselves.
Guided
Instruction:
1)
Log
into code.org and go to Unit 3: Lesson 8.
2)
Complete
all of the programming challenges. Make sure to read all documentation for the
given API before attempting to use. When you have successfully completed a
challenge take a screen shot using the Snipping tool, and add to your
Engineering Notebook.
3)
Complete
the practice written response in order to begin preparing for the Create
Performance Task
4)
Complete
the lesson assessment
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 8
challenges and assessment exercises. All information should be completed online
within code.org. Thanks
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.
Thanks for a great
week!
Mr. PC
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
Ř
Please
review the Student Digital Portfolio Guide and follow the directions for setting
up your digital portfolio for your AP CSP course. Thanks.
Online Explore Performance Task Resources:
AP CSP Performance
Task Directions for Students - College Board Student Handout
Explore
Performance Task Rubric
More Resources for
finding computing innovations:
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
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
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
Unit
3 Vocabulary
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.
Unit
4 Vocabulary
AP CSP Week 1 Agenda AP CSP Week 3 Agenda AP CSP Week 6 Agenda AP CSP Week 8 Agenda AP CSP Week 10 Agenda AP CSP Week 12 Agenda AP CSP Week 14 Agenda AP CSP Week 16 Agenda