Good job on your Unit 1 Chapter 2 Assessment!

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

Introduction to 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. 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:

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.

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

Tuesday Day D - 10-9-18 – Friday Day G – 10-12-2018

Tuesday Day D - 10-9-18

Lesson 1 – Bytes and File Sizes

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’.

Direct Instruction: 

As we embark on a new unit about Data and Digital Information we need to get familiar with terminology about data and different types of data files.

Terminology - Byte

Recall that a single character of ASCII text requires 8 bits. The technical term for 8 bits of data is a Byte.

A byte is the standard fundamental unit (or “chunk size”) underlying most computing systems today. You may have heard “megabyte”, “kilobyte”, “gigabyte”, etc. which are all different amounts of a bytes. We’re going to learn more about them today.

Compare sizes of plain text v. MS Word doc

Introduction:

Recall In a previous lesson (Unit 1 - Sending Formatted Text) we learned that in addition to the actual text of a document, it is usually necessary to store the formatting information that allows the text to be displayed correctly. We might wonder just how much extra information, i.e. how many extra bytes, we need to store when we include all of this formatting. Let’s find out!

If a single ASCII character is one byte then if we were to store the word “hello” in a plain ASCII text file in a computer, we would expect it to require 5 bytes (or 40 bits) of memory.

What about a Microsoft Word document that contains the single word “hello”?

Predict: “How many more bytes will a Word document require to store the word “hello” than a plain text document?”

Guided Instruction:

1)   Log into code.org and go to Unit 2 Lesson 1. Click on the activity Guide and make a copy.

2)   In pairs research and provide answers to the worksheet and attach the activity guide to the corresponding assignment within your AP CSP Google classroom.

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:

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 E - 10-10-18

Lesson 2 – Text Compression 

Standards Alignment

CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards

CL - Collaboration

• CL.L2:3 - Collaborate with peers, experts and others using collaborative practices such as pair programming, working in project teams and participating in-group active learning activities.

CPP - Computing Practice & Programming

• CPP.L2:4 - Demonstrate an understanding of algorithms and their practical application.

CT - Computational Thinking

• CT.L2:9 - Interact with content-specific models and simulations (e.g., ecosystems, epidemics, molecular dynamics) to support learning and research.
• CT.L3B:8 - Use models and simulations to help formulate, refine, and test scientific hypotheses.
• CT.L3B:9 - Analyze data and identify patterns through modeling and simulation.

Computer Science Principles

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

2.2 - Multiple levels of abstraction are used to write programs or create other computational artifacts

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

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

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

4.2.1 - Explain the difference between algorithms that run in a reasonable time and those that do not run in a reasonable time. [P1]

4.2.3 - Explain the existence of undecidable problems in computer science. [P1]

4.2.4 - Evaluate algorithms analytically and empirically for efficiency, correctness, and clarity. [P4]

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.

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: 

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.

• Today’s class is about compression
• When you abbreviate or use coded language to shorten the original text, you are “compressing text.” Computers do this too, in order to save time and space.

• The art and science of compression is about figuring out how to represent the SAME DATA with FEWER BITS.

• Why is this important? One reason is that storage space is limited and you’d always prefer to use fewer bits if you could. A much more compelling reason is that there is an upper limit to how fast bits can be transmitted over the Internet.

• What if we need to send a large amount of text faster over the Internet, but we’ve reached the physical limit of how fast we can send bits? Our only choice is to somehow capture the same information with fewer bits; we call this compression.
• Display the Activity guide: Decode this message - Activity Guide
• Put students into partners or work individually.
• Task: What was the original text?
• Give students a few minutes to decode the text. The text should be a short poem 

Guided Instruction:

1)   Now you’re going to get to try your hand at compressing some things on your own.

2)   Use the Text Compression Widget

3)   Mr. PC will assign teams of 2

4)   Each team will open both of the compression activity guides, complete the exercises, and attach the completed guides to the corresponding assignment within your Google Classroom.

5)   Watch the following video: Video: Text Compression with Aloe Blacc - Video

6)  Make sure to complete the end of lesson assessments within code.org

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:

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.

Thursday Day F - 10-11-18 and Friday Day G - 10-12-18

Lesson 4: Encoding Color Images

Standards Alignment

CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards

CL – Collaboration

CPP - Computing Practice & Programming

CT - Computational Thinking

Computer Science Principles

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

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

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.

2.2 - Multiple levels of abstraction are used to write programs or create other computational artifacts

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

        2.3.1 - Use models and simulations to represent phenomena. [P3]

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

          3.1.1 - Use computers to process information, find patterns, and test hypotheses about digitally

                      processed information to gain insight and knowledge. [P4]

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

          3.1.3 - Explain the insight and knowledge gained from digitally processed data by using appropriate

                     visualizations, notations, and precise language. [P5]

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

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

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:

Vocabulary

• Hexadecimal - A base-16 number system that uses sixteen distinct symbols 0-9 and A-F to represent numbers from 0 to 15.
• Pixel - short for "picture element", the fundamental unit of a digital image, typically a tiny square or dot that 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.

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:

o     Personal Favicon Project - Activity Guide 

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

o    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.

o    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://www.favicon.cc/
• 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:

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

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.