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This activity provides several ways to introduce students to databases, with follow-up lesson extensions for increasing database understanding. 

This report gives details of a series of computing lessons designed to relate fundamental concepts of database use and design to children in Primary and Secondary Education (ages of 6 to 16). The skills and concepts developed in these lessons begin at a very simple level but progress to cover abstract concepts such as Relational Databases. The series has been aligned to match the scope, range and targets recommended in the Computing At Schools document A Curriculum for Computing.

Contents:

• Human Branching Databases
• Human Databases: Introduction
• Human Databases: Intermediate
• Human Databases: Advanced
• Databases: Plugged-in
• Relational Databases: Introduction
• Philosophy of Computing: Introduction to databases

This activity concludes with a “plugged-in” activity using a database system. The Digital Schoolhouse Database Detectives lesson is aimed at Key Stage 2 pupils and based on the book Certain Death by Tanya Landman. Before completing the series of database unplugged activities, the class teacher is encouraged to read the book (except the last chapter) and complete a series of encryption activities loosely based on the book, the answers providing pupils with the clues to question the database and identify the murderer.

Pupils use cloud computing technology e.g. Google Documents: Spreadsheets, to collaboratively input data about the suspects from profile cards based on the book. Pupils then perform verification on their neighbor’s data entry before downloading the spreadsheet and importing it into Microsoft Access. After importing the data, pupils first use the filter tool to solve the murder using the answers from the numeracy challenges, then create a report for the Court based on a query identifying the murderer.

Denial of Service (DOS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks take down servers by distracting them with meaningless traffic until they grind to a halt. Scientology, Westboro Baptist Church, and other controversial organizations have been hit by this form of attack. This video discusses how the way we talk about the results of a software program -- words like "attack" -- reflects how we view the online world.

Students will use the design circuit boards and create an app of their own design.

Note: You will need to create a free account on code.org before you can view this resource.

Software failures happen all the time. Sometimes it’s a little bug that makes a program difficult to use; other times an error might crash your entire computer. Some software failures are more spectacular than others.

In 1996, The ARIANE 5 rocket of the European Space Agency was launched for its first test flight: Countdown, ignition, flame and smoke, soaring rocket... then BANG! Lots of little pieces scattered through the South American rainforest. Investigators had to piece together what happened and finally tracked down this tiny, irrelevant bug. A piece of software onboard the rocket which was not even needed had reported a value that was too big to be stored. An error was stored instead, but other software interpreted the error as saying the rocket was 90 degrees off course. Thankfully, no one was on board but the failure still caused about $370 million of damage.

Software engineering is all about how we can create software despite this enormous size and complexity while hopefully get a working product in the end. It was first introduced as a topic of computer science in the 1960s during the so-called "software crisis" when people realized that the capability of hardware was increasing at incredible speeds while our ability to develop software is staying pretty much the same.

As the name software engineering suggests, we are taking ideas and processes from other engineering disciplines (such as building bridges or computer hardware) and applying them to software. Having a structured process in place for developing software turns out to be hugely important because it allows us to manage the size and complexity of software. As a result of advances in software engineering, there are many success stories of large and complex software products that work well and contain few bugs. For example, Google's huge projects (Google search, Gmail, etc.) are built by teams of thousands of engineers, yet they still manage to create software that does what it should.

Reading and creating comic strips and comic books are engaging ways to promote literacy at any grade level and across content areas. The students in this video are members of a high school comic book club and have access to drawing tablets and Adobe Photoshop, so they can achieve sophisticated results. Even without such software, however, teachers can still integrate digital comics into a wide range of teaching situations. This video comes with several support materials that include video discussion questions and project suggestions.

There are a number of comic books, especially contemporary ones, that are not “school appropriate,” so you might want to guide students’ web research on comic books. 

As our students create more and more digital products—blog posts, videos, podcasts, e-books—they should be using images to enhance them. Images grab an audience’s attention, they can illustrate key concepts, set a certain tone, and present a more complete understanding of the ideas you’re putting out there.

And the internet is absolutely teeming with images students can grab and use in a matter of seconds. But in most cases, they SHOULD NOT GRAB. Despite the fact that these images are easy to get, using them may be illegal.

Use the information in this blog post to teach students to either create their own images or legally use images found online, including proper citation. 

In this video segment from FRONTLINE: "Digital Nation" teens talk about why they use social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. This video comes with discussion questions.

Students learn to draw images by looping simple sequences of instructions. In the previous online lesson, loops were used to traverse a maze and collect treasure. Here, students use loops to create patterns. At the end of this stage, students will be given the opportunity to create their own images using loops.

This lesson gives a different perspective on how loops can create things in programming. Students will test their critical thinking skills by evaluating given code and determining what needs to be added in order to solve the puzzle. Students can also reflect on the inefficiency of programming without loops here because of how many blocks the program would require without the help of repeat loops.

Students will be able to:
- Count the number of times an action should be repeated and represent it as a loop.
- Decompose a shape into its largest repeatable sequence.
- Create a program that draws complex shapes by repeating simple sequences.

Note: You must create a free account to access and use this resource. 

Your challenge is to open the Cyber Safe by completing Quests to help make the connection between the real world and the digital world. The decisions made in your digital world affect you as much as those made in the real world. In fact, your digital decisions and behaviors can affect you more and for longer than decisions made in the real world--even with prospective employers and college applications!

Earn your Cyber Safety Expert badge by successfully completing the Quests and cracking the cyber safe.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

When you have completed this activity you will:

1. know how to be safe while on the Internet [Digital Citizen]

2. understand online etiquette [Digital Citizen]

3. understand the impact of online bullying [Digital Citizen]

Today, Carrie Anne is going to take a look at how those transistors we talked about during the last episode can be used to perform complex actions. With just two states, on and off, the flow of electricity can be used to perform a number of logical operations, which are guided by a branch of mathematics called Boolean Algebra. We’re going to focus on three fundamental operations - NOT, AND, and OR - and show how they were created in a series of really useful circuits. These simple electrical circuits lay the groundwork for our much more complex machines.

In this lesson, students will begin to explore the way digital images are encoded in binary.

Note: You will need to create a free account on code.org before you can view this resource.

Computer programs often need to process a sequence of symbols such as letters or words in a document, or even the text of another computer program. Computer scientists often use a finite-state automaton to do this. A finite-state automaton (FSA) follows a set of instructions to see if the computer will recognize the word or string of symbols. We will be working with something equivalent to a FSA—treasure maps!

The goal of the students is to find Treasure Island. Friendly pirate ships sail along a fixed set of routes between the islands in this part of the world, offering rides to travelers. Each island has two departing ships, A and B, which you can choose to travel on. You need to find the best route to Treasure Island. At each island you arrive at you may ask for either ship A or B (not both). The person at the island will tell you where your ship will take you to next, but the pirates don’t have a map of all the islands available. Use your map to keep track of where you are going and which ship you have traveled on.

So, we’ve talked about computer memory a couple of times in this series, but what we haven’t talked about is storage. Data written to storage, like your hard drive, is a little different because it will still be there even if the power goes out - this is known as non-volatile memory. Today we’re going to trace the history of these storage technologies from punch cards, delay line memory, core memory, magnetic tape, and magnetic drums, to floppy disks, hard disk drives, CDs, and solid-state drives. Initially, volatile memory, like RAM was much faster than these non-volatile storage memories, but that distinction is becoming less and less true today.

In this lesson, students learn about the relationship between cryptographic keys and passwords. Students explore the Vigenère cipher with a widget to examine how a cryptographic "key" can be used to encrypt and decrypt a message. Then, students use a tool that shows them about how long it would take to crack a given password using a standard desktop computer. Students experiment with what makes a good password and answer questions about the “human components” of cybersecurity.

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.

Note: You will need to create a free account on code.org before you can view this resource.

Unencrypted communication over the Internet works a lot like sending a postcard: it can be read by anybody along the delivery route. Communication is routed through intermediary computers and systems, which are connected to many more computers and systems. Encryption, or encoding information so it appears scrambled to anyone who doesn’t know the key, is a way to wrap a postcard in an envelope. While it can never be 100% secure, stronger encryption makes it harder for people to get to the contents.

The lesson elements in this module teach students about the privacy principle “Communication over a network, unless strongly encrypted, is never just between two parties”. They are designed to be independent and flexible, so you can incorporate them into any size lesson plan. Student resources are available at https://teachingprivacy.org/someone-could-listen/. 

Summary of Learning Objectives: Students can articulate how the multi-step, multi-party pathways of networked communication affect users’ privacy; students can identify and use more secure communication options.

Target Age: High school, college undergraduate.

Learning Objectives: 

1. Students can describe how intermediary devices, and the services that provide them, are involved in transmitting information from point A to point B on the Internet.
2. Students can explain how the interconnected, many-layered structure of the Internet affects the security and privacy of online communication.
3. Students can identify the difference between a private network and a shared network and can describe some of the potential risks of using a shared network.
4. Students can describe how encryption decreases the chances of outside parties infiltrating private communications and accessing private information.
5. Students can explain why their security depends (in part) on their own decisions and behavior.
6. Students can give some examples of common encryption protocols, identify what layer of an electronic communication each of those protocols protects, and describe how they would verify that those protocols were being used.

Even though we think of computers as super high-tech machines with tiny parts, they can also be huge, wooden, and mechanical. It's what they have in common that makes them computers - switches!

This is a pretty fun lesson that has two main parts. First students warm up by reflecting on the reasons data visualizations are used to communicate about data. This leads to the main activity in which students look at some collections of (mostly bad) data visualizations, rate them, explain why a good one is effective, and also suggest a fix for a bad one.

In the second part of the class, students compare their experiences and create a class list of common faults and best practices for creating data visualizations. Finally, students review and read the first few pages of "Data Visualization 101: How to design charts and graphs" to see some basic principles of good data visualizations and see how they compare with the list the class came up with.

Students will be able to:
- identify an effective data visualization and give justification.
- collaborate to investigate and evaluate a data visualization.
- suggest an appropriate visualization for some data.
- evaluate a data visualization for the effectiveness of communication.
- identify a poor data visualization and give justification.

Note: You will need to create a free account on code.org before you can view this resource.

Does what you do online always stay online? Students learn that the information they share online leaves a digital footprint or "trail." Depending on how they manage it, this trail can be big or small, and harmful or helpful. Students compare different trails and think critically about what kinds of information they want to leave behind.

Students will be able to:

• Learn that the information they share online leaves a digital footprint or "trail"

• Explore what information is OK to be shared online

User will need to create a free account to access this resource. 

Word up! In this activity, children will explore decision-making as they use PBS KIDS ScratchJr to help WordGirl make a tough choice between saving the day and going to her friend’s birthday party.

Children will learn how to use the PBS KIDS ScratchJr programming blocks to make animated stories and interactive projects. They will explore coding and computational thinking practices as they utilize technology as a tool for creativity, expression, and learning with the PBS KIDS ScratchJr app.

This lesson dives deeper into the concept of processing that was introduced as part of the definition of a computer. Pairs work together to put a deck of cards in order, a form of processing information. In the end, the class discusses what processing means within the context of solving information problems.

Note: You will need to create a free account on code.org before you can view this resource.

What is Cryptography? A story which takes us from Caesar to Claude Shannon. Created by Brit Cruise.

On the left side of the linked webpage, there are additional resources related to cryptology, including Caesar cipher, polyalphabetic cipher, and the Enigma machine.

Kids find and read the news in lots of different ways. But studies show they're not very good at interpreting what they see. How can we help them get better? Teaching your students about the structure of online news articles is an important place to start.

• understand the purposes of different parts of an online news page.
• identify the parts and structure of an online news article.
• learn about things to watch out for when reading online news pages, such as sponsored content and advertisements.

Users will need to create a free account to access this resource. 

Hear the pros and cons of online advertising from the much-loved character Ruff Ruffman, in this animated video from RUFF RUFFMAN: HUMBLE MEDIA GENIUS. With his uniquely comical style, Ruff helps students acquire some key twenty-first-century skills. This resource is part of the RUFF RUFFMAN: HUMBLE MEDIA GENIUS Collection. This video can be played to introduce a lesson on identifying the different forms of web advertising and why websites, digital resources, and artifacts may include advertisements and collecting personal information.

Steve Trash teaches kids about science with fun and magic. The show is filmed in Alabama.

What are pollinators? What do they do? And how are they like messy babies? Then, see how every time you do something online you’re creating a digital footprint that can be tracked back to you. Steve Trash explains both with fun and magic.

In order to create more interesting and detailed images, the class is introduced to the sprite object. Every sprite can be assigned an image to show, and sprites also keep track of multiple values about themselves, which will prove useful when making animations. At the end of the lesson, everyone creates a scene using sprites.

Note: You will need to create a free account on code.org before you can view this resource.