Search ALEX...

This is the third of three lessons that make the connection between programming and algorithms. In this lesson, students continue to work with the "Human Machine Language" to get creative designing more algorithms for playing cards. One command is added to the language from the previous lesson (SWAP) that allows positions of cards to change. With the addition of swap, the challenge is to design an algorithm that will move the minimum card to the front of the list while keeping the relative order of all the other cards the same. If that is achieved some other Human Machine Language challenges are available.

Students will be able to:
- develop an algorithm to solve a new problem with playing cards.
- express an algorithm in the Human Machine Language.
- identify Sequencing, Selection, and Iteration in a program written the Human Machine Language.
- describe the properties of the Human Machine Language that make it a "low level" language.

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

Are your students savvy searchers? Can they spot the difference between a straight news article and an opinion piece? Do they recognize bias in their sources … or in themselves?

Do you need Fact Finder: Your Foolproof Guide to Media Literacy’s 11 flexible, multimedia lesson plans to tackle these challenges. Eight skill-building lesson plans introduce essential media literacy concepts through engaging explainer videos and colorful infographics that help students revisit, retain and apply the key concepts. The accompanying News or Noise? Media Map provides a collection of examples ready for students to analyze and evaluate with the support of worksheets and discussion prompts. Three reporting lesson plans help students take what they’ve learned and apply it to their own content creation, inspired by the issues that matter to them.

A simple flowchart and video explain how to differentiate news from other types of information; then students put their news-spotting abilities to the test.

You will need a free account to access this lesson plan. 

We begin our discussion of computer graphics. So, we ended the last episode (Keyboards and Command Line Interfaces: Crash Course Computer Science #22) with the proliferation of command line (or text) interfaces, which sometimes used screens, but typically electronic typewriters or teletypes onto paper. But by the early 1960s, a number of technologies were introduced to make screens much more useful, from cathode ray tubes and graphics cards to ASCII art and light pens. This era would mark a turning point in computing - computers were no longer just number-crunching machines, but potential assistants interactively augmenting human tasks. This was the dawn of graphical user interfaces which we’ll cover more in a few episodes.

To conclude their study of big data and cryptography, students will complete a small research project related to a dilemma presented by Big Data or Cybersecurity, in the form of a Practice Performance Task. Students will pick one of two issues to research more deeply - either an issue related to big data, or one related to cybersecurity. Students will need to identify appropriate online resources to learn about the functionality, context, and impact of the technological innovation that gave rise to the dilemma they are investigating. After completing their research, students will present their findings both in a written summary and with an audio/visual artifact they found online. The written components students must complete are similar to those students will see in the AP Performance Tasks.

This project is an opportunity to practice many of the skills students will use when completing the Explore Performance Task on the AP® Exam at the end of the year. While an open-ended research project might be intimidating, students have built all the skills they need to complete this task.

Note: This is NOT the official AP® Performance Task that will be submitted as part of the Advanced Placement exam; it is a practice activity intended to prepare students for some portions of their individual performance at a later time.

Students will be able to:
- identify reliable and authoritative sources of information about computing information.
- synthesize information taken from multiple online sources to create a cohesive description of a computing innovation.
- identify an artifact that clarifies an aspect of a computing topic not easily captured in writing.
- explain both the beneficial and harmful effects related to a modern social dilemma in computing.

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

Creating an identity on the Internet or impersonating somebody else is often just a matter of a few clicks. Currently, there is no foolproof way to match a real person with their online identity. This means that you can never be sure with whom you are communicating and that someone could steal your online identity and impersonate you!

The lesson elements in this module teach students about the privacy principle: “Identity is not guaranteed on the Internet”. 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/identity-isnt-guaranteed/.

Summary of Learning Objectives: Students can explain why it is difficult to be sure who one is communicating with online; students can investigate and evaluate the legitimacy of services that want their personal information.

Target Age: High school, college undergraduate.

Learning Objectives: 

1. Students can give examples of potential consequences of disclosing information online if the entity they’re sharing it with isn’t who they say they are.
2. Students can give examples of “weak points” that might allow someone to steal their identity, and examples of what that person could do with the stolen identity to compromise their privacy.
3. Students can explain how “phishing” works, and describe how they should respond to messages they suspect of phishing.
4. Students can give examples of methods they could use to verify someone’s identity online and can explain the shortcomings of those methods.
5. Students can give examples of methods they could use to verify the authenticity of apps, sites, and services that request their personal information, and can explain the shortcomings of those methods.
6. Students can describe some of the basic precautions they can take to keep their accounts secure from hackers and identity thieves.

A team from the Mechanical Engineering Department studies snail movement for inspiration that may lead to new emerging technologies of robotic locomotion in this video segment adapted from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the field of robotic locomotion, designers are finding the study of animal and insect movement an exciting area of research. Inspired by nature, these designers are creating robots that are extremely nimble and capable of moving over a variety of surfaces, such as rough terrain, steep inclines, and even vertical walls. This video comes with discussion questions.

For this Practice PT students will analyze the data that they have been collecting as a class in order to demonstrate their ability to discover, visualize, and present a trend or pattern they find in the data. Leading up to this lesson, students will have been working in pairs to clean and summarize their data. Students should complete this project individually but can get feedback on their ideas from their data-cleaning partner.

Note: This is NOT the official AP® Performance Task that will be submitted as part of the Advanced Placement exam; it is a practice activity intended to prepare students for some portions of their individual performance at a later time.

Students will be able to:
- create summaries of a dataset using a pivot table.
- manipulate and clean data in order to prepare it for analysis.
- explain the process used to create a visualization.
- design a visualization that clearly presents a trend, pattern, or relationship within a dataset.
- create visualizations of a dataset in order to discover trends and patterns.
- draw conclusions from the contents of a data visualization.

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

Teaching digital citizenship is all about helping kids think beyond themselves and recognize the ripple effects of their actions. Personal responsibility is important, but understanding their responsibilities to others can help kids unlock new ways to learn and connect with their communities -- and even change those communities for the better.

• Examine both in-person and online responsibilities.
• Describe the Rings of Responsibility as a way to think about how our behavior affects ourselves and others.
• Identify examples of online responsibilities to others.

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

Print this Human-Robot Activity Handout and guide the students in a game of Human-Robot where they use the cuttable blocks to program each other to act out different sequences.

PBS KIDS ScratchJr app is now available for free from the App Store on iPad and from the Google Play store on Android tablets.

This is a lesson plan from Google Education's Applied Digital Skills. During this lesson, students will think about the actions they take online and create a visual picture of their digital footprint in Google Sheets. As they complete the lesson, students will learn and practice the following digital skills: create a new spreadsheet in Google sheets, add text to cells, format text, digitally share a file with others, collaborate digitally in a spreadsheet, and add conditional formatting.

Focusing on texting, the much-loved character Ruff Ruffman addresses some of the questions kids have about responsible use of technology and media use, in this animated video from RUFF RUFFMAN: HUMBLE MEDIA GENIUS. With his uniquely comical style, Ruff helps guide students in responsibly navigating this twenty-first-century skill. This resource is part of the RUFF RUFFMAN: HUMBLE MEDIA GENIUS Collection. This video can be played when introducing a lesson on how to identify, demonstrate, and apply personal safe use of digital devices.

This lesson continues the introduction to CSS style properties, this time focusing more on non-text elements. The class begins by investigating and modifying the new CSS styles on a "Desserts of the World" page. Afterward, everyone applies this new knowledge to their personal websites.

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

What others find about us online shapes who they think we are and how they feel about us. But do kids know what kinds of tracks they've already left? Help your students learn about their digital footprints and the steps they can take in the future to shape what others find and see about them online.

Students will be able to:

• Define the term "digital footprint" and explain how it can affect their online privacy.
• Analyze how different parts of their digital footprints can lead others to draw conclusions -- both positive and negative -- about who they are.
• Reflect on what they want their digital footprints to be in the future and how they can monitor and shape them.

Resources available in both English and Spanish.

With mobile phone alerts, social media updates, and 24/7 news cycles, it's hard to escape the daily flood of breaking news. But do kids really understand what they're seeing when stories first break? Help students analyze breaking news with a critical eye for false or incomplete information, and discuss the downsides of our "always-on" news media culture.

• Define breaking news, and understand why individuals and news outlets want to be first to report a story.
• Analyze breaking news alerts to identify clues of false or incomplete information.
• Reflect on the consequences of reacting right away to breaking news alerts.

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

Learn about different types of hackers with this video from the NOVA Cybersecurity Lab. Hacking is solving problems in creative or unexpected ways. Hacks have been used for everything from Galileo’s telescope to Apollo 13. Similarly, there are many reasons that people hack computers. Some are just curious about how systems work, others hack to find and fix security flaws before they are exploited by criminals. Some hackers have bad intentions fueled by greed, attention, or rebellion. There are some hackers who have good intentions, but use questionable methods of getting information. “Hacking” isn’t good or bad – it depends on how and why people hack. This video comes with discussion questions. This video can be played during a lesson discussing the ethical ramifications of malicious hacking and its impact on society.

By combining the Draw Loop and the Counter Pattern, the class writes programs that move sprites across the screen, as well as animate other sprite properties.

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

In this activity, pupils will follow an algorithm to draw pictures constructed from 2D shapes. The algorithms they follow will include errors and pupils will use logical reasoning to detect and correct these.

PUPIL OBJECTIVES:
I can use logical reasoning to detect and correct errors in an algorithm.

TEACHING ASSESSMENT OPPORTUNITIES:
Informal, teacher assessment of progress during the main task, class discussions and plenary. Focus on how pupils use logical reasoning to identify errors in an algorithm and fix errors in the algorithm.
Formal, summative assessment of debugging sheets if required.

The lesson begins on page 43 of the document accessed via the resource link.

Students will:

- identify different types of media as intellectual property: writings, music, videos, computer games, etc.

-understand that intellectual property laws protect online and offline material.

-understand that it is stealing from real people if one copies copyright-protected material or downloads material from the internet without permission.

-understand it is against the law to download copyright-protected videos, music, etc. from the internet without permission.

- investigate famous cases of trade secret theft.

- investigate peer-to-peer networks.

Robotic devices are everywhere: in factories, law enforcement, caretaking. Today they are smarter than ever, but they only excel when the task is clearly defined. This video can be played during a lesson on identifying emerging technologies in computing.

In small groups, the class uses the design process to come up with ideas for smart clothing. From brainstorming to identifying users, to finally proposing a design, this is the first of several opportunities in this unit to practicing designing a solution for the needs of others.

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

The world is a noisy place, and errors can occur whenever information is stored or transmitted. Error detection techniques add extra parity bits to data to determine when errors have occurred.

This activity is a magic trick which most audiences find intriguing. In the trick the demonstrator is “magically” able to figure which one out of dozens of cards has been turned over, using the same methods that computers use to figure out if an error has occurred in data storage.

This learning activity will examine social media’s influence on America’s Civil Rights movement and its role in democratizing the media. In this video from Eyes on the Prize: Then and Now, activists, including DeRay McKesson, use social media to support the work of social change protesters. Because communications are unmediated and occur in real-time, McKesson says, social media can help build community. Tamika Mallory calls social media a powerful asset, enabling people who have never met before to share information and support one another’s efforts. Bree Newsome points out that without social media, people might not even have heard of important cases—including those of Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, and Sandra Bland. This video comes with a facilitator guide and student handout that helps guide the discussion of this activity.

Students will explore a wide variety of new and innovative computing platforms while expanding their understanding of what a computer can be.

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

If you've ever written a text-based program or typed a formula in a spreadsheet, chances are that at some stage the system has told you there's an error and won't even attempt to follow your instructions.

These "syntax errors" are annoying messages that programmers become excruciatingly familiar with... it means that they didn't follow the rules somehow, even if it's just a tiny mistake. 

When you try to compile or run the program, the computer will tell you that there's an error. If it's really helpful, it might even suggest where the error is, but it won't run the program until you fix it.

This might seem annoying, but in fact, by enforcing precision and attention to detail it helps pinpoint mistakes before they become bugs in the program that go undetected until someone using it complains that it's not working correctly.

Update your students on the social media trend of raising money for ALS research with this video and educational materials.

This lesson will prepare students mentally for the coding exercises that they will encounter over the length of this course. In small teams, students will use physical activity to program their classmates to step carefully from place to place until a goal is achieved.

By using physical movement to program their classmates, students will run into issues and emotions similar to what they will feel when they begin coding on a computer. Encountering those stresses in a playful and open environment will help to alleviate intensity and allow students to practice necessary skills before they run into problems on their own.

Students will be able to:
- Define a list of steps (algorithm) to get a friend from their starting position to their goal.
- Translate a list of steps into a series of physical actions.
- Identify and fix errors in the execution of an algorithm.

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

This is a free resource providing keyboarding, digital literacy,  and coding instruction for students.  The lessons are automated, or teachers can choose to assign lessons. Teachers can view student progress and can see current words-per-minute counts for students.   The resource includes accessible technology and multilingual curriculum.