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In the last few days of the unit, the class finalizes their personal websites, working with peers to get feedback. Then, the students will review the rubric and put the finishing touches on the site. To cap off the unit, everyone shares their projects and how they were developed.

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

This lesson is intended to introduce students to the concept of privacy rights as guaranteed in section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which provides that everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure. In light of society’s ever-increasing reliance on electronic devices to store and share personal information, this lesson will focus on privacy rights as they relate to information on cell phones, computers, and social media in a variety of contexts.

Specific Student Learning Objectives:

ï‚· Students will develop an understanding of privacy rights and why a guarantee of privacy is necessary for free and democratic societies (Students will consider the question if you have nothing to hide, why should you care about privacy?).

ï‚· Students will demonstrate an ability to identify and consider competing interests when determining the reasonableness of a search of private information.

Some wording may need to be altered, as some are written in formal English, not American English. 

Tagging friends on social media is a great way to connect with others and capture memorable experiences. But what if they don't want to be tagged? Encourage your students to take responsibility for how they may affect the digital footprints of others.

• Define "digital reputation," and identify examples of social media posts that can have a positive or negative effect.
• Use the 1-2-3-1 Perspectives activity to consider the causes and effects of posting about others online.
• Generate a list of questions to ask themselves before posting pictures or information about someone else.

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Creating a robot capable of safely navigating its environment without human intervention has been a goal of engineers ever since they first conceived of robots nearly 50 years ago. Despite rapid advancements in technology, however, engineers did not succeed in the task of designing autonomous robots until recently. This video segment adapted from NOVA follows two teams as they push their engineering design skills to the limit to develop systems that allow cars to drive themselves in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge. This video comes with discussion questions. This video can be played during a lesson on creating an algorithm to solve a problem as a collaborative team.

The class starts by using Booleans to compare the current value of a sprite property with a target value, using that comparison to determine when a sprite has reached a point on the screen, grown to a given size, or otherwise reached a value using the counter pattern. After using Booleans directly to investigate the values or sprite properties, the class adds conditional if statements to write code that responds to those Boolean comparisons.

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

In this activity, pupils are challenged to detect and correct the error in a number of water cycle programs (debugging). They use logical reasoning to do this, comparing what the program should do with what it does do, and systematically homing in on the error (bug) by ‘thinking through’ the code in the program.

PUPIL OBJECTIVES:
I can use logical reasoning to debug a program.
I can explain how I debugged a program.

TEACHING ASSESSMENT OPPORTUNITIES:
Informal teacher assessment of pupils as they tackle the debugging challenge: focus on pupils’ logical approach and ability to explain the bugs they found, why they are bugs and how they corrected them.
Summative assessment of pupils’ debugging challenge sheets.

If the Internet's making you feel meaner, you're not imagining it. People really do act differently online than they do in person. Here’s why. According to a paper published in 2004 by psychologist John Suler, there are about 6 main reasons people act differently online. This could explain the rise of internet trolls or why people open up more online than they would in person. A student viewing guide with discussion questions is available to be used with this video. 

In this interactive lesson, students will discover how new apps are improving the lives of people with a disability or illness and helping to raise empathy. Through original student-produced videos via PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs, students will learn about individuals who have overcome challenges and went on to help others. Then, students will use their knowledge of the invention process to design their own app which addresses a problem facing their school or community.

Users have been testing an app, and they have lots of feedback for the developer. The class needs to sort through all of this feedback, identify the common themes and needs, and start revising the prototype to make it better meet the users' needs.

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

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.

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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!