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This lesson covers the input and output aspects of computers in a context that is relevant and familiar to students: apps. The class evaluates various web applications to analyze the specific problems that they were designed to solve, the inputs that they need to work, and the outputs they provide to users. The class concludes with observations of these apps as well as a teacher-led discussion about the impact of apps on society.

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

Grade(s)

7

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

As kids grow, they'll naturally start to communicate more online. But some of what they see could make them feel hurt, sad, angry, or even fearful. Help your students build empathy for others and learn strategies to use when confronted with cyberbullying.

Students will be able to:

  • Understand that it's important to think about the words we use, because everyone interprets things differently.
  • Identify ways to respond to mean words online, using S-T-O-P.
  • Decide what kinds of statements are OK to say online and which are not.

Grade(s)

3

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

The web is full of questionable stuff, from rumors and inaccurate information to outright lies and so-called fake news. So how do we help students weed out the bad and find what's credible? Help students dig into why and how false information ends up online in the first place and then practice evaluating the credibility of what they're finding online.

Students will be able to:

  • learn reasons that people put false or misleading information on the internet.

  • learn criteria for differentiating fake news from credible news.

  • practice evaluating the credibility of information they find on the internet.

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

Grade(s)

6

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

Students are immersed in a multi-level adventure game cleverly designed to introduce computer programming concepts and improve problem-solving skills. To save the motherboard, kids create a custom hero character and fight bugs! Estimated time: 40 min. A teacher guide and answer key is provided. More free coding activities at www.tynker.com/hour-of-code.

Grade(s)

5

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

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

Ecosystems are not only the places where living things live, but also the connections between the living things in those places. Steve explores this cool idea and then tries to figure out the logical steps needed to get computer program to play the game rock paper scissors with him.

Grade(s)

3, 4, 5, 6

Subject Area

Science
Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

The class designs structure to represent their perfect day using the binary representation systems they've learned in this chapter. After deciding which pieces of information the record should capture, the class will decide how a punch card of bytes of information will be interpreted to represent those pieces of information. Afterward, everyone will use the ASCII, binary number, and image formats they have learned to represent their perfect days to try to decipher what a partner's perfect day is like.

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

Grade(s)

6, 8

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

This webpage provides students informational text and interactive tools to explore what makes a database. Students will be introduced to basic database structures. 

A database is a computerized system that makes it easy to search, select, and store information. Databases are used in many different places.

Your school might use a database to store information about attendance or to store pupils' and teachers' contact information. A database like this will probably be protected with a password to make sure that people’s personal information is kept safe. Your library might also use a database to keep track of which books are available and which are on loan.

Grade(s)

3

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

Often, the more information we have, the better decisions we're able to make. The power of data can benefit both individuals and governments. But who can be trusted with the responsibility of having all this data? Can governments collect and use it fairly and without violating our privacy? Help students think through this question and become thoughtful influencers of data policy and practice.

Students will be able to:

  • Identify the pros and cons of schools having access to students' social media.

  • Describe the concerns related to government access to social media and cellphone data, including those related to free speech and privacy.

  • Choose a position for or against government access to social media and cellphone data, and support that position with reasons and examples.

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

Grade(s)

9, 10, 11, 12

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

Sometimes the news is labeled as “fake” because the reader dislikes it or it contradicts their beliefs. However, fake news is when the news information, as well as the news organization itself, may intentionally be completely fabricated. Educators and media literacy advocates are working in the classroom to help students discern fact from fiction in news sources. This video can be played during a lesson on assessing the validity and identifying the purpose of digital content.

Grade(s)

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

This lesson covers functions as a way to organize code, make it more readable, and remove repeated blocks of code. The class learns that higher level or more abstract steps make it easier to understand and reason about steps, then begins to create functions in Game Lab. At the end of the lesson, the class uses these skills to organize and add functionality to the final version of their side scroller game.

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

Grade(s)

6, 7, 8

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

Students use computer science to simulate extreme sports, make their own fitness gadget commercial, and create commentary for a big sporting event.

Sports is a complete theme designed to be completed over eight, 45-75 minute, sessions. For each activity, students will watch a series of videos and create one coding project with opportunities to personalize their work using “Add-Ons,” which are mini-coding challenges that build on top of the core project.

Be sure to review the Materials tab for the lesson plan, starter guide, and more.

Users will need a Google account to use this resource.

Grade(s)

3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

This lesson uses the documentary film Web Junkie as a springboard for a project-based research exercise, assigning students to investigate whether Internet addiction is a problem in their community.

Grade(s)

8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

In this video, Harley moves in with Harry and makes Harry's life miserable. Harley spies on Harry writing in his diary. When Harley "borrows" the diary, he finds it is written in a code using numbers. Harley figures out a pattern with numbers and letters and decodes the page to find it is a message for Harley saying it is time to move out. 

Grade(s)

3, 8

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

Building on the screens that the class designed in the previous lesson, teams combine screens into a single app. Simple code can then be added to make button clicks change to the appropriate screen.

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

Grade(s)

6, 7, 8

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

Encryption is used to keep data secret. In its simplest form, a file or data transmission is garbled so that only authorized people with a secret "key" can unlock the original text. If you're using digital devices then you'll be using systems based on encryption all the time: when you use online banking, when you access data through WiFi, when you pay for something with a credit card (either by swiping, inserting or tapping), in fact, nearly every activity will involve layers of encryption. Without encryption, your information would be wide open to the world – anyone could pull up outside a house and read all the data going over your WiFi, and stolen laptops, hard disks, and SIM cards would yield all sorts of information about you – so encryption is critical to make computer systems usable.

An encryption system often consists of two computer programs: one to encrypt some data (referred to as plaintext) into a form that looks like nonsense (the ciphertext), and a second program that can decrypt the ciphertext back into the plaintext form. The encryption and decryption are carried out using some very clever math on the text with a chosen key. You will learn more about these concepts shortly.

Of course, we wouldn't need encryption if we lived in a world where everyone was honest and could be trusted, and it was okay for anyone to have access to all your personal information such as health records, online discussions, bank accounts and so on, and if you knew that no one would interfere with things like aircraft control systems and computer controlled weapons. However, information is worth money, people value their privacy, and safety is important, so encryption has become fundamental to the design of computer systems. Even breaking the security on a traffic light system could be used to personal advantage.

Grade(s)

9, 10, 11, 12

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

Discover how the net neutrality debate could affect consumers with this video and educational materials from PBS NewsHour from September 15, 2014. This video comes with a student viewing guide.

Grade(s)

9, 10, 11, 12

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

Students learn the basics for giving credit to others for their work as well as giving themselves credit in order for others to use their work. Students will also learn to differentiate between the ideas they create from the ideas they use but someone else created.

This activity was created as a result of the DLCS COS Resource Development Summit.

Grade(s)

2

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Learning Activity

This unplugged lesson brings together teams with a simple task: get the "flurb" to the fruit. Students will practice writing precise instructions as they work to translate written instructions into the symbols provided. If problems arise in the code, students should also work together to recognize bugs and build solutions. The bridge from algorithms to programming can be a short one if students understand the difference between planning out a sequence and encoding that sequence into the appropriate language. This activity will help students gain experience reading and writing in shorthand code.

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

Grade(s)

K

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

Technology has changed the world faster than many of us could imagine and continues to change the world at a daunting pace. Technological advances have had a tremendous impact on goods, services, jobs, and markets over the last 50 years. The Internet and electronic communication have changed the way we do business. While people still use stores for many goods and services, people are able to place orders for rare or unusual goods that can be filled quickly, from the comfort of their home. Children born in the last decade often do not have an understanding of how things have changed. This lesson focuses on those changes and will introduce the students to some of those changes. Because of scarcity, we are not always able to satisfy our wants. We have to choose some things and give up others. Anytime we make a choice, there is something that is not chosen. The value of the next best alternative is called the opportunity cost. Every decision has an opportunity cost.

Students will examine and analyze photographs that show life in the past, list the objects and people in the photos, compare life and technology today to the past, and identify ways technology has changed or lives. Students will interview an adult to gain information about how goods, services, and technology have changed over time. 

Grade(s)

1, 2

Subject Area

Social Studies
Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

What is “fake” news? How do we know it’s false? Use these resources from Common Sense Education to help students investigate the way information is presented so that they can analyze what they read and see on the Web.

Grade(s)

8

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

In this activity, students will explore Artificial Intelligence, develop their own definitions of what AI is, and share examples with their classmates via Note.ly. 

This activity was created as a result of the DLCS COS Resource Development Summit.

Grade(s)

6

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science
English Language Arts

Learning Resource Type

Learning Activity

By "programming" one another to draw pictures, students get an opportunity to experience some of the core concepts of programming in a fun and accessible way. The class will start by having students use symbols to instruct each other to color squares on graph paper in an effort to reproduce an existing picture. If there’s time, the lesson can conclude with images that the students create themselves.

The goal of this activity is to build critical-thinking skills and excitement for the course while introducing some of the fundamental programming concepts that will be used throughout the course. By introducing basic concepts like sequencing and algorithms to the class in an unplugged activity, students who are intimidated by computers can still build a foundation of understanding on these topics. In this lesson, students will learn how to develop an algorithm and encode it into a program.

Students will be able to:
- reframe a sequence of steps as an encoded program.
- explain the constraints of translating problems from human language to machine language.

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

Grade(s)

3

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

There are three basic Quests in this activity. You will be able to find, create, and edit digital images for a digital images selfie project. Your ability to use images in multimedia projects will allow you to express your creativity by communicating or presenting your ideas effectively.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES 

When you have completed this activity, you will:

  1. know how to locate and use digital images appropriately [Digital Citizen]

  2. understand that digital images can be edited and resized using online resources [Empowered Learner]

  3. understand how selfies can impact my digital identity [Digital Citizen]

  4. know how to represent myself appropriately online [Creative Communicator]

Grade(s)

6, 7, 8

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

Today we’re going to create memory! Using the basic logic gates we discussed in episode 3, we can build a circuit that stores a single bit of information, and then through some clever scaling (and of course many new levels of abstraction) we’ll show you how we can construct the modern random-access memory, or RAM, found in our computers today.

Grade(s)

6, 9, 10, 11, 12

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

Students will be introduced to how an Internet search works by experts in the field and practice conducting basic keyword searches.

This activity was created as a result of the DLCS COS Resource Development Summit.

Grade(s)

3

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science
English Language Arts

Learning Resource Type

Learning Activity

Students will learn to read App Lab’s API documentation and will use functions that accept parameters in order to complete a series of drawing puzzles which require them to make use of the App Lab API documentation to learn new drawing commands. Many of these commands will require the use of parameters. The final challenge asks students to design a personal monogram making use of the commands they learned during the lesson.

Students will be able to:
- use parameters to provide different values as input to procedures when they are called in a program.
- use API documentation to assist in writing programs.
- define an API as the set of commands made available by a programming language.

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

Grade(s)

9, 10, 11, 12

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

An infographic and explainer video break down some of the often-invisible ways that search engines —and people — make recommendations; then students hunt for these “search signals” to rank and evaluate real examples.

To access this lesson plan, you will need to create a free account. 

Grade(s)

8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

From polygon count and meshes, to lighting and texturing, there are a lot of considerations in building the 3D objects we see in our movies and video games, but then displaying these 3D objects of a 2D surface adds an additional number of challenges. So we’ll talk about some of the reasons you see occasional glitches in your video games as well as the reason a dedicated graphics processing unit, or GPU, was needed to meet the increasing demand for more and more complex graphics.

Grade(s)

9, 10, 11, 12

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

This activity guides students through the process of creating a graph of a particular data set. Students can produce a bar graph that compares different categories, a line graph that shows a change in something over time, or a pie graph that shows percentages of a whole. Students will select the most appropriate graph choice, input data, create labels and titles, and make design choices to enhance the graphic representation of the data.

This activity results from the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

Grade(s)

3, 4

Subject Area

Mathematics
Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Learning Activity

Students will develop an understanding of the purpose of the Declaration of Independence by synthesizing the grievances listed by the founding fathers.

Grade(s)

5

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science
Social Studies

Learning Resource Type

Lesson Plan

This lesson demonstrates how a slight manipulation of a conditional statement can allow for the creation of a new and powerful tool in constructing programs, a while loop. Students are introduced to a while loop by analyzing the flow chart of a conditional statement in which the "true" branch leads back to the original condition. Students design their own flowcharts to represent a real-world situation that could be represented as a while loop, and they learn how to recognize common looping structures, most notably infinite loops. Students then move to App Lab, creating a while loop that runs exactly some predetermined number of times. While learning about creating while loops, students will be introduced to many of the common mistakes early programmers make with while loops and will be asked to debug small programs. They finally progress to putting if statements inside a while loop to count the number of times an event occurs while repeating the same action. This activity will recall the need for counter variables and foreshadows their further use in the following lesson.

Students will be able to:
- explain that a while loop continues to run while a boolean condition remains true.
- translate a real-life activity with repeated components into a form that could be represented by a while loop.
- analyze a while loop to determine if the initial condition will be met, how many times the loop will run, and if the loop will ever terminate.
- write programs that use while loops in a variety of contexts.

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

Grade(s)

9, 10, 11, 12

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

This activity will introduce students to computer hardware and software. Students will explore the similarities and differences between the two. The video shown in this activity will provide the "hook" for the associated during activity.

This learning activity was created as a result of the ALEX - Alabama Virtual Library (AVL) Resource Development Summit.

Grade(s)

3

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Learning Activity

Whether it's watching TV or playing on a tablet, using tech can be super fun! Often, kids find it hard to transition from an online activity to an offline one. Teach your students a simple routine for how to manage those inevitable digital interruptions that are part of everyone's lives in the digital age. By examining feelings associated with being asked to stop doing something we enjoy, students will learn that it is respectful and kind to be mindful of the requests of others. 

 

Students will be able to:

  • Learn why it's important to be aware and respectful of people while using devices.

  • Learn the Pause, Breathe, Finish Up routine as a self-regulation strategy for transitioning from technology to face-to-face interactions.

 Users will need to create a free account to access resources. 

Grade(s)

K

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

Video games are fun to play, but have you ever wondered how to make one? Carmelo, a grad student in the MIT Media Lab, shows how anyone can start learning how to create video games by talking to machines through programming languages using block-based programming. This video can be played to introduce a lesson on computer programming.

Grade(s)

2, 3, 4, 5

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

Down on the Farm is a two-part VEX IQ learning activity that provides a hands-on exploration into the impact of computing and simulations on human tasks and machinery. Learners will assemble VEX IQ clawbots to use in a programming activity and a simulation activity based on agricultural tasks.

This activity was demonstrated during the Exploring Today's Classroom (ETC) Summit.

Grade(s)

8

Subject Area

Digital Literacy and Computer Science

Learning Resource Type

Learning Activity
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