In this lesson students begin tackling the question of whether digitizing information has made the world a better or worse place. To begin the lesson, students place stickies on a spectrum of "worse" to "better" to state their opinion prior to doing the activity. Students then choose an article they are interested in reading using a process the class completed collectively in the previous lesson. Students will discuss their preliminary reading and opinions after today's lesson and will have a chance to start making an artifact to present their findings.
This lesson is aligned to CSTA standards.

In this lesson students finish designing an artifact that represents their analysis of an article on the impacts of digitizing information. Students will complete the final two quadrants of their poster in which they identify the benefits and harms highlighted in the article and then make an overall claim about whether the world has been made better or worse through the digitization of information. At the conclusion of the class students update the position of their stickies on the "better" to "worse" spectrum they designed yesterday and then discuss whether and why they changed their opinion.
This lesson is aligned to CSTA standards.

Welcome to Computer Science Principles! The first lesson is about getting students excited about the course and connecting their own personal interests to computer science. Students are asked to share something they know a lot about and teach it to a small group. Groups make a “rapid” prototype of an innovative idea and share it. Students watch a brief video about computing innovations. The lesson ends with students logging into the Code.org CSP course web site, and answering a brief prompt about what “computer science” means to them.
This lesson is aligned to CSTA standards.

Using everyday materials, students create devices for sending information to a partner. Each group then uses its device to send an answer to a question. Following this, students modify their devices to answer more complex answers, responding with one of four possible messages, then one of eight possible messages, then one of sixteen possible messages.
This lesson is aligned to CSTA standards.

Students will create rules for ordering patterns of circles and squares. Students generate all possible messages with three place values, then create rules that explain how they ordered each message. Emphasis is placed on creating clear rules so that, if another group were to follow the rules, they would generate the same list in the same order. Using these rules, students then try to list all possible messages with four place values. As the lesson concludes, students share their rules with classmates.
This lesson is aligned to CSTA standards.

In this lesson, students will practice representing numbers in binary (base 2), transitioning from the circle-square representations they made in the last lesson. Students will create and use a "Flippy Do", a manipulative which helps students convert between binary (base 2) and decimal (base 10) numbers. They will practice converting numbers and explore the concept of place value in the context of binary numbers.
This lesson is aligned to CSTA standards.

Students extend their understanding of the binary number system by exploring errors that result from overflow and rounding. They use the binary odometer widget and develop their own systems for representing fractional amounts using the Flippy Do.
This lesson is aligned to CSTA standards.

In this lesson, students create a system for representing text using only numbers while communicating with each other. They are only allowed to send numbers back-and-forth, so they must create a system to translate between number and character. At the end of the main activity they briefly review the ASCII system for representing text. The wrap up discussion emphasizes how all of the concepts thus far have ‘built’ on each other and introduces the concept of abstraction to describe this progression.
This lesson is aligned to CSTA standards.

Students explore how black and white images are represented. Students use the black and white pixelation widget to represent each pixel of an image with black or white light. They learn how to sample an analog image using small squares of uniform size (each represented with a black or white value) and reflect on the pros and cons of choosing a smaller or larger square size when sampling.
This lesson is aligned to CSTA standards.

This is a second opportunity for students to interact with the Pixelation Widget, but this time they will work with color pixels. Students start off learning that each pixel uses red, green, and blue lights that can be turned on or off using bits. They will create more color variants using an increasing amount of bits per pixel, and apply their learning by approximating an analog color image using the widget.
This lesson is aligned to CSTA standards.

Students use the Text Compression Widget to experiment with compressing songs and poems and try to find their ‘personal best’ compression. A video introduces important vocabulary for the lesson and demonstrates the full features of the widget. Students pick a text they think will be ‘easy’ to compress and one they think will be ‘difficult’, paying attention to why some texts might be more compressible than others. As a wrap-up, students discuss what factors make some texts more compressible than others.
This lesson is aligned to CSTA standards.

After a short transition from representing information in Unit 1 to communicating information in Unit 2, students take time to think about their knowledge of the Internet and how it works. Following this, students are introduced to a new widget: The Internet Simulator which they will use throughout this unit to explore the inner workings of the Internet.
This lesson is aligned to CSTA standards.

In this lesson, students are formed into groups of 5-7 and given string so they can connect themselves together to form a computer network. Students are given several specific networks to form, along with several guidelines for how to best form computer networks. Students are also forced to wrestle with conflicting guidelines in determining the ‘best’ way to connect together to form a network, and will need to justify why they chose the networks that they did.
This lesson is aligned to CSTA standards.

Students complete a scheduling challenge three times, once unplugged, and twice on the Internet Simulator, to explore the need for addressing messages online. Students first complete a challenge where they are allowed to talk to one another to fill out a weekly schedule. They then move on to a version of the Internet Simulator where all of their messages are "broadcast" or sent to everyone in the same simulator room. This challenge forces students to develop shared rules for communicating to complete the scheduling activity a second and then third time. The wrap up helps students connect their experiences to real-life rules, or protocols, used on the Internet for addressing messages.
This lesson is aligned to CSTA standards.

Students spend most of today’s lesson in an updated Internet Simulator that lets students send messages with a dedicated To and From IP Address. Students start by connecting to a dedicated router and sending messages only to each other. They look at the router logs to find other students on different routers, then send messages to those students. They look at the router logs again to notice that messages are being passed between routers in order to reach their destination. Students continue to send messages and view the logs one last time to notice that the messages are also taking different paths to reach the same destination. The lesson wraps-up by introducing new vocabulary and using these words to summarize today’s activity.
This lesson is aligned to CSTA standards.

Students learn that large messages sent over the Internet are actually divided into individual packets and explore the challenges this creates. First students explore a version of the Internet Simulator that breaks messages into packets to get a sense for how it works. Students then use an activity guide that walks them through the challenges that dropped or out-of-order packets create. They then design their own protocol that addresses these challenges. At the end of the lesson students watch a video and learn and the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) and The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), two different protocols for sending messages broken into packets.
This lesson is aligned to CSTA standards.

Students conclude their study of the layers of the Internet by learning about two top-level protocols, HTTP and DNS. The lesson begins with a review of the layers students have already learned, namely the physical Internet, IP, and TCP / UDP. The lesson then dives into the core of the unit which is "What happens when I type an address into my browser?" Students will complete two brief activities, one unplugged, and one plugged, that explore how the DNS works. Students then watch videos explaining how both DNS and HTTP work, taking notes in a provided activity guide. The lesson concludes with a review of how the different layers of the Internet work.
This lesson is aligned to CSTA standards.

Students begin a two-day project. In this project, students explore a relevant Internet dilemma: Net Neutrality, Internet Censorship, or the Digital Divide. Students apply their knowledge of how the Internet works to address the core question related to their chosen dilemma. This project addresses the "so what" question - why is it important to learn about how the Internet works?
This lesson is aligned to CSTA standards.

Students finish a two-day project. In this project, students explore a relevant Internet dilemma: Net Neutrality, Internet Censorship, or the Digital Divide. Students apply their knowledge of how the Internet works to address the core question related to their chosen dilemma. This project addresses the "so what" question - why is it important to learn about how the Internet works?
This lesson is aligned to CSTA standards.

Students complete a multiple choice assessment which covers the unit topics.
This lesson is aligned to CSTA standards.