Search the California Content Standards

Standard:
Study, discuss, and think critically about the potential impacts and implications of emerging technologies on larger social, economic, and political structures, with evidence from credible sources.

Descriptive Statement:
For example, after studying the rise of artifical intelligence, students create a cause and effect chart to represent positive and negative impacts of this technology on society.

Standard:
Use collaboration tools and methods to increase connectivity with people of different cultures and careers.

Descriptive Statement:
Increased digital connectivity and communication between people across a variety of cultures and in differing professions has changed the collaborative nature of personal and professional interaction. Students identify, explain, and use appropriate collaborative tools. For example, students could compare ways that various technological collaboration tools could help a team become more cohesive and then choose one of these tools to manage their teamwork. Alternatively, students could use different collaborative tools and methods to solicit input from not only team members and classmates but also others, such as participants in online forums or local communities.

Standard:
Explain the beneficial and harmful effects that intellectual property laws can have on innovation.

Descriptive Statement:
Laws and ethics govern aspects of computing such as privacy, data, property, information, and identity. Students explain the beneficial and harmful effects of intellectual property laws as they relate to potential innovations and governance. For example, students could explain how patents protect inventions but may limit innovation. Alternatively, students could explain how intellectual property laws requiring that artists be paid for use of their media might limit the choice of songs developers can use in their computational artifacts.

Standard:
Explain the privacy concerns related to the collection and generation of data through automated processes.

Descriptive Statement:
Data can be collected and aggregated across millions of people, even when they are not actively engaging with or physically near the data collection devices. Students recognize automated and non-evident collection of information and the privacy concerns they raise for individuals. For example, students could explain the impact on an individual when a social media site's security settings allows for mining of account information even when the user is not online. Alternatively, students could discuss the impact on individuals of using surveillance video in a store to track customers. Additionally, students could discuss how road traffic can be monitored to change signals in real time to improve road efficiency without drivers being aware and discuss policies for retaining data that identifies drivers' cars and their behaviors.

Standard:
Evaluate the social and economic implications of privacy in the context of safety, law, or ethics.

Descriptive Statement:
Laws govern many aspects of computing, such as privacy, data, property, information, and identity. International differences in laws and ethics have implications for computing. Students make and justify claims about potential and/or actual privacy implications of policies, laws, or ethics and consider the associated tradeoffs, focusing on society and the economy. For example, students could explore the case of companies tracking online shopping behaviors in order to decide which products to target to consumers. Students could evaluate the ethical and legal dilemmas of collecting such data without consumer knowledge in order to profit companies. Alternatively, students could evaluate the implications of net neutrality laws on society's access to information and on the impacts to businesses of varying sizes.

Standard:
Illustrate ways computing systems implement logic through hardware components.

Descriptive Statement:
Computing systems use processors (e.g., a central processing unit or CPU) to execute program instructions. Processors are composed of components that implement the logical or computational operations required by the instructions. AND, OR, and NOT are examples of logic gates. Adders are examples of higher-leveled circuits built using low-level logic gates. Students illustrate how modern computing devices are made up of smaller and simpler components which implement the logic underlying the functionality of a computer processor. At this level, knowledge of how logic gates are constructed is not expected. For example, students could construct truth tables, draw logic circuit diagrams, or use an online logic circuit simulator. Students could explore the interaction of the CPU, RAM, and I/O by labeling a diagram of the von Neumann architecture. Alternatively, students could design higher-level circuits using low-level logic gates (e.g., adders).

Standard:
Categorize and describe the different functions of operating system software.

Descriptive Statement:
Operating systems (OS) software is the code that manages the computer’s basic functions. Students describe at a high level the different functions of different components of operating system software. Examples of functions could include memory management, data storage/retrieval, processes management, and access control. For example, students could use monitoring tools including within an OS to inspect the services and functions running on a system and create an artifact to describe the activity that they observed (e.g., when a browser is running with many tabs open, memory usage is increased). They could also inspect and describe changes in the activity monitor that occur as different applications are executing (e.g., processor utilization increases when a new application is launched).

Standard:
Select and use data collection tools and techniques to generate data sets.

Descriptive Statement:
Data collection and organization is essential for obtaining new information insights and revealing new knowledge in our modern world. As computers are able to process larger sets of data, gathering data in an efficient and reliable matter remains important. The choice of data collection tools and quality of the data collected influences how new information, insights, and knowledge will support claims and be communicated. Students devise a reliable method to gather information, use software to extract digital data from data sets, and clean and organize the data in ways that support summaries of information obtained from the data. At this level, students may, but are not required to, create their own data collection tools. For example, students could create a computational artifact that records information from a sonic distance sensor to monitor the motion of a prototype vehicle. Alternatively, students could develop a reliable and practical way to automatically digitally record the number of animals entering a portion of a field to graze. Additionally, students could also find a web site containing data (e.g., race results for a major marathon), scrape the data from the web site using data collection tools, and format the data so it can be analyzed.

Standard:
Use data analysis tools and techniques to identify patterns in data representing complex systems.

Descriptive Statement:
Data analysis tools can be useful for identifying patterns in large amounts of data in many different fields. Computers can help with the processing of extremely large sets of data making very complex systems manageable. Students use computational tools to analyze, summarize, and visualize a large set of data. For example, students could analyze a data set containing marathon times and determine how age, gender, weather, and course features correlate with running times. Alternatively, students could analyze a data set of social media interactions to identify the most influential users and visualize the intersections between different social groups.

Standard:
Evaluate the ability of models and simulations to test and support the refinement of hypotheses.

Descriptive Statement:
A model could be implemented as a diagram or a program that represents key properties of a physical or other system. A simulation is based on a model, and enables observation of the system as key properties change. Students explore, explain, and evaluate existing models and simulations, in order to support the refinement of hypotheses about how the systems work. At this level, the ability to accurately and completely model and simulate complex systems is not expected. For example, a computer model of ants following a path created by other ants who found food explains the trail-like travel patterns of the insect. Students could evaluate if the output of the model fits well with their hypothesis that ants navigate the world through the use of pheromones. They could explain how the computer model supports this hypothesis and how it might leave out certain aspects of ant behavior and whether these are important to understanding ant travel behavior. Alternatively, students could hypothesize how different ground characteristics (e.g., soil type, thickness of sediment above bedrock) relate to the severity of shaking at the surface during an earthquake. They could add or modify input about ground characteristics into an earthquake simulator, observe the changed simulation output, and then evaluate their hypotheses.