Search the California Content Standards

Standard:
Collaborate with many contributors when creating a computational artifact.

Descriptive Statement:
Users have diverse sets of experiences, needs, and wants. These need to be understood and integrated into the design of computational artifacts. Students use applications that enable crowdsourcing to gather services, ideas, or content from a large group of people. At this level, crowdsourcing can be done at the local level (e.g., classroom, school, or neighborhood) and/or global level (e.g., age-appropriate online communities). For example, a group of students could use electronic surveys to solicit input from their neighborhood regarding an important social or political issue. They could collaborate with a community artist to combine animations and create a digital community collage informing the public about various points of view regarding the topic. (VAPA Visual Art 8.5.2, 8.5.4)

Standard:
Compare tradeoffs associated with licenses for computational artifacts to balance the protection of the creators' rights and the ability for others to use and modify the artifacts.

Descriptive Statement:
Using and building on the works of others allows people to create meaningful works and fosters innovation. Copyright is an important law that helps protect the rights of creators so they receive credit and get paid for their work. Creative Commons is a kind of copyright that makes it easier for people to copy, share, and build on creative work, as long as they give credit for it. There are different kinds of Creative Commons licenses that allow people to do things such as change, remix, or make money from their work. As creators, students can pick and choose how they want their work to be used, and then create a Creative Commons license that they include in their work. For example, students could create interactive animations to educate others on bullying or protecting the environment. They then select an appropriate license to reflect how they want their program to be used by others (e.g., allow others to use their work and alter it, as long as they do not make a profit from it). Students use established methods to both protect their artifacts and attribute use of protected artifacts.

Standard:
Compare tradeoffs between allowing information to be public and keeping information private and secure.

Descriptive Statement:
While it is valuable to establish, maintain, and strengthen connections between people online, security attacks often start with intentionally or unintentionally providing personal information online. Students identify situations where the value of keeping information public outweighs privacy concerns, and vice versa. They also recognize practices such as phishing and social engineering and explain best practices to defend against them. For example, students could discuss the benefits of artists and designers displaying their work online to reach a broader audience. Students could also compare the tradeoffs of making a shared file accessible to anyone versus restricting it to specific accounts. (CA CCSS for ELA/Literacy SL.6.1, SL.7.1, SL.8.1) Alternatively, students could discuss the benefits and dangers of the increased accessibility of information available on the internet, and then compare this to the advantages and disadvantages of the introduction of the printing press in society. (HSS.7.8.4)

Standard:
Design algorithms to solve computational problems using a combination of original and existing algorithms.

Descriptive Statement:
Knowledge of common algorithms improves how people develop software, secure data, and store information. Some algorithms may be easier to implement in a particular programming language, work faster, require less memory to store data, and be applicable in a wider variety of situations than other algorithms. Algorithms used to search and sort data are common in a variety of software applications. For example, students could design an algorithm to calculate and display various sports statistics and use common sorting or mathematical algorithms (e.g., average) in the design of the overall algorithm. Alternatively, students could design an algorithm to implement a game and use existing randomization algorithms to place pieces randomly in starting positions or to control the "roll" of a dice or selection of a "card" from a deck.

Standard:
Compare levels of abstraction and interactions between application software, system software, and hardware.

Descriptive Statement:
At its most basic level, a computer is composed of physical hardware on which software runs. Multiple layers of software are built upon various layers of hardware. Layers manage interactions and complexity in the computing system. System software manages a computing device's resources so that software can interact with hardware. Application software communicates with the user and the system software to accomplish its purpose. Students compare and describe how application software, system software, and hardware interact. For example, students could compare how various levels of hardware and software interact when a picture is to be taken on a smartphone. Systems software provides low-level commands to operate the camera hardware, but the application software interacts with system software at a higher level by requesting a common image file format (e.g., .png) that the system software provides.

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:
Describe how artificial intelligence drives many software and physical systems.

Descriptive Statement:
Artificial intelligence is a sub-discipline of computer science that enables computers to solve problems previously handled by biological systems. There are many applications of artificial intelligence, including computer vision and speech recognition. Students research and explain how artificial intelligence has been employed in a given system. Students are not expected to implement an artificially intelligent system in order to meet this standard. For example, students could observe an artificially intelligent system and notice where its behavior is not human-like, such as when a character in a videogame makes a mistake that a human is unlikely to make, or when a computer easily beats even the best human players at a given game. Alternatively, students could interact with a search engine asking various questions, and after reading articles on the topic, they could explain how the computer is able to respond to queries.