Search the California Content Standards

Standard:
Create computational artifacts using modular design.

Descriptive Statement:
Computational artifacts are created by combining and modifying existing computational artifacts and/or by developing new artifacts. To reduce complexity, large programs can be designed as systems of interacting modules, each with a specific role, coordinating for a common overall purpose. Students should create computational artifacts with interacting procedures, modules, and/or libraries. For example, students could incorporate a physics library into an animation of bouncing balls. Alternatively, students could integrate open-source JavaScript libraries to expand the functionality of a web application. Additionally, students could create their own game to teach Spanish vocabulary words using their own modular design (e.g., including methods to: control scoring, manage wordlists, manage access to different game levels, take input from the user, etc.).

Standard:
Develop guidelines that convey systematic troubleshooting strategies that others can use to identify and fix errors.

Descriptive Statement:
Troubleshooting complex problems involves the use of multiple sources when researching, evaluating, and implementing potential solutions. Troubleshooting also relies on experience, such as when people recognize that a problem is similar to one they have seen before and adapt solutions that have worked in the past. For example, students could create a list of troubleshooting strategies to debug network connectivity problems such as checking hardware and software status and settings, rebooting devices, and checking security settings. Alternatively, students could create troubleshooting guidelines for help desk employees based on commonly observed problems (e.g., problems connecting a new device to the computer, problems printing from a computer to a network printer).

Standard:
Translate between different representations of data abstractions of real-world phenomena, such as characters, numbers, and images.

Descriptive Statement:
Computers represent complex real-world concepts such as characters, numbers, and images through various abstractions. Students translate between these different levels of data representations. For example, students could convert an HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) tag for red font into RGB (Red Green Blue), HEX (Hexadecimal Color Code), HSL (Hue Saturation Lightness), RGBA( Red Green Blue Alpha), or HSLA (Hue Saturation Lightness and Alpha) representations. Alternatively, students could convert the standard representation of a character such as ! into ASCII or Unicode.

Standard:
Describe tradeoffs associated with how data elements are organized and stored.

Descriptive Statement:
People make choices about how data elements are organized and where data is stored. These choices affect cost, speed, reliability, accessibility, privacy, and integrity. Students describe implications for a given data organziation or storage choice in light of a specific problem. For example, students might consider the cost, speed, reliability, accessibility, privacy, and integrity tradeoffs between storing photo data on a mobile device versus in the cloud. Alternatively, students might compare the tradeoffs between file size and image quality of various image file formats and how choice of format may be infuenced by the device on which it is to be accessed (e.g., smartphone, computer).

Standard:
Evaluate the ways computing impacts personal, ethical, social, economic, and cultural practices.

Descriptive Statement:
Computing may improve, harm, or maintain practices. An understanding of how equity deficits, such as minimal exposure to computing, access to education, and training opportunities, are related to larger, systemic problems in society enables students to create more meaningful artifacts. Students illustrate the positive, negative, and/or neutral impacts of computing. For example, students could evaluate the accessibility of a product for a broad group of end users, such as people who lack access to broadband or who have various disabilities. Students could identify potential bias during the design process and evaluate approaches to maximize accessibility in product design. Alternatively, students could evaluate the impact of social media on cultural, economic, and social practices around the world.

Standard:
Identify impacts of bias and equity deficit on design and implementation of computational artifacts and apply appropriate processes for evaluating issues of bias.

Descriptive Statement:
Biases could include incorrect assumptions developers have made about their users, including minimal exposure to computing, access to education, and training opportunities. Students identify and use strategies to test and refine computational artifacts with the goal of reducing bias and equity deficits and increasing universal access. For example, students could use a spreadsheet to chart various forms of equity deficits, and identify solutions in existing software. Students could use and refine the spreadsheet solutions to create a strategy for methodically testing software specifically for bias and equity.

Standard:
Demonstrate ways a given algorithm applies to problems across disciplines.

Descriptive Statement:
Students identify how a given algorithm can be applied to real-world problems in different disciplines. For example, students could demonstrate how a randomization algorithm can be used to select participants for a clinical medical trial or to select a flash card to display on a vocabulary quiz. Alternatively, students could demonstrate how searching and sorting algorithms are needed to organize records in manufacturing settings, or to support doctors queries of patient records, or to help governments manage support services they provide to their citizens.

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:
Describe issues that impact network functionality.

Descriptive Statement:
Many different organizations, including educational, governmental, private businesses, and private households rely on networks to function adequately in order to engage in online commerce and activity. Quality of Service (QoS) refers to the capability of a network to provide better service to selected network traffic over various technologies from the perspective of the consumer. Students define and discuss performance measures that impact network functionality, such as latency, bandwidth, throughput, jitter, and error rate. For example, students could use online network simulators to explore how performance measures impact network functionality and describe impacts when various changes in the network occur. Alternatively, students could describe how pauses in television interviews conducted over satellite telephones are impacted by networking factors such as latency and jitter.

Standard:
Describe the design characteristics of the Internet.

Descriptive Statement:
The Internet connects devices and networks all over the world. Large-scale coordination occurs among many different machines across multiple paths every time a web page is opened or an image is viewed online. Through the domain name system (DNS), devices on the Internet can look up Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, allowing end-to-end communication between devices. The design decisions that direct the coordination among systems composing the Internet also allow for scalability and reliability. Students factor historical, cultural, and economic decisions in their explanations of the Internet. For example, students could explain how hierarchy in the DNS supports scalability and reliability. Alternatively, students could describe how the redundancy of routing between two nodes on the Internet increases reliability and scales as the Internet grows.