Search the California Content Standards

Standard:
Seek and incorporate feedback from team members and users to refine a solution that meets user needs.

Descriptive Statement:
Development teams that employ user-centered design processes create solutions (e.g., programs and devices) that can have a large societal impact (e.g., an app that allows people with speech difficulties to allow a smartphone to clarify their speech). Students begin to seek diverse perspectives throughout the design process to improve their computational artifacts. Considerations of the end-user may include usability, accessibility, age-appropriate content, respectful language, user perspective, pronoun use, or color contrast. For example, if students are designing an app to teach their classmates about recycling, they could first interview or survey their classmates to learn what their classmates already know about recycling and why they do or do not recycle. After building a prototype of the app, the students could then test the app with a sample of their classmates to see if they learned anything from the app and if they had difficulty using the app (e.g., trouble reading or understanding text). After gathering interview data, students could refine the app to meet classmate needs. (CA NGSS: MS-ETS1-4)

Standard:
Incorporate existing code, media, and libraries into original programs, and give attribution.

Descriptive Statement:
Building on the work of others enables students to produce more interesting and powerful creations. Students use portions of code, algorithms, digital media, and/or data created by others in their own programs and websites. They give attribution to the original creators to acknowledge their contributions. For example, when creating a side-scrolling game, students may incorporate portions of code that create a realistic jump movement from another person's game, and they may also import Creative Commons-licensed images to use in the background. Alternatively, when creating a website to demonstrate their knowledge of historical figures from the Civil War, students may use a professionally-designed template and public domain images of historical figures. (HSS.8.10.5) Additionally, students could import libraries and connect to web application program interfaces (APIs) to make their own programming processes more efficient and reduce the number of bugs (e.g., to check whether the user input is a valid date, to input the current temperature from another city).

Standard:
Document programs in order to make them easier to use, read, test, and debug.

Descriptive Statement:
Documentation allows creators, end users, and other developers to more easily use and understand a program. Students provide documentation for end users that explains their artifacts and how they function (e.g., project overview, user instructions). They also include comments within code to describe portions of their programs and make it easier for themselves and other developers to use, read, test, and debug. For example, students could add comments to describe functionality of different segments of code (e.g., input scores between 0 and 100, check for invalid input, calculate and display the average of the scores). They could also communicate the process used by writing design documents, creating flowcharts, or making presentations. (CA CCSS for ELA/Literacy SL.6.5, SL.7.5, SL.8.5)

Standard:
Design modifications to computing devices in order to improve the ways users interact with the devices.

Descriptive Statement:
Computing devices can extend the abilities of humans, but design considerations are critical to make these devices useful. Students suggest modifications to the design of computing devices and describe how these modifications would improve usabilty. For example, students could create a design for the screen layout of a smartphone that is more usable by people with vision impairments or hand tremors. They might also design how to use the device as a scanner to convert text to speech. Alternatively, students could design modifications for a student ID card reader to increase usability by planning for scanner height, need of scanner device to be connected physically to the computer, robustness of scanner housing, and choice of use of RFID or line of sight scanners. (CA NGSS: MS-ETS1-1)

Standard:
Represent data in multiple ways.

Descriptive Statement:
Computers store data as sequences of 0s and 1s (bits). Software translates to and from this low-level representation to higher levels that are understandable by people. Furthermore, higher level data can be represented in multiple ways, such as the digital display of a color and its corresponding numeric RGB value, or a bar graph, a pie chart, and table representation of the same data in a spreadsheet. For example, students could use a color picker to explore the correspondence between the digital display or name of a color (high-level representations) and its RGB value or hex code (low-level representation). Alternatively, students could translate a word (high-level representation) into Morse code or its corresponding sequence of ASCII codes (low-level representation).

Standard:
Collect data using computational tools and transform the data to make it more useful.

Descriptive Statement:
Data collection has become easier and more ubiquitous. The cleaning of data is an important transformation for ensuring consistent format, reducing noise and errors (e.g., removing irrelevant responses in a survey), and/or making it easier for computers to process. Students build on their ability to organize and present data visually to support a claim, understanding when and how to transform data so information can be more easily extracted. Students also transform data to highlight or expose relationships. For example, students could use computational tools to collect data from their peers regarding the percentage of time technology is used for school work and entertainment, and then create digital displays of their data and findings. Students could then transform the data to highlight relationships representing males and females as percentages of a whole instead of as individual counts. (CA CCSS for Mathematics 6.SP.4, 7.SP.3, 8.SP.1, 8.SP.4) Alternatively, students could collect data from online forms and surveys, from a sensor, or by scraping a web page, and then transform the data to expose relationships. They could highlight the distribution of data (e.g., words on a web page, readings from a sensor) by giving quantitative measures of center and variability. (CA CCSS for Mathematics 6.SP.5.c, 7.SP.4)

Standard:
Test and analyze the effects of changing variables while using computational models.

Descriptive Statement:
Variables within a computational model may be changed, in order to alter a computer simulation or to more accurately represent how various data is related. Students interact with a given model, make changes to identified model variables, and observe and reflect upon the results. For example, students could test a program that makes a robot move on a track by making changes to variables (e.g., height and angle of track, size and mass of the robot) and discussing how these changes affect how far the robot travels. (CA NGSS: MS-PS2-2) Alternatively, students could test a game simulation and change variables (e.g., skill of simulated players, nature of opening moves) and analyze how these changes affect who wins the game. (CA NGSS: MS-ETS1-3) Additionally, students could modify a model for predicting the likely color of the next pick from a bag of colored candy and analyze the effects of changing variables representing the common color ratios in a typical bag of candy. (CA CCSS for Mathematics 7.SP.7, 8.SP.4)

Standard:
Compare tradeoffs associated with computing technologies that affect people's everyday activities and career options.

Descriptive Statement:
Advancements in computer technology are neither wholly positive nor negative. However, the ways that people use computing technologies have tradeoffs. Students consider current events related to broad ideas, including privacy, communication, and automation. For example, students could compare and contrast the impacts of computing technologies with the impacts of other systems developed throughout history such as the Pony Express and US Postal System. (HSS.7.8.4) Alternatively, students could identify tradeoffs for both personal and professional uses of a variety of computing technologies. For instance, driverless cars can increase convenience and reduce accidents, but they may be susceptible to hacking. The emerging industry will reduce the number of taxi and shared-ride drivers, but may create more software engineering and cybersecurity jobs.

Standard:
Discuss issues of bias and accessibility in the design of existing technologies.

Descriptive Statement:
Computing technologies should support users of many backgrounds and abilities. In order to maximize accessiblity, these differences need to be addressed by examining diverse populations. With the teacher's guidance, students test and discuss the usability of various technology tools, such as apps, games, and devices. For example, students could discuss the impacts of facial recognition software that works better for lighter skin tones and recognize that the software was likely developed with a homogeneous testing group. Students could then discuss how accessibility could be improved by sampling a more diverse population. (CA CCSS for ELA/Literacy SL.6.1, SL.7.1, SL.8.1)

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.