tealsk12/apcsa-public

AP Computer Science A Curriculum Materials

TEALS AP CS A Repo

This open public repository contains materials for all users (including students) of the TEALS AP CS A course. In addition, it contains the source for the AP CS A Curriculum.

Instructors, volunteers and other developers, see also the apcsa-instructor repo for restricted curriculum materials and assets.

For questions, contact Kenney Chan.

Previewing Locally

Curriculum Issues

TEALS will only continue making small corrections and critical updates to TEALS curricula. Please open an issue if you encounter things like factual, spelling, or grammatical errors, broken links, sequencing problems (topics needed before they are taught), or incomplete/missing materials.

Giving feedback and asking questions about the curriculum

TEALS intends for our curricula to be starting points for teaching teams. We invite volunteers and classroom teachers using our curricula to fork them as appopriate! If you'd like to suggest changes or additions to a curriculum be added to the master branch, please submit a pull request containing your changes. As a best practice, each pull request should contain a singular atomic change.

For general curriculum-related questions and discussion not tied to a specific reported issue, we encourage everyone to actively participate in the GitHub Discussions board for the corresponding curriculum. This is a great place to share alternative lesson ideas, share pro-tips for implementation and differentiation, pacing advice, etc.

apcsa-public's Issues

Pandoc conversion

Set up pandoc tool and associated temporary scripts. Run full pass and get all target Word docs into draft Markdown form.

Scan for bogus backslash escapes

Scan docs for all backslash characters. These arise occasionally (and improperly) due to approximate Markdown conversion.

Markdown pass unit 1

Lesson Plan 3.04 - Algorithm for Solving Problems file mentioned but not linked

I see the file in the repo but it isn't linked from the Lesson Plan

Gitbook prelim research

Go through Gitbook documentation and get enough information to plan out all work remaining for hosting the APCS curriculum Gitbook. While doing this, take enough notes for material for the documentation for the final docset delivery.

Document GitBook process

Symantic error in Slides for Lesson 3.02

On slide # 33 for Unit 3, there's some example code for the doubleNumber method.

That example code will always print "Initial value = + number" and "Final value = + number"

I assume the actual intent is to print something like "Final value = 34"

Also, on an unrelated note, is it possible to turn off smart quotes and auto capitalization for all of the slides? They make it difficult to read, in my opinion.

Break up section 1.03

Section 1.03 (entitled Strings and Console Output) begins with unrelated content on nature of Java/ Eclipse/ setting up your first program. I'd advise breaking this into two separate units.

Add more Culture Day Resources from Forums

We should update the culture day topic with a list of other videos that have been submitted from the forums as an ongoing resource list.

Big Data

• NYC Taxi Trips

Careers

• Career slides from Verizon PM

Concepts

• Halting Problem (that a program can't determine if it'll finish)
  • Computerphile Video - 6 minutes and is prefaced with a bit more history. It has a simpler setup in the end, but introduces the notion of some larger problem sets and theory.
  • Animation - 8 minutes and has a bit more complex setup but is much more visual and starts off a little bit more from the basics.
• Various Topics Playlist - Crash Course Computer Science

History & Humanity

• Carol Shaw - Game Design
• Farmers turned Hackers - How do we rely on technology? Right to repair, etc... see more follow-up questions from original post
• Movies
  • Hidden Figures - Female team of African-American woman who were pivotal to getting NASA to space. CS topics include: Applied Applications, Algorithms, Programming
  • The Imitation Game - Alan Turing and the Enigma machine. CS topics include: Encryption, Turing Machines
  • Pirates of Silicon Valley - About Apple & Microsoft.
  • Sneakers - Fictional, about a team of hackers and a theoretical device that can break any encryption. CS topics include: Importance of Encryption, difference between White & Black Hat hackers.
  • The Social Network - Mark Zuckerberg & Facebook. CS topics include: Social Networks, Privacy, Law
  • WarGames - Fictional, about a student who breaks into a computer and accidentally starts WWIII. CS topics include: Hacking, AI

Physical Activities

• CS Unplugged

Self-Driving Cars / AI

• Self-Driving Cars: The Road Ahead - KQED QUEST
• Tesla Autonomy Day - Neural Networks - Direct link to start of middle of video (best section). Talks about Software/AI/Neural-networks, does a good introduction to them in general. Time index 10236 is start of third section about integration at scale, first part of video is about hardware.
• Trolley Problem Simulator - Trolley Problem Info
• Digital Creatures Learn to Walk
• 3D Models from Images

More Articles

Ensure all code blocks are marked as Java

Some of the earlier units lacked the Java keyword for triple back-tick code openers.

Need a more condensed Curriculum Map

I think there's a strong need to have a view of the curriculum map that is more glance-able, like the tabular view of each unit currently on the SharePoint wiki page.

Barron's Textbook references

Currently, we do not recommend or require the Barron's Text for schools doing AP CS A but we reference the text from Unit 5 on. We need to considering replacing the references with other free resources or adding the purchase of the Barrons Text in the implementation guide.

Grab and cache all external images

There are a bunch of references from the curriculum to third-party imagery. Where possible, grab the images and cache them in the book content.

Issues with AP CS A curriculum, Test 2, Section II, Question 3

I recently discovered a couple of issues in the AP CS A curriculum provided by teals. Specifically, AP CS A Test 2 Section II, question 3 has both a minor problem with the questions (duplicate line), and the provided solution is incorrect (won't even compile). I'm working off the newest version of the curriculum (v2.2.2), just released December 5. Request fixes for these items. Thanks.

Remove "APSquad" reference in "giving feedback" section of Introduction page

As far as I know, the APSquad email list is no longer used. I would think feedback should either go on the forum or in Github issues list as per "Contribute" page?

Word Pass

Go through all Word docs and

• hoist all content out of textboxes
• no floating elements
• some images converted
• mild doc cleanup

Lesson 3.04 slides tell students to prompt user; they haven't learned that yet

I think this issue was already reported on the TEALs discourse forums. It looks like the worksheet was updated, but the slides were not.

On slide 52 of the Unit 3 slides, it instructs the students to prompt the user for destinations. The students have not yet learned how to use console input, so the assignment should instruct them to pre-select 3 locations and hard code them in.

New AP CS A Projects not in the Summary file correctly

Need to take a look at the following:

• 3.18 - Consumer Review Lab
• 4.09a - Steganography Lab
• 5.06a - Data Lab
• 6.07a - Celebrity Lab

How to access apcsa-instructor?

The README mentions restricted curriculum materials at another repo apcsa-instructor but does not talk about how to gain access. I'm not authorized; what's the process?

Markdown pass unit 3

Unit Slides are hard to discover

A recent Discourse post indicated that a user of the curriculum didn't know that there are slides for each unit. In particular, lesson 1.08 references the slides but the user didn't know what slides the lesson was referring to. Perhaps each lesson should link to its unit's slide deck under "materials" (or perhaps, this should only be the case if there are slides in the deck relevant to a given lesson)?

Broken Link - Unit 5 Curriculum Assets

A teacher reported a broken link (Curriculum Assets) for Unit 5:
https://tealsk12.github.io/apcsa-public/Unit5-Map-CB.md.html

Add GitBook styles/config here used to publish the actual site

Previewing the site locally doesn't contain all the styles and configuration setup for the actual TEALS GitBook. e.g. Logo header and having the chapter panel on the right.

It'd be nice if we could include that config/style stuff here as well so we can have a higher fidelity preview when making changes locally.

Link to Eclipse Walkthrough no longer functions

"TEALS volunteer Gil Lund has prepared a video with a Hello World and walkthrough of some Eclipse: https://mix.office.com/watch/pje5izaj92jz/."

This link just takes me to a microsoft page explaining how they've discontinued the service that the video was hosted on.

I'm hoping someone has an alternative copy of the video?

Qbank output should go to a common output directory

Here I am engaging in one of my biggest pet peeves: intermingling build output with source. Currently, the qbank project directs generated tests to the /qbank/out directory. This should instead go into something like /out/qbank. Keep generated output isolated to a single simple output directory. If a developer clobbers the /out directory, they should be left with nothing but source-controlled files.

Figure out a way to automatically create PDF files from Word docs in a build process

Hopefully there's a way to do this from the command line so we can have a single script that can run and do this. Ideally, all assets to be created for the instructor are targeted to a zip file for each unit.

Markdown pass unit 4

Lesson 2.02

Last paragraph of Procedure, for the hook, it talks about students learning how the Fahrenheit/Celsius temperature app is built, but the only reference to temperature work is in Accommodation and Differentiation and it specifically excludes the app taking input. It would be less confusing to use a different hook or adjust the lesson/worksheet/exercises to include F/C of some kind.

Lesson 1.01 Links to VS Code setup instructions missing

The links to WS 1.1.1 VS Code and WS 1.1.2 VS Code are missing from curriculum map and lesson plan.

Lesson 1.05 - Broken Link

Overly complicated diagram http://tinyurl.com/y8a7cry

Outdated year references

"As of the 2015–2016 school year, TEALS classes do not have access to the Practice-It dashboard for tracking student progress on the exercises."

"Since these materials are new in 2015–2016, TEALS will apply to have the new syllabus approved."

We're preparing for the 2018-19 school year, and seeing these two lines just made me realize that no one has updated the materials in 3 years.

Remove bogus code literary quotes

A lot of our code examples use left-right literary quotes, rather than the correct straight quotes. Make a pass through the documentation to correct these.

Unit 4 has incorrect title

The name of unit 4 is "Arrays, Lists, & Files", but there isn't any direct instruction on file I/O. Poster 4.1 (dealing with the File object) doesn't appear to be referenced in the curriculum either.

Should Unit 4 be renamed "Arrays and Lists"?

Incorrect order of labs in AP CS A curriculum

The current 2020-2021 AP CS A curriculum calls for the Steganography Lab to be done in Unit 4, PRIOR to Picture Lab in Unit 5.

Picture Lab is a predecessor to Steganography Lab, so this won't work. Here's the first sentence in the Steganography Lab Teacher's guide: "In the Steganography Lab, students will expand on activities from the Picture Lab to
practice manipulating 2D arrays and explore steganography techniques."

Can you fix this in the curriculum? Thanks.

Merge Canadian Version into Master

Merge the BCIT additions from CA-2018-August into the master branch. Review work in the BC-By-FCL (Fair Chance Learning) branch. Add any additional updates required to be inclusive of our Canadian schools.

Markdown pass unit 8

Markdown pass unit 7

Curriculum Map missing

Broken link to Curriculum Map from AP CS A Gitbook, under "Using the curriculum"

Curriculum Lesson 1.05 has bad link to "overly complicated diagram"

https://tealsk12.gitbooks.io/ap-computer-science-a/content/Unit1/Lesson-105.html

tinyurl now just redirects to msn.com page.

reference to TEALS Slack on "Contribute" page

Is this actively used? I'm not aware of an existing program-wide slack, and the slack in question doesn't have a way to join.

Markdown pass unit 9

Fix improper right single quote chars

For some odd reason, Word auto-corrects apostrophes to right single quote characters, which is incorrect. Pass through the documentation and replace apostrophes with apostrophe characters.

Markdown pass unit 6

Markdown pass unit 5

Spelling Error in "Unit 1 Word Bank.docx"

"Hexidecimal" should be spelled "Hexadecimal"

Incorrect Book Title

https://github.com/TEALSK12/apcsa-public/blob/master/curriculum/README.md

Reference to Building Java Concepts: A Back to Basics Approach should actually be Building Java Programs: A Back to Basics Approach

Move cheat-detect tool into the new `toolbox` repo

Now that we have the toolbox repo, move the cheat-detect tool there, as it's of general use across the curricula and projects.

Markdown pass unit 2

Frac Calc Project blank page in AP CS Curriculum

From Dan-
There was a question in the forums about FracCalc from CS A. I hadn't realized we had deleted it from the curriculum, but I can't find it in the new resources or the gitbook and the earlier curriculum does still talk about creating a calculator. Here's the link to the question in the forums: https://forums.tealsk12.org/t/where-is-the-calculator-project/5344

Oops! My mistake. I was looking for it in the unit 3 folder of the latest release. (It is not there.) I do see it in the projects, though. I know we were talking about getting rid of FracCalc because it was probably the least popular project, but - if we are removing it (and I do see there is the 3.XX.1 alternative project still in the curriculum) - we need to get the references to the calculator out of the curriculum that start with unit 2.

Thanks for correcting my oversight, Emilie!

From Emilie -
To clarify further, the page on the gitbook is completely blank: https://tealsk12.gitbook.io/apcsa/unit-3-advanced-data-and-control-flow-4-weeks/lesson-3.xx-frac-calc

That said, it is still under “Additional Curriculum Materials” under the following file path: /AP CS A Release/TEALS-APCSA-Curriculum-v2.2.1/Projects/APCSA-FracCalc-v1.1.0

Is there a reason why it is blank in the gitbook? Is the intention that it is skipped now?

Thanks in advance for your guidance!

Question - Practice-It

Do the SC and EX problems in the lessons and curriculum map always correspond to the textbook?

I was curious, because I noticed in unit 2, the numbering of problems in the text book diverges from Practice-It. Here's an example, from the Lesson 2.02 lesson plan:

Complete self-check questions 5, 6, 9, 12-15 (4th edition: 6, 7, 10, 14-17)

Textbook BJP4, Chapter 2, problem 6:

Practice-It BJP4 2.7 (not 6!):

If the numbers in the lesson plans always correspond to the textbook, I'd be happy to open a PR with corresponding Practice-It problems. So far, I've got unit 1 and 2. https://github.com/TEALSK12/apcsa-public/compare/master...rmoscowitz:practice-it?expand=1

I just wanted to double-check that I'm reading the lesson plans correctly before going further.

Thanks!