Big Idea 5.1 Beneficial and Harmful Effects

Come up with three of your own Beneficial and corresponding Harmful Effects of Computing

    1. you can become more detail-oriented, because you have to identify syntax errors in your code, at the same time, you also might harm your eyes staring at the screen for too long.
    1. While computer programs can help you double check your work, instead of doing your work to learn the necessary critical thinking and skills to be successful in the future, people can cheat and just copy the answers.
    1. multitasking becomes very easy, however, it could be harder to focus on one task seriously.

Talk about dopamine issues above. Real? Parent conspiracy? Anything that is impacting your personal study and success in High School?

  • Dopamine issue is real, when we scroll, especially on Tiktok or Instagram, we get immediate hits of dopamine, which is one of reasons why Youtube is a dying platform. Videos are too long, people want a 60 second or less video. As a result, we are losing our ability to focus and find joy in daily, mundane tasks. I found myself continously scrolling on Tiktok during quarantine, and I wasn’t doing the things I wanted to finish. After I deleted the app, I replaced the time I was spending on social media and swapped it for real hobbies and activities like calling my friends, playing the guitar, etc.

Big Idea 5.2 Digital Divide

How does someone empower themself in a digital world?

  • Someone can empower themself in the digital world by making sure that they are informed on all the new technological advancements, getting all the information they can, so that they aren’t easily scammed or tricked.
  • Exploring all the fields in the interdisciplinary digital world such as UX/UI, software engineering, data mining, etc., you can make sure that you know what interests you and further explore that area.
  • A lot of the times, people are turned away from computer science because they think it’s just coding, but there are so many different fields to pursue and you are sure to find something that appeals to you.

How does someone that is empowered help someone that is not empowered? Describe something you could do at Del Norte HS.

  • For example, I’m a member of Girls in CS, a club at Del Norte that helps make computer science more accessible to girls. In my CSP classes, there are noticably less girls than boys and when I try to convince my friends to do CS events with me, they always think that it’s too hard or boring.
  • I think since my friends are already pursuing different areas now, it might be too late to convince them to learn cs, which is why I think it’s important to start empowering kids from a young age to consider this field.
  • Through hosting hackathons, workshops, and seminars that educate others on how fun and challenging it can be.

Is paper or red tape blocking digital empowerment? Are there such barriers at Del Norte? Elsewhere?

  • paper is blocking digital empowerment, we’ve been using paper for so long that it’s what we’re used to. As a result, some people don’t want to use the computer if not necessary because it can be difficult to learn.
  • But it’s important to to learn how to use a computer, especially in this day in age, everything is online, sticking to paper will only cause you to restrict yourself.
  • Yes, there are such barriers at Del Norte. In English, we still had to write on-demands on paper. We were only give 40 minutes and I didn’t understand a situation in real life where we would only have paper and 40 minutes to write an essay. Instead of practicing writing fast, you should practice your typing skills, which would be more efficient and faster in the long run, allowing you to write more.

5.1-5.2 Additional Questions

Think of three beneficial effects of your projects based on 5.1 Unit

  • help humane society with donations
  • help abandoned dogs and dogs without homes find good owners
  • find the dog that matches your life the best so that it is the easiest transition

Think of a potential harmful effect of your project.

  • There could be an error in the code and the people could be matched to a dog that doesn’t fit their criteria and the dog may be returned.

Answer with an opinion and learnings so far this year: What are pros/cons on internet blockers at router and lack of admin password on lab machines at school?

  • pros- keeps people on track at school, for example if students want to use instagram, pinterest, or other social medias, they have to wait until they go home
  • cons- for computer science class, certain websites are banned, like when we want to deploy a website. Therefore, we have to use vpn or a hot spot which can be inconvenient.

What concerns do you have personally about the digital divide? For yourself or for others.

  • One concern I have is that others who live in poverty and don’t have access to the technology that we have may fall behind and not be educated on all the changes in the digital world. Additionally, they may be less encouraged to pursue jobs in the tech industry because of a lack of opportunity. As a result, certain demographics may be less represented in the technology we use.

5.3 Computing Bias

Write summary/thoughts/conclusions from each of the exercises above. Focus on avoiding Bias in algorithms or code you write.

  • From our discussion, we realized that certain apps are used more by a certain age group. As a result, the information spread is likely to be catered toward that age group. What is recommended for users of one age is unlikely to be reccomended for a different age group. Companies like Netflix, Google, and Amazon recommend products or shows based on what you’ve already seen and enjoyed. For example, if you’re a Democrat on Tiktok and interact with one video positively, you are going to receive more and more Democrat videos that align with your opinion. One way to avoid computing bias is to make sure you have a lot of training diversity when you are creating your algorithms. The reason why the HP camera couldn’t pick up on the black man testing, is because there probably wasn’t a lot of people of color testing the product before launch. In the code I write, I will make sure that other people test it out because everyone can run into different bugs and I can make sure my program is as bug-free as possible.

5.4 Crowdsourcing

CompSci has 150 ish principles students. Describe a crowdsource idea and how you might initiate it in our environment?

  • We already use crowdsourcing with our slack. A lot of people ask questions in the general channel, and anyone can answer. A lot of the time, you get different answers and you can go through the options that people give and use the once that you think will help your error the best. I’ve seen teachers do this with a myConnect discussion board before but I think slack is one of the best ways to crowdsource because you can notifications, and it’s very quick and easy to get responses.

What about Del Norte crowdsourcing? Could your project be better with crowdsourcing?

  • We often use google forms and collect data for classes like Statistics. I also know that different clubs utilize discord and instagram to get more data from members and followers. For example, our Yearbook team will post on their story questions like “how do you feel about the dance getting canceled,” or “do you like our new school schedule.” A lot of the time, crowdsourcing is helpful to quickly get data from peers, but you are also more prone to unreliable responses. My project could be better with crowdsourcing because you can quickly get feedback on ideas that you might be unsure about. When creating these projects, you have to look at issues and ideas from the lens of the viewer, which can be difficult if you don’t get their opinion directly. However, that also doesn’t mean you should utilize everything that people suggest, it’s up to you to filter through responses and pick the ones that you like the best.

What kind of data could you capture at N@tM to make the evening interesting? Perhaps use this data to impress Teachers during finals week.

  • I could keep a record of each project and write down points that I liked about it or parts of the project that inspired me and how I could potentially use it for trimester 3.

Big Ideas 5.5 Legal and Ethical Concerns

When you create a GitHub repository it requests a license type. Review the license types in relationship to this Tech Talk and make some notes in your personal blog.

  • They ask for a SSH private and public key that you generate, and are used to authenticate and establish an encrypted connection between client and remote machine over the internet.

In your blog, summarize the discussions and personal analysis on Software Licenses/Options, Digital Rights, and other Legal and Ethical thoughts from this College Board topic.

  • Some types of licenses include open source MIT and GPL licenses. MIT licenses allows using code freely and distributing closed source versions, the author would want informal credit such as mentioning their name. Closed source means a private project. GPL license let’s people do anything they want except distributing closed source versions. In computer science, you must cite your sources, even images!

Make a license for your personal (blog) and Team repositories for the CPT project. Be sure to have a license for both Team GitHub repositories (frontend/backend). Document license(s) you picked and why. FYI, frontend, since it is built on GitHub pages may come with a license and restrictions. Document in blog how team made license choice and process of update.

  • We decided to use a MIT license, the permissions is: Commercial use, Modification, Distribution, Private use
  • limitations are liability and warranty, and you can’t stop someone else from profitting off your work
  • The MIT license gives users express permission to reuse code for any purpose, sometimes even if code is part of proprietary software. As long as users include the original copy of the MIT license in their distribution, they can make any changes or modifications to the code to suit their own needs.
  • Majority of projects use MIT license so it felt the most safe to use.

5.6 Big Idea 5.6 Safe Computing

Describe PII you have seen on project in CompSci Principles.

  • I’ve seen login features on people’s projects that require personal information such as email or names.

What are your feelings about PII and your personal exposure?

  • For PII, most of the time, if my personal information isn’t required, I don’t fill it out, just to be as private as possible. Sometimes, I change random information I can such as birthday, and I don’t usually put my last name when signing up for websites, I’ll use an initial. If it’s for entertainment, like signing up for Spotify, I won’t use specific personal information, but if it’s for college, I provide the accurate required info.

Describe good and bad passwords? What is another step that is used to assist in authentication.

  • A good password is one that cannot be easily guessed, it should include numbers, letters (capitals and lowercase) and special characters. You should also have different passwords for different websites. Bad passwords are simple and don’t include different types of characters and are the same for everything.

Try to describe Symmetric and Asymmetric encryption.

  • Symmetric encryption utilizes the same secret key to encrypt and decrypt sensitive information. Asymmetric encryption uses linked public and private key pairs and decrypt sender and recipients private data. Github uses asymmetric encryption.

Provide an example of encryption we used in AWS deployment.

  • We use ports and keys so that every person’s website is deployed on a unique port.

Describe a phishing scheme you have learned about the hard way. Describe some other phishing techniques.

  • One time, I got an email that said I got into an exclusive community, but they just wanted donations lol. Phishing techniques often include using emails, links on the internet or appealing advertisements.