AP CSP: Unit 1 - Lesson 6 Speed Run (2021-22)

After this lesson students will understand the ways the most common types of information, text and numbers, are stored using binary. More importantly they should understand the challenges or principles that led to the creation of these systems and that these systems are somewhat arbitrarily created to solve a shared problem. They work not because there was "one right answer" but because many people agreed to use them. The wrap up discussion begins to explore the concept of abstraction. This is a challenging concept to understand and one that students will return to many times throughout the course. In this context, we emphasize how common it is to send text messages to each other yet these messages rely on many smaller layers (like binary numbers and electrical signals) to truly function correctly.