My Materials Supporting Exploring Computer Science Curriculum Unit 2

Included here will be my personal materials supporting the Exploring Computer Science (ECS) curriculum, specifically version 4.0. (Some teachers in Chicago may also be using a version of this curriculum with integrated experiences providing preparation for Microsoft Office Specialist certification: Taste of Computing curriculum.)

My materials have not been reviewed by others, and do not have any official status within the ECS curriculum; rather they are simply a few handouts, web pages, and suggestions that I have prepared to support certain pieces within the ECS curriculum.

Most of my materials are available in

PDF format. (If you don't have it already, you can download the free Adobe PDF Reader for .pdf files.)
LaTeX format. (If you are not already familiar with this format, you will probably want to skip over it, but here is a starting point for learning more about LaTeX.)

Feel free to edit and repackage these materials for your own use. If you are not familiar with LaTeX, you will probably want to cut-and-paste from the PDF to whatever document preparation tool you prefer. These materials are presented in the same order as the standard curriculum for Unit 2 and labeled with appropriate topical descriptions. Many topics are skipped, since it may be sufficient to handout things copied directly from the official curriculum or materials that it references. I include here only additional/modified handouts. (See also available materials for other units.)

Convenient 2-page (11pt type) version of New York Times article about search data referenced for instructional days 1--2. This version elides sexually-related and suicide-related material. PDF, LaTeX.
Convenient 2-page (11pt type) version of New York Times article about online privacy referenced for instructional days 1--2. PDF, LaTeX.
Suggestion based on an idea of Baker Franke: For each article, have students read and then submit through a Google form 10 keywords they think are most descriptive of what the article is about. Then collect all the submitted words and make a word cloud at http://wordle.net.
A handout with a scenario and questions to get students thinking about a community problem. PDF, LaTeX.
A general list of problem-solving strategies that could be useful to present to students; got this from Dan Wheadon at a professional development workshop. HTML
A handout presenting the four problem solving steps and helping guide students to work on the candy bar problem. PDF, LaTeX.
A handout to help guide students through the dictionary exercise for linear and binary search. PDF, LaTeX.

Other units: Previous Unit: Unit 1, Next Unit: Unit 3.