Georgia Foundations of Computer Programming

When was the first computer made? What did it look like, and what was it used for? In this lesson, students will explore the creation and evolution of computing machines that now permeate our day-to-day life.

In this lesson, students will learn about the essential internal components that make up a computer. Component categories include the motherboard (system board), firmware (BIOS), CPU (processor), GPU (graphics processor), storage, cooling, and NIC (network adapter).

What kinds of software do computers use and need?

In this lesson, the topic of software is broken down into types of software, how they interact, and the specific functions of the different types of software.

What is hardware? How does hardware work?

In this lesson, hardware is broken down into the different physical components of computers and how they contribute to the function of the computer as a whole.

Where is computing headed? What is Artificial Intelligence and what are the potential impacts that this might have on our world?

In this lesson, students learn about Artificial Intelligence and how the landscape of computing might change in the future. Students will discuss how these future developments might impact our society.

How do computers store and manipulate information? In this lesson, students learn how computers abstract complicated information into manageable chunks that they can then store and manipulate.

In this lesson, students will have a high level discussion about what the internet is and how the internet works. The topics of anonymity and censorship will also be discussed.

In this lesson, students are presented with different ways that the Internet impacts their lives. The Internet affects the way that people communicate (emails, social media, video chat) and collaborate to solve problems. It has revolutionized the way that people can learn and even buy things. Because the Internet is present in almost every facet of people’s lives, there are severe ethical and legal concerns that derive from the Internet.

For the final project, students will create a short presentation about a specific model of computer. It could be an early computer model, or a computer model that is still being developed. They may pick any technology where a computer is the main component – this includes phones, robots, drones, etc.

In this lesson, students are introduced to coding with turtle graphics. Students will begin to recognize programs as sequences and groups of commands. Students will learn a few basic commands and then apply them right away by writing their first program.

In this lesson, students will be introduced to the layout of Tracy’s grid world and will learn how to use coordinate pairs to locate Tracy on the coordinate plane. They will add to the list of commands they know and can use to create Tracy graphics.

In this lesson, students will learn how to use the left and right commands in order to move Tracy to more locations on the canvas. They will now have many commands that can be used to have Tracy create more complex graphics.

In this lesson, students are introduced to for loops. They learn how for loops simplify the process of making small changes to a program and help avoid repeating code. For loops are written like this:

for i in range (4):
    // Code to be repeated 4 times

In this lesson, students are introduced to the ability to turn Tracy at any angle. With this feature, Tracy can now draw diagonal lines which opens up the possibility to draw multiple shapes that weren’t previously available.

In this lesson, students learn how to use comments to describe their programs. Comments are helpful because they allow programmers to leave notes about the programs they are writing. Students will also learn about the different types of comments that can be used and the benefits of using them.

In this short lesson, students will be introduced to the rules for naming elements in their code. Variables and functions that are used inside their programs will be named by students, so the following guidelines should be obeyed to be sure that the programs written are readable and successful.

In this lesson, students are introduced to functions. They start with the basics of defining a function and why we need them and will revisit a program they coded earlier in the unit to rewrite it using functions.

In this lesson, students are able to add some flair to their turtle graphics programs by controlling color, pensize, and fill. These new commands are added to the list of commands that have been already practiced in order to allow for more creativity in student programs.

In this lesson, students are introduced to the concept of Top Down Design. Top Down Design is the process of breaking down a program into functions or smaller parts to avoid repeated code and to make our programs more readable.

In this lesson, students will learn about a fundamental aspect of every programming language: Variables. A variable is something that stores information in a program that can be used later.

In this lesson, students will learn how to incorporate user input into their programs. Students will learn how to request user input as both strings and integers, where the input is stored, and how to convert strings and integers.

In this lesson, students will dive deeper into the concept of functions by exploring how to use parameters to customize their code.

In this lesson, students will expand their knowledge of for loops. They are aware that for loops execute the same lines of code a given number of times but will learn that i is actually a variable that can be used to control commands inside the loop as it is running.

In this lesson, students will learn the extended parameters that can be used to control the value of i in for loops. They will then be able to use the variable i to control much more of their code by setting specific values.

In this lesson, students will learn how to use If Statements which will allow them to use conditions to determine how their code should run.

In this lesson, students will learn how to expand on If Statements by including a way to have Tracy make decisions between multiple scenarios.

In this lesson, students will learn that while loops allow code to be executed repeatedly based on a condition. They will also be warned that infinite loops are created if the exit condition of the while loop is never met, causing the code inside the while loop to repeat continuously which causes the program to crash.

In this lesson, students will put together all the concepts they’ve learned thus far. They will be able to use top down design and to write programs that will solve complex problems.

In this lesson, students review content with a 25 question End-of-Unit Quiz.

In this lesson, students will use the grid coloring functionality of Karel to create a digital image.