Safety, Privacy, and Security

1. Identify, demonstrate, and apply personal safety use of digital devices. The safety, security, and privacy of students are essential both physically and digitally. In early grades, this equates to helping students understand the importance of protecting themselves when utilizing digital technologies and accessing resources in a responsible manner. As students mature, the specific ways in which they interact with technology will change. Utilizing passwords to access remote resources, protecting their identity online, and interacting appropriately in online environments are only a few examples of skills students need to master. As students progress to the senior high level, they should develop a greater understanding of how policies and license agreements could threaten their personal identity. Therefore, all Alabama graduates should possess the skills required to mitigate threats from individuals, as well as automated software agents.

Legal and Ethical Behavior

2. Recognize and demonstrate age-appropriate responsible use of digital devices and resources as outlined in school/district rules. It is important for students to demonstrate age-appropriate responsible use of digital devices and resources. In the early grades, students demonstrate an understanding of their district’s acceptable use policy by such actions as giving another author credit for work, identifying examples of cyberbullying, and stating consequences for misuse. Upper elementary students should be able to demonstrate and apply responsible use of computers, devices, and resources. These students should also practice and share an understanding of guidelines for copyright. Students in middle grades may review the school/district rules and advocate for or against policies. As students reach secondary grades, they should be able to apply legal and ethical standards as they utilize digital tools for synthesizing information, utilizing protected content, collaborating, exploring social networks, and developing/presenting original content while adhering to local acceptable use policies.

Impact of Computing

3. Analyze the potential impact of computing. While meant to advance the processes of work, computing heavily impacts our lives. It is important for students to recognize both beneficial and harmful effects of computing. At a young age, students can be given a manual task and an automated task to determine which occurs more efficiently. Students can then begin to identify advances in computing that have improved efficiency or allowed innovation. As Alabama Course of Study: Digital Literacy and Computer Science students mature, they can begin to identify the positive and negative impacts of computing. At the secondary level, students should identify economic, social, and cultural influences that affect computational innovation and/or limitations.

Systems

​4. Identify and employ appropriate troubleshooting techniques used to solve computing or connectivity issues. Because technology is such a prevalent part of daily life, it is essential that students practice basic troubleshooting tasks at an age-appropriate level. Young students can complete simple tasks such as restarting “frozen” devices or notifying a trusted adult when they experience an unexpected response from the device. As students enter upper elementary grades, they should be able to quit a program when it is responding inappropriately and be able to diagnose simple network connection errors. In middle grades, students will be able to determine if an update is needed for a program or operating system. In secondary grades, students will apply a systematic approach to problem solving with programs and computer systems.

Collaborative Research

5. Locate, curate, and evaluate information from digital sources to answer research questions. With unlimited access to information, students need to develop the skills to process information. In early grades, teachers support collaborative research as students learn to gather data from a variety of sources and then compare their findings with those of their peers. As students progress in age, research will be less teacher-directed and more student-driven. As students mature, they will be able to identify sources as valid or invalid based on multiple factors such as publication date, location of material, author, supporting evidence, etc. The complexity of data will increase at an age-appropriate level. At the secondary level, students will work cooperatively to access digital sources from a variety of perspectives and media to synthesize and report answers for complex research questions.

Digital Tools

6. Produce, review, and revise authentic artifacts using appropriate digital tools. One goal of the DLCS COS is to produce effective communicators capable of sharing their viewpoints through digital media. With guidance from their teachers, young students will work in a variety of platforms including word processing, presentations, spreadsheets, and web applications and progress toward opening their own files and saving them either onto a computer or in the cloud. Students will then progress to selecting appropriate mediums for communicating information. Secondary students will utilize appropriate technologies for creation and management of content with due consideration of desired artifacts, content area, and prescribed and logistical limitations.