Portfolio Reflection Questions
Make a copy of this document in your Portfolio Assignments folder and answer these questions in the spaces below. Once complete, turn in this assignment according to the steps given by your teacher.
3.10 Impacts of CS: Electronic Documents Curriculum Page
Short answer:
1. What is metadata? Give an example of how a piece of metadata could be used to increase the usefulness of an image or document.
Metadata is data about a file, such as the last time it was edited or the date it was created. This could increase the usefulness of a document, for example is a court of law, by providing evidence of when or by who a document was edited.
2. What is a model?
A model is a digitally rendered version of an image that appears on a computer screen. For instance, the image that you just took with your iPhone camera.
3. What's the difference between a raster image and an ASCII representation of a text document?
A raster image is a rectangular grid of pixels that represents an image, whereas an ASCII representation of a text document is a set of code in ASCII that represents the text in a document.
4. What are filename extensions? What are they used for?
Filename extensions are additions to a file name, such as .jpg, that are used to represent what type of compression technique is used for that file. For instance, .doc, .mov, and .jpg.
5. What is lossless representation? What is lossy representation? What are the trade-offs in using each representation?
Lossless representation is compression where no data is lost whereas lossy representation is compression where some data is eliminated in order to reduce redundancy. The trade-offs are that lossless rep, requires more storage and lossy makes the file worse quality.
6. What is steganography and what is it used for? Describe in your own words the steganography algorithm used in the activity.
Steganography is the art of hiding messages or details inside documents, images, or other files.
7. What would you have to do to delete a document from your computer so that it could not possibly be read by anyone else?
In order to delete a document so that it could be read by anyone else, you would have to delete it and then execute an "Empty Trash" command, which writes over the old data, effectively obliterating it.
8. What is free and open source software? Provide an example.
Free and open source software is software that is open to be shared, edited, used, etc. by anybody. For instance, mozilla firefox is open and free source software.
Free Response:
1. How has retouching become a controversial issue? Give an example.
Retouching has become controversial because it has been used to tamper with evidence such as images. For instance, photoshop is used to make models seem slimmer and more attractive, something reality doesn't entail.
2. Would you rather own a camera (or camera phone) with a higher number of megapixels or lower? Explain.
I would rather my camera with a higher number of megapixels because then the images that i take have better quality. Saying this, they do take up more storage.
3. Other than digital images, what might be an example of a computer model? Explain your answer based on the definition of a model.
Another example of a computer model is a video, which is really just a bunch of images play is rapid succession to give the appearance of movement. This fits the definition of a model because a video is a representation of a multitude of photographs in bits.
4. The code that implements App Inventor is open source and its impact on education is obvious. Find another example of open source software and describe its positive impact on education, business or society.
Another example of open source code is mozilla firefox. This has a positive impact in businesses because they can edit forefox’s code into their own version, which they can then market without risk of copyright.