This writer’s reference condenses and covers everything a beginning writing student needs to successfully compose college-level work, including the basics of composition, grammar, and research. It is broken down into easy-to-tackle sections, while not overloading students with more information than they need. Great for any beginning writing students or as reference for advanced students!

This resource is a google slide created to help students begin research for an animal report. This will help them use the explora piece to Utah's Online Library  

This resource is a Language Arts student activity that utilizes Utah's Online Library resources - specifically, the three Gale databases (Kids InfoBits Grades K-6, Research in Context Grades 6-8, and Reference Collection Grades 9-12), the Library of Congress (located in the section called General Resources), and eMedia - to help students research and read about Booker T. Washington.

To kick off the final unit of this course, students will do some research into interesting innovations in computing. This lesson will expose students to wider variety of computing form factors (what a computer looks like) and fields that are impacted by computing. Later in this unit students will look back on the devices they encountered in this lesson as they develop their own physical computing devices.

The core idea of this lesson occurs in the unplugged activity that kicks off the lesson, in which students try to keep track of IP addresses that had been randomly assigned to each student in the class, while at the same time the teacher occasionally changes students' addresses. This leads to identifying the need for an authoritative system for name-to-address mappings, known as the Domain Name System or [v DNS].

Students then briefly experiment with a DNS protocol in the Internet Simulator. The activity is similar, in that students will have to grapple with IP addresses changing in real time and use the built in DNS protocol to resolve the issues.

The lesson ends with students doing some rapid research about DNS and some of its vulnerabilities, particularly what are known as Denial of Service Attacks.

This lesson is a capstone to the Internet unit. Students will research and prepare a flash talk about an issue facing society: either **[v Net Neutrality]** or **Internet Censorship**. Developing an informed opinion about these issues hinges on an understanding of how the Internet functions as a system. Students will prepare and deliver a flash talk that should combine forming an opinion about the issue and an exhibition of their knowledge of the internet.

This lesson is good *practice* for certain elements of the AP Explore Performance Task.1 The primary things practiced here are: doing a bit of research about impacts of computing (though here it’s specifically about the Internet), explaining some technical details related to ideas in computer science, and connecting these ideas to global and social impacts. Students will practice synthesizing information, and presenting their learning in a flash talk.

1**Note:** This is NOT the official AP® Performance Task that will be submitted as part of the Advanced Placement exam; it is a practice activity intended to prepare students for some portions of their individual performance at a later time.

This lesson sets the the stage for why we want to learn about how the Internet works. First students share what they currently know about how the Internet works through a KWL activity.

Then students watch a short video the introduces Vint Cerf and the Internet at high level. Students then skim a memo written to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) by Vint Cerf in 2002 entitled “The Internet is for Everyone,” which calls out a series of threats to the prospect that the Internet should be an open, easily and cheaply accessible resource for everyone on the planet.

Finally we foreshadow the practice PT at the end of the unit. Many of the questions and challenges raised by Vint Cerf still apply today, and students will be asked to research and present on one for the Practice PT.

In this lesson students are introduced to the standard units for measuring the sizes of digital files, from a single byte, all the way up to terabytes and beyond. Students begin the lesson by comparing the size of a plain text file containing “hello” to a Word document with the same contents. Students are introduced to the units kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, and terabyte, and research the sizes of files they make use of every day, using the appropriate terminology. This lesson foreshadows an investigation of compression as a means for combatting the rapid growth of digital data.

Students learn the difference between lossy and lossless compression by experimenting with a simple lossy compression widget for compressing text. Students then research three real-world compressed file formats to fill in a research guide. Throughout the process they review the skills and strategies used to research computer science topics online, in particular to cope with situations when they don't have the background to fully understand everything they're reading (a common situation even for experienced CS students).

In this lesson students will conduct a small amount of research to explore a file format either currently in use or from history. Students will conduct research in order to complete a "one-pager" that summarizes their findings. They will also design a computational artifact (video, audio, graphic, etc.) that succinctly summarizes the advantages of their format over other similar ones.

This lesson is intended to be a quick, short version of a performance task in which students rapidly do some research and respond in writing. It might take 2 class days but should not take more. The goal is to develop skills that students will use when they complete the actual Explore PT later in the year.

Students learn about various types of cybercrimes and the cybersecurity measures that can help prevent them. Then students perform a Rapid Research project investigating a particular cybercrime event with a particular focus on the data that was lost or stolen and the concerns that arise as a result. The Rapid Research activity features vocabulary, concepts, and skills that should help prepare them for the AP Explore PT, and also serves as a capstone for the sequence of lessons on encryption and security.

This lesson asks students to consider carefully the assumptions they make when interpreting data and data visualizations. The class begins by examining how the Google Flu Trends project tried and failed to use search trends to predict flu outbreaks. They will then read a report on the Digital Divide which highlights how access to technology differs widely by personal characteristics like race and income. This report challenges a widespread assumption that data collected online is representative of the population at large. To practice identifying assumptions in data analysis, students are provided a series of scenarios in which data-driven decisions are made based on flawed assumptions. They will need to identify the assumptions being made (most notably those related to the digital divide) and explain why these assumptions lead to incorrect conclusions.

In this lesson students will conduct a small amount of research to explore a computing innovation that leverages the use of data. Students will research a topic of personal interest and respond to questions about about how that innovation produces, uses, or consumes data. The lesson is intended to give students practice with doing research of this nature and provides a small amount of scaffolding to help students figure out what to look for.

This lesson is intended to be a quick, short version of a performance task in which students rapidly do some research and respond in writing. It might take 2 class days but should not take more. The goal is to generate ideas for exploration later when students complete the actual Explore PT later in the year.

Need your students to do some research and want to make sure that they know how to find credible sources? There is the perfect Google for Education Applied Digital Skills Lesson for that!  Thumbnail Photo Credits: "Keyboard and Encyclopedia" by brad.rourke is licensed with CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ 

This lesson plan is co-taught in the media center with a classroom teacher who has assigned a research paper. The students should have an approved topic but have not started their research. They will learn how to evaluate sources they can use in their research paper. Once they have at least one source chosen, the students will create and share a short screen recording showing the different elements of the source that make it a good choice for their research paper. Citations:Per A.J. Andersson, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia CommonsCRAAP https://libguides.cmich.edu/web_research/craap#:~:text=CRAAP%20stands%20for%20Currency%2C%20Relevance,one%20method%20for%20evaluating%20content.

This lesson plan gives students a chance to learn about a country of their choice by accessing two databases to pull information from: Culturegrams and World Book Online. They are given a list of topics that need to be included in their project (which also serves as their assessment). They will be using Adobe Express to create a video highlighting their country, giving space for the topics they've researched.For cover image:Photo by Vlada Karpovich: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-opening-a-map-on-the-floor-7368277/photo resource Lesson plan idea:https://www.uen.org/lessonplan/view/42845 

This lesson is on a Fantasy Vacation. It utilizes Google Earth. This assignment allows student flexibility to learn about a new location of their choice, conduct some basic research and provide information on what they learned after they explore pre-selected locations. This lesson is designed for students to work individually, however, depending on the need of your students, you could assign this assignment to a pair of students or a group. 

This is a lesson plan was created to help librarians and first grade teachers teach their students about research. The format is note taking and a Power Point presentation. cover page photo credit = File:Mammal Diversity (Placentalia).png - Wikimedia Commons

This lesson has been created to use with a 6th grade class. The format is a genius hour format. Students will be choosing a topic on a current event and researching that current event. They will create an infographic using Adobe Spark that shows the inforamation they found.The graphic for the cover page was created by Jean Robinson using Canva.

Students should have autonomy in their learning and be given the opportunity to light their interest in learning about something that intrigues them. At times they don't know how to start this process or to do it effectively to find their answers. In this Genius Hour Introduction and Plan students will learn how to research, find answers and create a project that they can share with others to share what they learned while taking autonomy in their learning.  Thumbnail image link website.