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Intro to CS 9-10 / Week 12 / Friday
5/6
Week 12 · Safe, Fair and Ready: Beacon Launch Review

Friday

Impact Friday: Fair for everyone
// Privacy, security, fairness and a launch day demo
⏱ about 20 min

Friday: Impact Friday: Fair for Everyone

The plant team tests Beacon one last time, with Wednesday's fixes in place. Most of them love it.

One gardener taps the alert screen. "Thank you for the words. I cannot tell your red light from the green one."

Comet winces. "We fixed that on the screen in week 8. Then I added the sensor box light and made the same guess again."

Wren nods slowly. "What do you notice? An old wrong assumption about our users crept back into a new part."

Nova hovers beside the gardener. "And testing caught it before launch," she says gently. "That is exactly what testing is for."

Comet taps the fixed alert procedure. "Words first, light second. For everyone, every time."

Bias and wrong assumptions

Computing innovations can reflect human biases, through biases written into algorithms or biases in the data they use.

Biases can enter at every level of software development. Programmers should act to reduce them.

One kind of bias is a wrong assumption developers make about their users.

Teams can check their work against professionally accepted accessibility standards.

SPOT THE BIAS
  • Read the question.
  • Tap your answer.
What wrong assumption did Comet make?
How was the bias found?
Where can bias enter software?

Access and credit

The digital divide is differing access to computing devices and the Internet. It is based on social and economic factors, where people live, or which groups they belong to.

It raises issues of equity, access and influence, both locally and around the world.

Software licenses include copyright, freeware and many open-source schemes. Creative Commons lets creators share work freely.

Using someone else's work as your own is plagiarism. Always cite material made by others.

StatementTrue or false?
A developer's wrong assumption about users is a kind of bias.?
Bias can only enter software through its data.?
The digital divide is about differing access to devices and the Internet.?
You must cite material created by someone else.?
WHY THIS EXERCISEA fair app works for its users and gives credit where it is due.

Course review

BEACON, FROM IDEA TO LAUNCH
  • ?We interviewed the greenhouse team and wrote requirements.
  • ?We sent packets through the relay and rerouted around a break.
  • ?We wrote alert rules, loops and lists in pseudocode.
  • ?We encoded readings in bits and compressed photos for the relay.
  • ?We split Beacon into procedures and tested it with extreme inputs.
  • ?We ran the launch review: safe, fair and ready.
WHY THIS EXERCISEEvery step of the course built one more piece of Beacon.
BIG IDEAS CHECK
  • Read the question.
  • Tap your answer.
Which three building blocks can make any algorithm?
Which search needs sorted data?
How many bits are in a byte?
Differing access to devices and the Internet is called the digital ____.
Presenting someone else's work as your own is ____.
What did Comet put first in the fixed alert, words or a light? Type one word.
WHY THIS EXERCISEWords first makes the alert work for users who cannot tell the colors apart.
Try it
Look around your home for a signal that uses only color, such as a light on a charger or an appliance.
How could it also show its meaning in words, a symbol or a sound?
On paper, sketch the cover of Beacon's design brief: its name, its purpose in one sentence, and one picture.

Outstanding work, developer. Tomorrow's Mission Quest is launch day: your family demo.

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