Unit 1: Computer Engineering Technology: Safety and Careers

Unit 1: Grade 11/12 Computer Engineering Technology: Safety & Careers

This University/College preparation course extends students’ understanding of computer systems and computer interfacing with external devices. Students will assemble computer systems by installing and configuring appropriate hardware and software, and will learn more about fundamental concepts of electronics, robotics, programming, and networks. Students will examine related environmental and societal issues, and will explore postsecondary pathways leading to careers in computer technology. Focus will support robotics and the Robo program here at Western. The course will be 18 weeks in duration with your later term work weighted heavier than at the beginning of course, and will include a culuminating project.

Course Units and Descriptions

Use this table for an overview and navigate to each of the course unit pages.

Unit	Description
Review course outline for more details
1	Safety & Career - Intro, computers, organization, safety, careers, and custom proposal
2	Computers & Components - Electronics, operation, design, troubleshooting, and maintenance
3	Digital Logic & Circuits - Binary, boolean, logic gates, counters/register ccts., calculations, design, & build
4	Networking & Programming - IP addressing, data routing protocols, services, languages, and concepts
5	Hardware Interface & Control - Student designed custom project
6	Showcase & Web Portfolio - Testing and presentation

Unit Activity Breakdown Format

You will notice each unit activity below is broken down into five subtopics, SPICE, to guide and help you through the project and assignments related to the unit activity:

Situation - This is the introduction, big picture, or you can think of it as the setting of story/novel
Problem/Challenge - What must be resolved or completed, i.e. what you will need to accomplish
Investigation/Ideas - includes gathering ideas, research and organizing information to help create, construct, and/or complete the Problem/Challenge
Create/Construct - take your best idea and complete and/or build the needed solution
Evaluation - did the Problem/Challenge above get resolved and/or completed

This unit will introduce you to the course, class routines, expectations, organization, safety, possible project ideas, and circuit characteristics.

Unit Content Activity Quick Links, Click to Jump to Specific Activity!

Unit 1, Act. 1: Course Information, Organization, and Safety

Situation:

A class of students starting a computer technology/robotics course here at school.

Problem/Challenge:

Getting familiar with what the course is all about, related careers, class routines, expectations of the course and the teacher, general administration of class, and safety are all important issues to know and understand. This activity will allow students the opportunity to organize and prepare for course and understand administration, evaluation, marks, routine, possible career direction, and expectations for classes to run smoothly.

Investigation/Ideas:

The following is list of items that are to be reviewed by students to understand what is going on in this course:

Course Details
General Safety
Detailed Safety Issues
Shop/room Layout
Shop/room Resources
Emergency Procedures
Expectations
Assessment & Evaluation
Class Policies
Routines
Remote learning
Attendance and Lates
Moodle Log-in

It is important that students feel comfortable with the above points and should know what is happening in the course.

Create/Construct:

Room 174a Layout

Introduction

Start by organizing your supplies and materials for taking and storing your notes and assignments in a binder. A duo-tang will be provided for your in-class journals and safety related paper work and stored in the classroom filing cabinet share. Review the course outline and class routines and write down any questions you have about the course, requirements, expectations, or responsibilities you need to be clear on. Timetable and school policies will also be reviewed using your agenda as a guide. A room and school tour will be conducted to familiarize students with our facilities.

A Survey - Getting to know you will be handed out for students to fill out in-class so that the instructor can get to know you and allow you to write down any important information that you feel the instructor should know about such as extra support, health, social, and/or interests you may want to pass on..

The following is a list of related support document links for students, which will be reviewed in class:

Work Redo?

If work is done poorly resulting in less than 50% of a mark, students may have an opportunity to redo. Before submitting a second time:

use teachers feedback as a checklist here and show/report back what is done, fixed, and/or updated,
double check the instructions,
share with a peer mentor that has already done well, to get a peer comment with feedback on your work

This process should result in a close to if not perfect assignment to hand in. If you still need further support, go see the teacher in the morning prior to classes, for extra help.

Tech Info Page

One of the first things in class we do is review the Introduction to Technical Classes, point number three above which gives you a great overview of the course operation. The top section of the page has ten blank boxes to be filled in with the important things we will cover in this course. You will find this information by reviewing the course outline and listening to the teacher discussing what is happening in the course. The bottom section will also need to be filled out with two in-class peer partners for contact information and support with-in the class to help foster team support. collaboration, and responsibility.

Important Information, Routine Details, and Support

To help everyone understand daily routines, expectations, student responsibilities there are some steps that you must be aware of, that we will discuss in detail such as:

Paper Hand-in Bin

Resource Binder

Current Events

Class schedule day
School/room map layout (tour)
Late arrival process and class entry
Absent - note name, reason, & dates to office VP
End of period journals- finish & discussions/collaboraton
Paperwork hand-in bin
Paperwork over-flow out bin
Class share resource table/area
Extra handouts & digital copies
Daily current events board
Supply teacher respect and learning
Due date - beginning of class
Leaving the room - process (ex. - washroom - 1)
Class Sign-out resource binder
Seating - support, proximity, and behavior
Partners, groups, and leaders - collaboration
Communication - email, chat, phone, video, txt, forum
Foreperson/moderator leadership/support
Late/missed class lesson/work responsibilities
Clean up process - yours and others
Back-up digital work daily (routine)
Work on current lesson work right after lesson
Contact process - e-mail, details and what you tried
Extra support, instructions, resources, help options
Don't know, or not sure? ... ask!

Remote and Digital Process of Learning

Remote learning is something relatively new for High School students and the following points should be considered.

Make a schedule and keep a routine to help with even breakdown and consistency of learning - requires self-motivation and being self-sufficient
Create a study area and stay organized, use a distraction free environment, in an open public area, so you can focus on learning
Require appropriate technology - microphone, web cam, good Internet connection, lighting, ergonomic comfort
Communication- hand-up, chat, normally muted, clarifications & understanding of content
Read assignments and course material, post in discussion forums (chats), work ahead, participate, and seek help if/when needed

More information to support this course can be found on the Virtual & Digital e-Learning Support page and is a must to check out. This page can also be accessed from any page by going to the main menu, selecting the Support drop-down, then Virtual e-Learning.

Safety

In this activity, we will review the General Safety Presentation to get an overview of safety concerns students must be aware of in the school and classroom. Students will review and sign a General Safety Contract then take home to parents to also review and sign. Safety awareness and lessons in this class will be on-going throughout the course, and specific to each project so that it is fresh in your minds when starting work on that specific project. Although there are less physical dangers, there are other safety concerns such as working with digital work safely as an example.

Given our current situation with Covid-19, a presentation on Covid-19 Safety and Well Being will be also reviewed, for process, support, and clarification.

USB Memory, File Naming Conventions, Folders, Back-up, and Shortcuts

It is highly recommended that you get a USB memory stick, for saving your work on to. It does not have to be large, 2 Gig or larger (use your school drive temporarily if you do not have your USB flash drive). You will need to follow instructions on the Tech Info handout (PDF page printed and handed out recently, that can be found above) to create shortcuts inside a main folder named with your course code, and a sub-folder named "shortcuts". With an organized folder structure, you now have a place to save work to. You are to create the shortcuts below in your shortcuts sub-folder using similar suggested TIJ course codes for your own course code letters.

Course Google Classwork (TEJ-GCW)
Your course folder root directory (TEJ)
Your back-up folder at Home (TEJ-BKH)
Your back-up folder on the cloud (TEJ-BKC)
Franzen website Home Page (mfranzen)
Franzen website Course Details Page (TEJ-Det)
Franzen website Course Journal Page (TEJ-C-Jou)
Franzen website Course Marks Page (TEJ-Mrk)

Note Google Drive File Stream -G Drive (replacing H: Drive) should be avaliable when you sign in to TDSB computer with a Google sign-in window which will connect you to your G: Drive and place on your file browser as G: Drive letter. If you cancel or not sign-in, then just relaunch the Google Drive File Stream application from your start menu.

With all your shortcuts created and saved to your USB sub-folder-shortcuts, you can also copy these shortcuts to your desktop, so you can use them from multiple locations, but the desktop is not a safe place to save work from, as it could be deleted at any point in time.

To keep your electronic work for this course organized, you will need to create more folders for future projects as you continue with the course. The intent is to work off of your USB in school and save to your local or cloud drive when you are finished at the end of class either at home or at school, as a daily habitual back-up process. This way you can take your work with you and work elsewhere if needed and it is faster to access a flash drive then the board network or a cloud drive.

In school we also make use of and use the internal network for getting work and handing in work. These locations are found clicking on the Western Tech shortcut on your desktop on your school computer, then navigating to either selecting the "Pick-up" folder, for getting work from teacher or the "Drop-off" folder, for handing in work.

File Naming Conventions and Shortcut Demonstration

To finish you will need to use all three shortcut links in an exercise called "tij_d-joe_shortcuts-files-folders-v-txt" and copy and paste the correct shortcut addresses to demonstrate you have done this correctly. This is a good time to save the text file to your shortcuts folder (review file naming conventions in the Tech Info Handout and save it right away with the correct file name, then open it up, and update the correct course coded in 1 to 8 shortcut sample names.

Type your header information which you are required to have, on all assignments when handing in,being aware that it is always in the top right of the page with you name having your just your last initial, first name name
Update TIJ part of shorcut name to your course letters, then several shortcut target addresses will be needed from your recently created shortcuts by right clicking on shortcut to get to the properties, then copy the shortcut link address to paste into your project text file just underneath the related shortcut name/description
You are also required to get the actual shortcut file location of the specified shortcut in the required folder locations you are keeping your files in. You can get the address location for the shortcut by right clicking on your web site shortcut link, click on properties, then the switch to the General tab to copy the location where you saved this shortcut link to, then add the actual shortcut file name and correct file extension (more here on File extensions). For Google drive, use the worded file location, not the link.
Go to the Tech info page on the site and open up the PDF file and copy the section called "Organizing and saving your work" that explains about file naming conventions and paste below
Check over your shortcuts assignment and ensure you have checked that your file naming convention is correct for this text file.
Use your system snip screen capture tool to get a image of your desktop showing your class shortcuts on the right and your file browser on the left showing your main save location folder for this course, class topic subfolders, with shortcuts topic folder selected and showing all your created shortcuts, your shortcuts text file, and image file
Convert your text file to a PDF by either putting your text file in a Google Doc along with your screenshot below, then download to a PDF,
or "printing" to a PDF, Adobe Acrobat Reader DC conversion tool, or using an online converter, then use online PDF Combine tool for both your text and image file to combine into one PDF file and then submitting

Evaluation:

These assignments are very important as they will benefit you throughout the rest of this course. You can see a student journal sample done by another class with limited expectations and reduced marks, but you will get the idea and see the learning process throughout. Journals are a very powerful tool when used with learning and if make the effort to fill out correctly and fully, this will not only earn you marks, but also significantly help you with all of your course work and learning. The following are paper entry student daily log samples (another class with different format, but similar entries) can be viewed here Assorted Journal Daily Logs, Full semester of Daily Journals, plus end-of-semester Weekly Summary Journal

Evaluation Breakdown Component Descriptions	Marks
Always double check instructions and ensure all required work is done correctly.
Survey - Answer all 23 questions fully	23
Course Outline Signed - Review, highlighting, and signed by parent	15
Tech Info - 10 course components, highlighting, and two peer contacts	14
General Safety Contract - Read, highlighting, signed by student & parent	15
Shortcut Test - Folders, shortcuts, file naming, and screen-shot	26
Daily Journal Entries - specific details, 10 marks daily @1/2 weight, entered weekly	50

Conclusion

If you feel comfortable that you know all the details of the class/course details, you are ready to move on to the next activity. Be prepared to use what you learned in this unit activity to apply to future class work and process. At this point you should be ready for the rest of the course for use with computers, keeping organized with binder and digital files, routines, daily journals, and general safety. If you are still having trouble with specific things, PLEASE ASK!