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Session 26: TLO #3: U1L10 - Lossy Compression

60 minutes

lesson exploration

Purpose

TLOs are intended to help participants experience part of the curriculum as a learner and also practice teaching lessons from the curriculum. We use the debrief to discuss important aspects of teaching CS Principles in classrooms.

Objectives

  • Participants understand how productive classroom discussions support students in being informed decision makers.

Supplies & Prep

Room Setup:

  • Full Cohort
  • Table Groups (3-4)

Facilitator Supplies and Prep:

Teacher Materials:

Agenda

Intro and Lesson (41 minutes)

Debrief (19 minutes)

Facilitation Guide

Intro and Lesson (41 minutes)

Producer Tip

You should have information from the teaching group on how they would like to handle breakout rooms. Verify that the information is correct during the break prior to the session

(0 minutes) Teaching Group Set Up

Teaching group sets up during break.

Producer: Temporarily give the teaching group Co-Host privileges so that they can move in between breakout rooms.

Producer: If using breakout rooms, set up the participant rooms, a “Teacher” room, and a “Facilitator” room

(1 minute) Reinforce Roles

Remind participants of what it means to be a learner or a teacher. Have them put their hats on before handing it over to the teaching group.

Facilitator Tip

To make teachers feel more comfortable, it may be a good idea to turn off your camera throughout the lesson and/or change your name to “Facilitator - Ignore Me”. This can be helpful while moving through breakout rooms so “students” do not look to you for answers.

Facilitator Tip

If breakout rooms are used, it is important to get a sense of what is happening in them. As you move through the rooms, make sure that you are not providing input. If you are asked for it, remind teachers using chat that you are not a teacher right now and they can use the call for help button if needed.

Producer Tip

Just as with facilitators in breakout rooms, you may need to act as a “messenger” for the teachers. If a group presses the “call for help” button, you will need to find the teachers and inform them that a group is asking for help.

(40 minutes) Lesson

Facilitator Instructions

Be attentive to what is happening during the lesson as you select your debrief goals, reflection prompts, and discussion prompts. During the lesson, it is recommended that you communicate with your co-facilitator to share what you are seeing in the lesson and develop a shared understanding of the goal of the debrief for the lesson. You can communicate through Slack or through passing notes to one another. You are looking for the teaching group to demonstrate the “Essential practice” and “Teaching group decisions” identified in the debrief below.

Lesson Plan Link

Lesson Slides Link

Lesson Overview

Students are introduced to lossy compression via the Lossy Text Compression widget. They apply this concept and their prior knowledge of sampling to create their own lossy compressions of image files using the Lossy Image Widget. Students then discuss several practical scenarios where they need to decide whether to use a lossy or lossless compression algorithm. The lesson ends with a discussion of the situations where lossless compression is important and the situations where lossy compression is important.

Debrief (19 minutes)

Producer Tip

You will need a breakout room for the teaching group to debrief while the main group does their reflections.

Debrief process reminder:

  • (~5 minutes) Start with displaying the reflection prompt slide. Have the participants who acted as learners reflect on the reflection prompt(s) individually.
    • While the room is reflecting, have the teaching group in a breakout room and discuss and be prepared to share their “Choices, Advice, and Takeaways”.
  • When the teaching group is ready, have them share their Choices, Advice, and Takeaways with the room to start the debrief.
  • After they have shared, applaud the teaching group and lead the group discussion using the discussion prompts. Once again, post discussion prompts on a slide to help keep track of the conversation.

Suggested Debrief Plan
To Watch for During the Lesson Essential
Practices
There is a robust discussion about the pros and cons of using compression in each of the images at the end of the lesson.
Potential Teaching Group Decisions
  • The teacher may play devil’s advocate to spark discussion if there appears to be premature widespread consensus.
  • The teacher draws out similarities and differences between learners’ comments and reasoning.
  • Teachers may build connections back to students’ real lives (security cameras in schools, etc).
If the essential practices, listed above, are present in the lesson we recommend the following for your debrief:
Debrief Direction Topic Classroom discussions
Goal Teachers understand how productive classroom discussions support students in being informed decision makers.
To reach this goal, consider using the following reflection and discussion prompts:
Debrief Suggestions Reflection
Prompt
  • As a learner, what experiences from the first half of this lesson informed your decisions about the “best compression” for the images at the end of the lesson?
  • As a learner, what experiences from your real life informed your decisions about the “best compression” for the images at the end of the lesson?
Discussion
Prompts
One of our goals in this curriculum is for students to be informed decision makers when it comes to the impact of technology. Thinking about your students, what experiences will they pull from to inform their decisions about compression?
  • Which experiences will be from the classroom?
  • Which experiences will be from real life?

What “teaching tricks” will you use in your classroom to structure discussions so that students build their “informed decision making” skills through discussions (ex. Using sentence frames that emphasize reasoning, using think-pair-share to allow students to develop ideas before defending them, etc)?

FACILITATOR NOTE:
As you discuss this prompt, look for places to draw out the decisions for this lesson, listed above.

FACILITATOR NOTE: During your debrief, avoid the topic of teaching in the virtual world unless you know the majority of teachers will be virtual next year. Many teachers will be in person, and conversations about choices made for the virtual setting will not be helpful as teachers return to the classroom.