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AP Comp Sci P

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Unit 5

5.0 Big Idea 5 Overview: Impact of Computing

4 min read•december 21, 2022

Minna Chow

AP Computer Science Principles ⌨️

80 resources

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This guide was based on the updated 2020-21 Course Exam Description. The Learning Objectives are taken directly from the CED's learning objectives.

The One Thing You Need to Know About this Big Idea:

This big idea covers all the ways society is impacted by computing devices and how we can help mitigate some of the harmful effects.

5.1 Beneficial and Harmful Effects

Learning Objective: Explain how an effect of a computing innovation can be both beneficial and harmful.

Learning Objective: Explain how a computing innovation can have an impact beyond its intended purpose.

Key Ideas

societal changes to accommodate computing innovations
differing opinions on computing innovations
- positive
- negative
unforeseen consequences of computing innovations
- positive
- negative
- cross-purpose (ex: technology originally intended for medical use being used for a different field like the arts)
examples of benefits of computing innovations
examples of harms of computing innovations

Vocabulary

World Wide Web
targeted advertising
machine learning
data mining

Resources

🔗 5.1: Beneficial and Harmful Effects

5.2 Digital Divide

Learning Objective: Describe issues that contribute to the digital divide.

Key Ideas

explain what the digital divide is
differences in internet access
- socioeconomic
- geographic
- demographic
impact of the digital divide on groups and individuals
issues the existence of the digital divide raises
- equity
- access
- influence
- global/regional disparity
ways the digital divide can be impacted
- to decrease it
- and actions that might increase it

Vocabulary

digital divide
Internet access

Resources

🔗 5.2 Digital Divide

5.3 Computing Bias

Learning Objective: Explain how bias exists in computing innovations.

Key Ideas

biases in algorithms

biases in data
biases in all levels of software development

action programmers can take to reduce bias

Vocabulary

bias

Resources

🔗 5.3 Computing Bias

5.4 Crowdsourcing

Learning Objective: Explain how people participate in problem-solving processes at scale.

Key Ideas

benefits of widespread data access
citizen science: what it is and what its impacts are
crowdsourcing: what it is and what its impacts are

Vocabulary

crowdsourcing
citizen science

Resources

🔗 5.4 Crowdsourcing

5.5 Legal and Ethical Concerns

Learning Objective: Explain how the use of computing can raise legal and ethical concerns.

Key Ideas

relationship between intellectual property, copyright law, and how computing affects them
ways to legally use the work of others
examples of legal and ethical issues that arise from computing

Vocabulary

intellectual property
copyright
plagiarism
Creative Commons
open source
open access

Resources

🔗 5.5 Legal and Ethical Concerns

5.6 Safe Computing

Learning Objective: Describe the risks to privacy from collecting and storing personal data on a computer system.

Learning Objective: Explain how computing resources can be protected and can be misused.

Key Ideas

types and methods of information collection
types of personally identifiable information
benefits and harms of information collection

types of authentication
encryption and decryption
dangers of computing
ways to foster safe computing

Vocabulary

personally identifiable information (PII)
virus
worm
malware
phishing
keylogging technology
Authentication measures
strong password
multifactor authentication
Encryption
Decryption
Symmetric key encryption
public key encryption
public key
private key
digital certificates
Certificate Authorities (CAs)
trust model

Resources

🔗 5.6 Safe Computing

Exam Weighing

21-26% of the AP Exam
Practically, this translates to about 20 questions on the Multiple-Choice section of the test.

Big Idea 5 Practice Problems and Solutions

Unlike the concepts brought up in Big Idea 3, you won't be asked to apply the content from Big Idea 5 to your Create Task. That means you only need to answer multiple-choice questions about it.

These multiple-choice questions may be single-select, multiple-select, or attached to a reading passage.

(Confused about the types of MCQs you'll have to answer? Go to our Exam Guide!)

Practice Problem #1:

Answer

The answer is C.

The key to this problem is understanding the definition of phishing. Phishing works by tricking users into providing their personal information by posing as a trustworthy group. Once you know that, the description of C (tricking a user to provide their account password by posing as the manufacturer) fits exactly.

Practice Problem #2

Answer

The answer is C. This is a question that relies partially on understanding the definition of the key term digital divide, but also on your inference skills.

The digital divide refers to the unequal gap between those who have easy access to the internet and technology and those who don't. This gap can fall on demographic, socioeconomic, and/or geographic lines. The key word here is access. A and B both assume that students have access to technology already; D assumes that all students have the financial resources to access "computers with as much processing speed as possible."

Only C directly reduces the gap between those with and those without access to technology by giving everyone at the school direct access to technology.

Resources

🔗 Multiple Choice Questions

🔗 MCQ Answers and Review

Browse Study Guides By Unit

🕹Unit 1 – Creative Development

⚙️Unit 2 – Data

📱Unit 3 – Algorithms & Programming

🖥Unit 4 – Computer Systems & Networks

⌨️Unit 5 – Impact of Computing