Monday, June 1, 2020

Khan Academy AP® CSP updated for 20-21 standards

Last year, we released our AP Computer Science Principles review course to help students learn and practice a vast array of computing concepts.

Now that this year's AP CSP students have submitted their portfolios, we've updated the course to reflect the new AP CSP 2020-2021 standards from the College Board.

We've added:
  • New unit: Digital Information
    • Includes previously covered topics of binary numbers, compression techniques, and licenses.
    • Adds new topics: bytes, binary representation of text, sampling analog data.
  • New unit: Online data security
    • Includes previously covered topics of cookies, browsing history, geolocation, encryption, phishing attacks, and passwords.
    • Adds new topics: PII, search history, rogue access points, multifactor authentication.
  • New unit: Simulations
    • Includes previously covered topic of randomness. Adds new content on exploring and creating simulations.
  • New unit: Computing Innovations
    • Covers similar topics as previous "Global impact" unit but with new exercises focusing on the harms and benefits of innovations.
  • New lesson: Parallel & distributed computing (in Algorithms unit)
We've changed a lot of the content in the Internet unit. There's a big overlap in the content covered in the articles, but the exercises have changed to reflect the change in the standards, and the content now covers UDP, WWW, scalable systems, and open protocol development.

We're removed the Computers unit. The lessons on binary data and compression are in the new Digital information unit. The lessons on computer hardware, files, and hexadecimal numbers are still available in our Computers and the Internet content.

We hope this updated content helps students and teachers master the variety of topics in AP CSP in the coming years. Happy learning!