Search every subject world, from Preschool to Grade 12. The first five courses of every subject path are free.
33 courses
Computers & Digital Literacy · Every grade
A hands-on start for anyone new to computers, tablets or PlayOwl. Children really point, click, tap, drag, scroll, zoom and type, open and close tabs and windows, search on a pretend web, and take a tour of PlayOwl, all inside safe practice screens. It works with a mouse, a touch screen or a keyboard.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 9
Learners sort machine-learning requests into classification, regression and clustering, read a dataset as examples, features and a label, and learn to ask what a label really measures. They then frame projects before any model exists: the decision, the people affected, the cost of each error, a success criterion and a baseline. The course ends by deciding when a simple rule, more data or human judgment is the better choice.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 9
Defensive security starts with understanding what you are protecting. Learners inventory the assets of a fictional public library, describe harm with confidentiality, integrity and availability, separate threats from vulnerabilities and controls, rate risks with a likelihood-times-impact matrix, and build a first threat model for a fictional food pantry's volunteer sign-up website.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 9
Learners turn categories and text into numbers with one-hot encoding and word counts, and rescale numeric features with min-max scaling using training-data limits. They then examine how the data a model learns from can mislead it: sampling variability versus representation bias (with a sampling simulation), and measurement, label and historical bias in fictional datasets, each paired with a mitigation.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 9
Learners separate identification, authentication, authorization and accountability, compare authentication factors and multi-factor methods, calculate how the number of possible codes grows with length, and apply least privilege, role-based access and separation of duties to fictional organizations. The course ends with the access lifecycle: joiners, movers, leavers and a real access review.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 9
Using only toy examples, learners build the vocabulary of cryptography with a shift cipher and see why its tiny key space makes it useless for real secrets. They compare shared-key and public-key encryption, explore hashing with a deliberately weak toy hash, and finish with digital signatures, certificates, what the browser padlock really means, and good key-management habits.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 9
Learners build three simple models entirely by hand on small fictional datasets: a one-feature threshold learned by counting the errors of each candidate cutoff, a two-level decision tree grown by choosing the split with the fewest errors, and a k-nearest-neighbors classifier using Euclidean distance and a majority vote. They then compare hand-written rules with learned models on transparency, maintenance, adaptability and data needs.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 9
In a toy model of a library network, learners split a flat network into zones, evaluate firewall rule tables where the first matching rule wins and everything else is denied, read fictional sign-in and connection logs for warning signs, and choose hardening controls such as replacing default passwords and closing internet-facing admin pages. Everything happens on paper-style tables; no real networks are touched.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 9
Learners split data into training, validation and test sets and compute the counts for common splits. They use validation results to choose settings such as k and tree depth, read the overfitting signature in training and validation error, and learn why the test set is used only once. They then hunt for data leakage in fictional project logs and choose stratified, time-based or group splits when a simple random split would mislead.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 9
Learners look at a fictional food pantry's volunteer app from the builder's side. They validate untrusted input with allowlists on the server, apply secure-by-design principles such as least privilege, safe failure and careful error messages, handle data responsibly from collection to deletion, and turn security requirements into concrete test cases.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 9
Learners evaluate a fictional leak-detection model the way practitioners do: they build confusion matrices and compute accuracy, precision, recall, specificity and F1 with the real formulas, compare the model with a majority-class baseline, and measure regression error with mean absolute error. They then choose a decision threshold from the costs of each error type and break errors down by subgroup and by error type to recommend next steps.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 9
Learners study how social engineering exploits ordinary human responses such as urgency, authority and helpfulness, then practice reading sender addresses and web addresses to find the domain that really controls a link. They learn to verify through a separate, known channel, respond calmly after a mistake, and design organizational defenses that cover email, phone, text messages, QR codes and in-person tricks. All messages are fictional and use reserved example domains.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 9
Learners explain models globally and locally: they compute permutation feature importance as the drop in performance when a feature is scrambled, and write counterfactual explanations for individual decisions, judging whether they are actionable. They then study what explanations cannot tell us (correlation is not causation; out-of-distribution inputs) and design human oversight with review queues, appeals and override logs that counter automation bias.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 9
Learners follow a fictional food pantry through a realistic account-compromise incident, from a lookalike email to a copied volunteer list. They learn the phases and roles of incident response, separate events from incidents and rate severity, build a timeline from several logs while preserving evidence, and practice clear, factual communication and a blameless post-incident review with owned action items.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 9
Learners apply data minimization, purpose limitation and meaningful consent to fictional data plans, then measure re-identification risk by counting how many records share the same quasi-identifiers before and after generalization, suppression and aggregation. They read and write model cards and dataset datasheets, and plan governance across a model's life: impact assessment, named roles, monitoring for drift, and people's rights to access and correct their data.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 9
The elective's capstone. Learners carry out a complete, strictly defensive security review of a fictional bike co-op: they agree written permission and scope, gather evidence from documents, settings and interviews with a checklist, rate and prioritize findings, write specific recommendations with owners and dates, and present a clear report with a plain-language executive summary and a follow-up plan.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 9
Learners carry out a complete, small modeling project on a fictional library dataset: they frame the problem and fix a success criterion, check the data for leakage, minimization and quality problems, make a time-based split, compute baselines, build and choose between a threshold model and a small decision tree on validation data, evaluate the chosen model once on the test set, analyze errors by subgroup, and write a model card that a teacher reviews against a rubric.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 11
Before trusting any number, learners examine how its data were collected. They separate populations, sampling frames and samples, compare random, stratified, convenience and voluntary-response sampling, diagnose sampling, nonresponse and measurement bias in fictional Cedar Valley studies, use a sampling simulation to separate random variability from bias, and ask who is missing from app logs and sensor data and what informed consent requires.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 11
Learners migrate a messy shared spreadsheet, the Cedar Valley Community Garden's volunteer sheet, into a relational design step by step. They find the entities hidden in a flat sheet and the anomalies its repeated facts cause, choose stable primary keys, make values atomic, split tables so each fact is stored once, link them with foreign keys, compare spreadsheet lookups with database joins, check referential integrity while loading, and document the result in a data dictionary.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 11
Learners answer real questions from Cedar Valley Bike Share's trip data by predicting exactly what SQL-like queries return: filters that combine AND, OR and NOT with parentheses, aggregates with COUNT, SUM, AVG and GROUP BY, and inner joins that silently drop unmatched rows. They then turn a result into communication: choosing a visualization that fits the result's shape and writing a precise headline with annotation, honest axes and caveats.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 11
Learners act as the volunteer IT team for the fictional Cedar Valley Public Library. They split a flat network into guest, staff, device and server segments, apply toy firewall rule tables where the first matching rule wins and everything else is denied, read fictional sign-in logs for warning signs such as bursts of failed logins, and harden systems through secure configuration, patch management, least privilege and the zero-trust idea. Everything is defensive: recognizing, preventing, detecting and responding.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 11
A vendor says its leak-detection model for Cedar Valley's water meters is '97% accurate'. Learners find out what that does and does not mean. They build confusion matrices, compute accuracy, precision and recall with the real formulas, see how rare positives make accuracy misleading, trace how a decision threshold trades false positives for false negatives, choose metrics by the cost of each error, and evaluate fairly with separate test data and subgroup results.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 11
Learners review the design of Spokewise, the fictional Cedar Valley bike share's new app, and a student team's study-timer app. They apply privacy by design (data minimization, purpose limitation, retention limits, protective defaults and meaningful consent), recognize and redesign deceptive design patterns, distinguish copyright, patents, trademarks and trade secrets, compare permissive and copyleft open-source licenses as concepts, and reason through design decisions with stakeholders, consequences and rights. All legal content is general information, not legal advice.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 11
This advanced course follows the Cedar Valley Library's design team as it tests and repairs its new study-room booking page. Learners compute usability metrics (task success rate, time on task, error rate and post-task ease ratings), plan an ethical, inclusive test with disabled participants, informed consent and non-leading tasks, audit accessibility through the keyboard path, accessible names, contrast ratios, captions and reflow, and then prioritize findings by severity and frequency before retesting.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 11
In this project course, a student team investigates why Cedar Valley High's Wi-Fi slows to a crawl at lunch. Learners turn a complaint into a testable question with competing hypotheses, choose data sources (access-point logs, latency measurements, link usage, a survey, a schedule) with permission and privacy safeguards, analyze fair comparisons across time, place and days, write claim–evidence–reasoning statements that match the strength of the evidence, name confounders and limitations, and write a full investigation report with evidence-based recommendations.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 12
Learners turn a vague idea into a plan they could defend to a sponsor: a problem statement backed by evidence, a stakeholder map, an explicit scope, measurable goals and deliverables, a dependency-ordered schedule with a critical path and buffer, and a scored risk register with mitigations. One fictional project, a loan catalog for a community tool library, is planned end to end, and new projects in every lesson and the quiz check transfer.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 12
Learners turn a project plan into a specification others can build and test against: functional and non-functional requirements worded so they can be verified, user stories with Given/When/Then acceptance criteria, a data inventory that justifies every field and its retention, meaningful consent and a light privacy impact assessment, and accessibility requirements that each name a verification method. The tool-library catalog from course 1 is the running example.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 12
Learners judge tools and information the way a careful consultant would. They evaluate software against requirements, privacy terms, update support, total cost of ownership and lock-in; test an AI tool on a small labeled sample and decide how much human review it needs; trace claims and datasets back to their origins with a four-move routine; and make weighted comparisons with must-have criteria and a sensitivity check. The tool library's catalog decision is the running case.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 12
A strictly defensive course on running a small project team securely. Learners redesign a team's accounts around individual logins, password managers, multi-factor sign-in and recovery that survives graduation; apply least privilege to file and link sharing with regular access reviews; protect data and devices with tested 3-2-1 backups, updates and device encryption; and talk two fictional incidents (a lost laptop and an over-shared link) through detect, contain, notify, recover and a blameless review.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 12
Learners find out why estimates from samples wobble, separate chance variation from bias, and use the approximation 'margin of error is about 1/√n' to turn a sample share into an honest interval. They compare groups with intervals and error bars, learn why 'no evidence of a difference' is not 'evidence of no difference', and rewrite headlines and charts so the precision of the words matches the precision of the data. A bike-share survey runs through the course, and a sampling simulation makes the variation visible.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 12
Learners practice the communication that surrounds every real project: emails that get a useful reply, concise messages and meeting notes with owners and dates, a portfolio case study that credits the team and reports evidence honestly, and a public professional presence that protects their privacy. They also learn to give feedback that is specific, actionable and kind, and to receive it without getting defensive. The tool-library team's sponsor emails and case study are the running examples.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 12
Learners write the documentation that lets someone else trust, check and continue their work: decision records that keep the reasons for choices (and supersede rather than rewrite them), user-facing changelogs, citations for data, software and AI assistance, limitations sections that name threats to validity and their likely effects, and the habits and README that make an analysis reproducible. Worked examples come from the tool-library and bike-share capstones.
Computers & Digital Literacy · Grade 12
The capstone path ends where real projects end: in front of an audience. Learners structure a short presentation around problem, evidence and limitations, with claim-style slide titles and a time budget; plan a live demo with a script, test data, a pre-flight checklist and a recorded fallback; make slides and delivery accessible; and then review other teams with a rubric, answer questions honestly, and reflect on their own project with evidence.
