Computer & Information Technology – Preparatory Grade 2

Course highlights

• Explain how smart systems (sensors, IoT, AI) monitor and reduce the causes and effects of climate change
• Recognise advanced cyber threats (ransomware, spear phishing, social engineering, attacks on services) and apply protective measures
• Explain big data, its characteristics (volume, velocity, variety, veracity, value) and sources
• Explain how AI learns from big data, give applications and discuss privacy and bias
• Apply principles of attractive, professional website interfaces (consistency, hierarchy, contrast, white space, navigation, responsiveness, accessibility)
• Format web pages with CSS (selectors, colours, fonts, alignment, spacing) linked to HTML
• Plan and build a multi-page website for the school through planning, design and testing
• Create a website with the help of AI tools, writing clear prompts and reviewing the output critically and ethically
• Trace the main milestones in the history of AI (Turing 1950, Dartmouth 1956, expert systems, Deep Blue 1997, deep learning, generative AI)
• Explain how machines «learn»: data, training, model, prediction, testing, and supervised learning with labelled examples
• Identify AI applications in health, transport, agriculture, education, finance and phones, with benefits and risks
• Describe an artificial neuron (inputs, weights, bias, sum, activation) and compute its output
• Explain how neurons form layered neural networks and how training adjusts weights (deep learning)
• Explain the data-analysis steps (question, collect, clean, analyse, present) and why Python is used for them
• Read an Excel table into Python (pandas), compute mean / max and filter rows
• Write if / elif / else statements with comparison and logical operators
• Use for and while loops and define functions with parameters and return values
• Choose and use Python collections: list, tuple, dictionary, set
• Explain encryption (plaintext, ciphertext, key) and apply a Caesar shift in Python
• Encrypt and decrypt a message with the XOR operator and a key, and explain why the same key reverses it

Course content

• 6units
• 20sessions
• 5quizzes

The lecturer