All resources in Public Interest Technology

A Brief Introduction to the Applications of Small Organic Molecules as Food Additives

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A new chapter in Introductory Organic Chemistry course. Lecture PowerPoint file and laboratory document are also included in this work. The goal of this chapter is to cover the basic ground of the food additives from the perspective of organic chemistry. Lecture PowerPoint slides have all in-class questions/discussions and after-class assignments listed. Laboratory document – Synthesis of Yellow 5 (Sunset yellow), an azo dye used in food industry. Document includes a short introduction, detailed experimental procedure and post-laboratory questions.

Material Type: Module

Author: Zhou Zhou Ph.D.

Accessibility Evaluation

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This activity guides students through the evaluation of a website that they have created to see if it is accessible for users with disabilities. Students will simulate a number of different disabilities (e.g. visual impairments, color blindness, auditory impairments, motor impairments) to see if their website is accessible; they will also use automated W3 and WAVE tools to evaluate their sites. Students will consider the needs of users with disabilities by creating a persona and scenario of a user with disabilities interacting with their site. Finally, students will write up recommendations to change their site and implement the changes. Comments Although this activity can be used in isolation, it is intended to be part of a series guiding students towards the creation of a front-end of a website. The series (all published as OER) consist of: a) Needfinding b) Personas, Scenarios and Storyboards c) Front-end Website Design and Development d) Accessibility Evaluation

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Assessment, Homework/Assignment

Author: Devorah Kletenik

Coding for the Public Good: Front-end Website Design and Development

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This activity helps student design and develop a front-end of a website, from wireframes through HTML/CSS/Javascript. It includes design questions for students, including the invocation of Ben Schneiderman's eight golden rules for interface design. Note: this activity assumes prior knowledge of web development. Since this activity is designed for an HCI course, with a focus on interface design, students are not expected to create a back-end for it. This activity can obviously be modified for a full-stack experience. Comments Although this activity can be used in isolation, it is intended to be part of a series guiding students towards the creation of a front-end of a website. The series (all published as OER) consist of: a) Needfinding b) Personas, Scenarios and Storyboards c) Front-end Website Design and Development d) Accessibility Evaluation

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Assessment, Homework/Assignment

Authors: Cuny Brooklyn College, Devorah Kletenik

Personas, Scenarios and Storyboards

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This activity guides students towards the creation of personas, scenarios and storyboards for a product/website that they are creating. Comments Although this activity can be used in isolation, it is intended to be part of a series guiding students towards the creation of a front-end of a website. The series (all published as OER) consist of: a) Needfinding b) Personas, Scenarios and Storyboards c) Front-end Website Design and Development d) Accessibility Evaluation

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Assessment, Homework/Assignment

Author: Devorah Kletenik

Needfinding

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This activity guides students through the process needfinding to identify areas of need for their creation of a technology for the "public good." Students will conduct contextual inquiry to identify the needs of their target audience. Comments Although this activity can be used in isolation, it is intended to be part of a series guiding students towards the creation of a front-end of a website. The series (all published as OER) consist of: a) Needfinding b) Personas, Scenarios and Storyboards c) Front-end Website Design and Development d) Accessibility Evaluation

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Assessment, Homework/Assignment

Author: Devorah Kletenik

Accessibility: the Whys and the Hows

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This presentation introduces Computer Science students to the notion of accessibility: developing software for people with disabilities. This lesson provides a discussion of why accessibility is important (including the legal, societal and ethical benefits) as well as an overview of different types of impairments (visual, auditory, motor, neurological/cognitive) and how developers can make their software accessible to users with those disabilities. This lesson includes videos and links to readings and tutorials for students. Comments These slides use Poll Everywhere polls; to use them, create your own Poll Everywhere account and duplicate the polls.

Material Type: Lecture

Author: Devorah Kletenik

Coding for the Public Good

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These slides are used to guide a discussion with students introducing them to the notion of public interest technology and coding for the public good. The lesson is intended to spark a discussion with students about different sorts of technology and their societal ramifications. Comments Note that these slides use Poll Everywhere polls; to use them, you will need to create your own Poll Everywhere account.

Material Type: Lecture

Author: Devorah Kletenik

Cybercrime and Cyber security Techniques

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This lecture presents information about cybercrime, which has become the most ubiquitous crime world-wide and affects individuals, companies and government. The lecture indicates that 95% of all cybercrime is preventable and describes a myriad of cyber security techniques that are available to prevent hacking. Legislation to combat cybercrime is presented as well as the places where cybercrime should be reported.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lecture Notes

Authors: Amy J Ramson, Shalom Cohen

Cybersecurity-Fake News

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The goals of this activity are to facilitate team work, critical thinking, and presentation skills in the area of cybersecurity and fake news. Students will be grouped into two teams. As a team, they will choose and analyze cases and ethical questions about fake news through the questions presented in the activity. They will present their analysis to the class.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Author: Amy J Ramson

Cybersecurity-Online Identity Theft

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This is an activity the goals of which are to facilitate team work; critical thinking; presentation skills in the area of cybersecurity and law. Students will be grouped into two teams. As a team, they will choose and analyze cases about online identity theft through the questions presented in the activity. They will present their analysis to the class.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Homework/Assignment

Author: Amy J Ramson

Cybersecurity-The Internet of Things

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With 38.5 billion smart devices in existence in 2020 and increasing every year, the potential for security breaches in the Internet of things is also escalating at a dramatic pace. The goal of this team activity is to facilitate team work, critical thinking, and presentation skills in the area of cybersecurity and the Internet of Things. Students will be grouped into two teams. As a team, they will analyze cases about security cameras and smart dolls through the questions presented in the activity. They will present their analysis to the class.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Homework/Assignment

Author: Amy J Ramson

Cybersecurity-The Silk Road Market

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This presentation is about the Silk Road Market, one of the largest cases of illegal drug activity on the dark web, that the federal government has prosecuted. Beyond discussing the case, the presentation adds general facts about the US Department of Justice, the FBI and the DEA, and federal sentencing. The case discussion includes information about: Ross Ulbricht the creator and head of the market; how the Silk Road operated; the involvement of the FBI and DEA; the trial; the fourth amendment violations alleged by the defense; and the sentencing.

Material Type: Lesson

Author: Amy J Ramson

Syllabus for Issues in Law Enforcement: Cybersecurity and Public Interest Technology

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This is a syllabus for a course in Issues in Law Enforcement, a criminal justice course. The curriculum is a public interest technology course in cybersecurity. Principally, the federal government handles cybersecurity investigations along with some state governments and the FBI acts as the center for all cybersecurity complaints. The course expands beyond law enforcement and provides a comprehensive background to the field through the following presentations: a history of cybersecurity; an explanation of the Internet; an introduction to cybercrime and cybersecurity techniques; the legal environment, which includes a survey of law enforcement and prosecution departments and agencies, and federal and NY state criminal, civil and privacy laws; a case (Silk Road Market) about a darknet market which demonstrates federal law enforcement in action; and the concept that cybersecurity is an enormous challenge to law enforcement. The course provides two types of student activities: (i) Service learning project in which students present about how to prevent yourself from being hacked; and (ii) Group assignments in which students choose and analyze four types of current cybersecurity cases as a team by answering questions posed by the professor which is presented to the class as a whole.

Material Type: Syllabus

Author: Amy J Ramson

Engineering and Technology for the Better Good of Society

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Engineering and Technology for the Better Good of Society PIT-OER is intended to train engineering technology students to leverage the power of select technologies aligned to the public interest applications and targeted public works institutions.This PIT-OER consists of four modules:Module 1: Project Management Methods with Applications to Public Works.Module 2: Technology and Ethics: “Are You Conflicted?”. Module 3: 3D Printing Applied to Everyday Public Interest and to Public Work Institutions.Module 4: How “Open” is Open Source Content: The Do’s and Don’t of Using Open Source Software, OSS. Each module is organized with lecture, assessment, and laboratory experiments. The modules are course materials for TECH-100, Introduction to Engineering and Technology, of Queensborough Community College.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Assessment, Case Study, Homework/Assignment, Lecture, Lecture Notes, Module, Teaching/Learning Strategy

Authors: Huixin Wu, Raymond Lam, Dimitrios Stroumbakis

Physics For Everyone

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The online educational resource Physics For Everyone is the scaffolding for a 3 contact hour, 3 credit general education course that conveys the relevance, beauty, and power of physics as a foundation of science and technology in the public interest. This slide deck provides the outline for the semester-long course. Each week’s lecture topics, with key points to be covered, are highlighted in two slides, which also list writing prompts, problem-solving exercises, and labs. Also, we have curated a list of high-quality online video resources that students (and instructors) should use to help them learn (and teach) physics ideas and concepts using demonstrations, animations, and humor. Many of those videos are parts of larger series and programs, created by some of the most skilled and popular online presenters in the world; that means some of their content is commercially sponsored, but all the content is free to students and instructors. Finally, we have envisioned this course so that students are assessed with a large set of low-stakes, just-in-time-type assignments and laboratory exercises. This work has been generously supported by New America’s PIT-UN (Public Interest Technology University Network) challenge grant program, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Full Course, Homework/Assignment, Syllabus

Authors: Charles Liu, Sarang Gopalakrishnan, Vadim Oganesyan

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

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9. Brave New World - AI/ML The trifecta of globalization, urbanization and digitization have created new opportunities and challenges across our nation, cities, boroughs and urban centers. Cities are in a unique position at the center of commerce and technology becoming hubs for innovation and practical application of emerging technology. In this rapidly changing 24/7 digitized world, city governments worldwide are leveraging innovation and technology to become more effective, efficient, transparent and to be able to better plan for and anticipate the needs of its citizens, businesses and community organizations. This class will provide the framework for how cities and communities can become smarter and more accessible with technology and more connected.

Material Type: Lesson

Author: Rhonda S. Binda

Internet of Things

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8. Brave New World - Internet of Things The trifecta of globalization, urbanization and digitization have created new opportunities and challenges across our nation, cities, boroughs and urban centers. Cities are in a unique position at the center of commerce and technology becoming hubs for innovation and practical application of emerging technology. In this rapidly changing 24/7 digitized world, city governments worldwide are leveraging innovation and technology to become more effective, efficient, transparent and to be able to better plan for and anticipate the needs of its citizens, businesses and community organizations. This class will provide the framework for how cities and communities can become smarter and more accessible with technology and more connected.

Material Type: Unit of Study

Author: Rhonda S. Binda