In this lesson, students will explore the practice of hiding secret messages within text or data known as steganography. Students will compare advantages and disadvantages of different techniques of steganography. Students will create their own secret code to communicate with each other. Students will create a digital form of steganography with their group.
This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.
Codes are used to transmit messages. We may use codes to keep our messages secret from people who do not know the code, or we may use them to change one type of information into another. The key to decoding a message is knowing the rule to crack the code. In this lesson, students will explore different types of codes, create coded messages, and apply rules to decode messages.
This lesson provides the background needed for students to then develop their own method for transferring information.
In this learning activity, students will visit the American Museum of Natural History website to learn about fireflies and how they communicate. They will compare the communication pattern of fireflies to Morse Code used by humans and practice communicating with fireflies through an interactive game. Finally, students will collaboratively create their own "code" to communicate with other students and send a message across the classroom using the Google Science Journal app. The Google Science Journal app gives real-time access to data from electronic motion, light, and sound sensors that are built into the device.
This activity results from the ALEX Resource Gap Project.
Visualize the relationship between the binary code of 1s and 0s and an image with this interactive tool. Students can investigate relationships by testing how a code is used to create an image pixel by pixel and how the quality of a picture (its resolution) can be improved. A student assignment includes a brief reading to provide context on the code and an opportunity to test out a code with a partner.
