What's Going On? February 1-5th

Fundamentals of Programming

This week students will be finishing up their first app, "Hello Purr".  We will continue to talk about the important programming components that we have encountered so far:

• Design View of MIT App Inventor
• Block View of MIT App Inventor
• Visible Components
• Non-Visible Components
• User Interface
• Properties
• Events
• Event Handlers

Once we have solidified our knowledge of these basic components, we will move on to our next app: "I Have a Dream".  In this app, we will add two buttons to the design view of our app.  When the user taps the picture of Martin Luther King, Jr. his "I Have A Dream" speech plays.  When the user taps the picture of Malcolm X we will pause the MLK speech before we start playing the Malcolm X speech.  While creating this app, we will explore the use of a "Player" component, including the play and pause features.  We will also be introduced to decision-making in apps through "if...then...else..." blocks.

Students are considered "on pace" for this class if they have the "Hello Purr" app portfolio page completed by the end of class on Tuesday and the "I Have a Dream" portfolio page completed by the end of class on Friday.

Programming the Web 1

This week we will finish up our first lesson and then dive into our second lesson of the semester.  We will start Monday's class will our lesson 1 review questions.  Once this is complete we will work on our first official web assignments.  During Friday's class we talked about appropriate file structure and created a sample first web page together.  This week, students will have the opportunity to put this into practice.  Along with our second unit, students will have our lesson 2 review questions on Friday (see BlackBoard for questions), and programming projects 2A, 2B, and 2C.  Through these three assignments, students will work with basic HTML and CSS structure.  We will follow a book tutorial, complete a "find the errors" assignment, as well as start to build a personal web page.  Along with the web page assignments, students should read chapter 4 in our textbook and complete the accompanying reading guide to help pick out the most important concepts in the reading.  Students are considered "on pace" for this class if unit 2 is complete by Friday's class.

Programming the Web 2

Now that we have completed our review of the basic HTML and CSS principles learned in Programming the Web 1, we will now focus on our work for the first part of the semester.  Students will be starting to create a website.  As the basic structure is complete, we will then start to employ new CSS techniques to improve upon the site's functionality.