What's Going On? April 9th through April 13th

Welcome Back!

I hope everyone had a restful spring break and we are rested up.  It is time to hit the ground running!  We have nine weeks until the end of the school year.  What does that mean?  If you are not happy with your current standing in the class, NOW is the time to act!  I would be more than happy to work with you and answer questions so you can end the year satisfied with your end results!


 App Development 1

This week, students will be working on the end of app challenge, "Tip Calculator".  Students will create an app that will calculate the 15% tip a diner should leave at a restaurant.  To build onto this, students can add features to calculate a 10%, 20%, and 25% tip.  Students can also build on a feature that would tell how much each person should contribute if the bill is split evenly among several people.

App Development 2

This week, students will be working on the end of app challenge, "Za Hunter".  For this app, students will use location services to find the location of different pizza places on a map.  Students can also add features to include the restaurant's logo, a phone number and website.

Programming the Web 2

This week, students will move ahead with our study of JavaScript.  We will talk about how we can implement arrays and do a more in-depth look at variables.  Along with this week's study, students will take a look at the "MadLibs" website assignment.

AP Computer Science Principles

This week, students will have class time to wrap up the "Create" performance task.  Ideally, students should spend class time on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday answer the response questions.  Students must check the rubric carefully to make sure that they are clearly identifying all of the required points.  Please check out some of the sample responses that have been released on AP Central's website.  (A link to this can be found on BlackBoard).  During class on Friday, we will be uploading draft versions of the "Explore" and "Create" performance tasks.  This will give students the ability to check their work over one final time before they hit "submit".  Once the "submit" button is pressed, there is no way to change the submission documents. 

Mandatory AP Testing Meetings

All students who are registered to take one or more AP exams this coming May are required to attend an AP Testing Meeting.  There are two meetings coming up after spring break and all AP students are expected to attend ONE of these meetings.  The schedule is listed below.  Please bring a regular #2 pencil and a folder or notebook to write on.  The meetings are divided by last name, however, if you have a conflict with your assigned meeting you can attend the other meeting.

AP Testing Meeting (students with last names starting with A-L)

Wednesday, April 11th

North Auditorium from 7:30 - 8:15 a.m.

AP Testing Meeting (students with last names starting with M-Z)

Thursday, April 12th

North Auditorium from 7:30 - 8:15 a.m.

What's Going On? March 26th through March 29th

It's a Short Week!
This is just a reminder that this week is a shortened week where we will not have school on Friday and students have an early release day on Thursday.  This means that Monday will have a "Tuesday-style" schedule, Tuesday, will have a "Wednesday-style" schedule, Wednesday will have a "Thursday-style" schedule, and Thursday will have a modified "Friday-style" schedule.  Our third quarter grades will also be posted on Thursday afternoon.



Programming the Web 2


This week, we will continue our study of JavaScript.  We will investigate how JavaScript can be used to change features on an image and how we can use JavaScript to create a slideshow.





App Development 1

This week, students will take a look at "gesture recognizers" in Swift.  That is, how we can design our app to respond to different touches on the screen.  Once we are finished with this, students will start our end of unit app challenge: Tip Calculator.






App Development 2

This week, students will finish up our Mobile Mapper "Hackwich" where we are learning to use GPS location services and add locations to our map with a pin.  This is our lead-in activity to our end of unit app challenge: 'Za Hunter.





AP Computer Science Principles

Students will have all three class days this week to work on our "Create" performance task.  Students will be on pace to finish within the 12 hours of provided class time if the app portion is complete by the end of class on Tuesday.  This will give students the remaining class periods to work on creating the one minute video highlighting the app's features and writing responses to the writing prompts.  The majority of the score for the AP "Create" task is found in the written responses.

All AP Performance tasks (Explore and Create), will need to be uploaded to AP Central on April 15th.  The performance tasks account for 40% of the overall AP exam score.  Please look through the scoring rubric as well as the code.org survival guides BEFORE uploading to the AP Central website.


Summer Camps

I recently came across two summer camps in STEM and I thought I would pass along the information.


Game Development Camp @ UW-Whitewater

For more information, check out the link:
https://www.uww.edu/ce/camps/additional/game-development










MSOE Week-Long STEM CAMP

For more information, check out the link:

https://www.msoe.edu/academics/high-school-programs/summer-programs-at-msoe/

What's Going On? March 19th through March 23rd

App Development 1

Last week, students should have finished up our introduction to working with functions.  We will start off this week with a short formative assessment to check our current level of understanding.  This week, students will spend some time working with conditionals.  Students will participate in some class notes with examples and will complete a "Conditionals Challenge".





App Development 2

This week, we will spend some time learning about "modal segues".  This allows a new View Controller window to appear on top of the currently running window.  Once this is dismissed, the control is transferred back to where the code left off.  We will also take some time to look at incorporating GPS into our apps.  We will learn how to make a map appear in the app, how to center on a specific location, how to find the user's current location, and how to mark other locations on the map.

Programming the Web 2

This week, we will continue our investigation of JavaScript.  We will continue to look at how we can declare and use variables and we will also learn how to define functions.  Students will have some time this week to work on our "Menu" website that will automatically display a restaurant's daily special that will automatically update depending on the current day of the week.

AP Computer Science Principles

This week, students will continue their 12 hours of class time to work on the AP "Create" task.  This performance task will account for 24% of the AP score.  Students should be prepared to upload their "Explore" and "Create" performance tasks by April 15th.

What's Going On? March 12th through March 16th

App Development 1

Now that our "Multiply App" is wrapping up, we will be diving into our next unit.  We will spend some time talking about functions and students will participate in  "Functions Challenge".  We will also spend time focusing on conditionals: how we can determine the next steps of a program based on a set of criteria.  Some students already dove into this with our "Multiply" app where students showed three different pictures based on the results of our calculation: show North's logo when our result is over 100, show a funny picture when the result is even and show a funnier picture when the result is odd.


App Development 2

Students will spend Monday's class finishing up our "Assignment Notebook" end of unit app challenge.  After that, we will start taking a look at Composition: How the objects and their protocols in apps are organized. Students will work on a "Composition Challenge" during class on Wednesday.  We will finish up the week with a short composition quiz and we will start our discussion on "modal segues".  This is a different way to transition from one view controller to another.

Programming the Web 2

We will start off the week with students working on their "Image Gallery" for their portfolio pages.  Students will choose 10 images to use, format them properly for the web, and choose two image techniques to showcase the images.  

After our Image Gallery work is complete, we will start our work with JavaScript.  Students will be introduced to how variables can be used in order to make a web page more interactive.  Once we go through some of the basics, students will apply their knowledge to creating a "Menu" website that will automatically display a different dinner special based on the day of the week.

AP Computer Science Principles

This week, students will start their "Create" task that will be submitted to the AP board that will be counted as 24% of the AP score.  On Monday, we will look at some sample app submissions and analyze the scoring for each.  We will also brainstorm a list of potential app ideas that students could potentially take on for their project.  Students will have 12 class hours to work on their "Create" task that will be submitted on April 15th.  For this task, students must create their own app and analyze the development process as well as the app's makeup.  Since this is an official AP assignment, students may not receive feedback from outside sources.  I have provided a template, a scoring guide, and a checklist to help students stay organized during this task.

What's Going On? March 5th through March 9th

App Development 1

This week, students will be completing our Commission Pay "Hackwich".  In this formative app assignment, students will learn how to read information from a text field and then perform a mathematical calculation.  This will be the lead-in for our end of unit app challenge, "Multiply".  For the multiply app, students will have two text fields.  The user will be able to add, subtract, multiply and divide the two numbers.  Additionally, students can choose to add a customized picture based on the results.

App Development 2

We will start off the week by finishing our "Dragon Fashion" hackwich.  Once this is complete, students will continue their work on the "Assignment Notebook" end of unit app challenge.  Students will have an "MVP" with four additional stretches to try out.  Some of the features to include in the app include the ability to add assignments, the ability to delete assignments, the ability to add assignment due dates, the use of DatePicker to choose assignment due data, permanent data storage, and the use of dictionaries to store data

Programming for the Web 2

Now that we have finished up our work with forms and tables, we will investigate image gallery techniques.  We will go through several techniques that can be applied to images such as filters, making images look like polaroid photos, adding captions, and allowing images to rotate.  Once we go through some sample techniques, students will choose at least one technique in order to display ten images on their portfolio page.

AP Computer Science Principles

This week, students will have their remaining time to work on our "Explore" task that will be submitted to the AP board on April 15th.  Students should be using the checklist and the scoring rubric to make sure that all required elements have been included in order to earn the best score possible.  Students are more than welcome to work on this project outside of class after this week, but we will not have any more class time dedicated to the "Explore" task.