What's Going On? February 4th through February 8th

App Development 1

This week, we will take a look at how to store data in an app using variables and constants.  Variables can be extremely helpful in programming when we want to reference information later on or make some changes to it along the way.  One way to use a variable is for keeping track of a score in a game.  Every time a player earns a point, the score variable can be updated and displayed for the user to see.  After we finish our discussion on variables, students will work on our "Variables Challenge".  This is a formative assessment where students will be able to practice using variables within a larger-scale app.  Students will be encouraged to work together and troubleshoot along the way.  We will finish the week with a short variables formative quiz on BlackBoard. 


App Development 2

At the beginning of the week, students will finish up their intro app assignment "High-Low Guessing Game".  Once this review assignment is complete, we will dive into the official second-semester curriculum.  We will dive into the use of "dictionaries" to store data and how to write a class that can be used over and over in order to simplify our code. 

AP Computer Science

Students should have wrapped up our summative programming project #7 at the end of last week.  This week, we will focus on our second lab of the year: Pictures.  The AP Board suggests that students spend time working with three different labs in order to get some experience working with a large scale program.  Students will work with analyzing and writing methods for a 2D array in order to display and manipulate pictures.  

Programming the Web 1

We will start off this week by completing our 10 multiple choice questions from lesson 1 about some of the basic principles and roles involved in web design.  Students will also need to turn in their "reading guides" that we were working on during class on Friday.  Once we wrap up lesson 1, we will move into lesson 2 where we actually get to start making a web page.  For the first few lessons of the semester, students will work in a basic text editing program called "Text Edit".  This will allow students to become familiar with the basic structure that will be implemented in every web page we create throughout the course.  Students will learn how to include a title, paragraphs, and images on a web page.  Along with this week, students will need to read chapter 4 in our textbook and complete the accompanying reading guide.  Students will also have three web page assignments to complete in order to practice our new knowledge.  We will finish the week by completing our 10 multiple choice questions from lesson 2.