What's Going On? January 2nd through January 6th

Thought for the Week

Looking Ahead: Exam Week

While it may not be on our radar quite yet, here is our plan for exam week.

AP Computer Science Principles

This week, we will dive into the world of Cybersecurity.  For these lessons, we will head back to the PLTW website to learn about how to detect and avoid scams, phishing, and other types of attacks.  We will also take a look at what companies can do to protect their data and the data of their customers.  For this, we will look at some methods of encryption and decryption.  With the help of Python, we will write messages, encode them, and send them to our classmates.  Our classmates will receive the message and decode it to read the secret message.  We will learn about Caesar Cyphers, Brute-Force Encryption, as well as Public Key Encryption.

App Development

This week, we will take a closer look at "Strings", or in other words, "text".  We will learn how to keep track of Strings and make changes to them.  Once we wrap this up, we will take a look at "Alerts", or those pop-ups that show up on our phones.  Once we wrap up these topics, students will move into our summative "Word Play" app.

Programming the Web 1

Now that we are back from break, students will turn their full attention to their final projects.  Students will be creating a website that consists of four web pages.  Students will choose their own (school-appropriate) topic, design the look of all of the pages, and provide the content and images.  The goal of this assignment is to highlight many of the great web design tools that we have learned about over the course of the semester.  As a reminder, students who are enrolled in the WCTC transcripted credit class option and who earn a "C" or higher based on the WCTC scale will earn free college credit!

What's Going On? December 19th through December 22nd

Thought for the Week

Join in the Fun for Our Dress-Up Days!

AP Computer Science Principles

We will start off this week by wrapping up our card game assessment.  After further discussion in class, it seems like this project is best if we value it as a summative.  For this assessment, students will be graded under two major learning targets: Writing Code and Analyzing Code via our responses.  This card game project serves as our final practice attempt for the AP Create Performance task that students will be submitting to the AP board and will account for 30% of the AP score.  During the last part of the week, we will finish up the diagnostic test from our "5 Steps to a 5" book to see what knowledge we have gained and help us to pinpoint areas for further study.

App Development

During this week, students will investigate segues and navigation controllers a little further.  Students will also have some time to experiment with our Tello Drones.  Students will program via block-based code in order to demonstrate their understanding of variables, functions, and loops.

Programming the Web

This week, students make sure that they have correctly hosted their "Clear Reflections Photography" sites.  After we check to make sure that our sites are live and visible to all online, students will start thinking about their final project.  For our final, students will get to choose their topic and layout design.  Students will plan what will appear on all four pages of their website and choose their design features.  Students will think about how to best highlight what they have learned over the course of the semester as it relates to HTML tags and CSS design features.

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

 Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science Principles

This week, students will spend their time working on creating a simple card game using the Python programming language.  Students should aim to complete the coding for this project by the end of class on Wednesday to give themselves time to work on the written responses for the task.  This task serves as a practice performance task that will be completed as submitted to the AP board as part of the AP exam score.

App Development

This week, students will take a break from our normal coding routine and experiment with our Tello Drones.  Students will take some time to fly our drones as well as complete some simple programming with them.  Students will demonstrate their ability to program conditionals (if statements) while flying their drones.

Programming the Web 1

This week, students will learn how to host their pages live online for the world to see!  Students will learn about the different types of hosting available, and some of the features, and then put their learning into practice.  Students will wrap up their "Clear Reflections Photography" website and then host it online.  Along with this assignment, students will also have 10 multiple-choice questions to complete.

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

Thought for the Week

Happy Computer Science Education Week!

In celebration of this year's Computer Science Education Week, Waukesha North will host an HOUR OF CODE session during JIT B on December 7th.  JOIN US!

AP Computer Science Principles

This week, we will continue examining sample student work that has been submitted for the AP Computer Science Principles Create Task.  Students will analyze submitted work to learn how to craft an appropriate response.  We will learn about mistakes to avoid and language to include when writing our responses. 

After this, we will then work on our second Create Task project.  Students will be tasked with creating a simple card game.  The game can be played with two human players or with a human versus a computer.  Within the program, students will again work with creating lists, writing algorithms, and creating functions.  We will also spend time analyzing and explaining our work with the AP Create task prompts.

App Development

This week, students will work on our summative end-of-unit app project called "Tip Calculator".  Students will design and program an app that a person could use when going out to eat.  The app will calculate the tip to leave for the server and can also add in functionality to split the check between friends.

Programming the Web

This week, students will dive into the world of Photoshop.  Students will learn how to properly format images for the web so that they load quickly and still look good.  Students will learn about different image formats and learn how to convert files.  Along with this week, students will complete our last reading guide of the semester while completing our final reading assignment.  Additionally, students will complete a set of lesson review questions.  Lastly, students will complete the "Clear Reflections" home page.  This home page will serve as the basis for our week 14 assignment.  

What's Going On? November 28th through December 2nd

 Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science Principles

This week, students will work on two different items.  First, students will work on finishing up their "Character Quiz" where we put into practice our ability to write and call custom functions.  Once we have wrapped this up, we will take a look at past submissions of Create task projects to the AP board.  Students will learn how to craft a response in order to get the maximum score for the project.  Students will learn about the elements to be sure to include as well as common errors in crafting responses.  If there is enough time, students will then prepare to work on a second practice create task where we play a simple card game.

App Development

We will start off this week by summarizing what we know about conditionals with a techincal blog post. Once this is complete, we will learn about several "gestures" that can be used to interact with our app such as tapping, swiping, and dragging our finger across the screen.

Programming the Web

This week, students will be introduced to the concept of responsive web design.  Students will learn how to write a "media query" to determine the size of the browser screen (desktop, tablet, or phone) and write an appropriate set of styles to make the website look the best on the device.  Along with this week, students will read a chapter in our textbook, complete the reading guide, and answer 10 multiple-choice review questions.  Students will also complete web assignment 12A where we follow along with the textbook tutorial to create a sample responsive site.

What's Going On? November 21st and 22nd

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone enjoys their Thanksgiving Break!  Take some time to relax and rejuvenate over your 5-day weekend!

AP Computer Science Principles

This week, students will continue to work on their "Character Quiz" assignment.  Students are writing a quiz with multiple choice questions to determine a character the user most resembles based on their answers.  We have students working on a Pokemon character quiz, a quiz to determine which football player we are most like, and more.  Students will use decision-making structures, lists, and functions to complete this project.  The goal of this program is to get a feel for the type of work we will need to do when it comes time to complete our AP Create Performance task which accounts for 30% of our AP score.

App Development

This week, students will practice working with decisions in our program.  We will work on our conditional statements with our "Conditionals Code Challenge".  Students will have class time on Monday and Tuesday to complete the challenge.  Any remaining time can be used for students to start researching their final project for the semester.

Programming the Web 1

During our short week, students will work on
checking out page layouts with different CSS techniques.  We will spend Monday's class going through the new terminology and techniques.  We will apply what we have learned during Tuesday's class when we complete Web Assignment 11A: Mt. Olympus.

What's Going On? November 14th through November 18th

Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science Principles

This week, we will start to take a more serious look at preparing for the AP Create Performance Task.  We will begin by reviewing all of the vocabulary terms that we have been working with that we will be expected to know while creating our project.  We will then take a look at how we can manage the complexity of our programs with functions.  We will spend some time talking about abstraction and writing our own custom functions.  Toward the end of the week, we will start working on a "Character Personality Quiz" where students will work in small groups to demonstrate their ability to write custom functions, make decisions within a program, and work with lists.  

App Development

We will start off this week by continuing our work with functions.  We will spend Monday and Tuesday's classes working on our "Functions Code Challenge".  In this project, students will write and call their own custom functions.  Towards the end of the week, we will talk about the scope of a variable and talk about how we can make decisions using "conditional" statements.

Programming the Web 1

This week, we will wrap up our work with lesson 9 by checking in our reading guides on Monday and completing our lesson 9 review questions during class on Tuesday.  While all of this is going on, we will also investigate a relatively new concept in Web Development: Flexbox.  We will spend some time on Monday playing with a site called Flexbox Froggy in order to learn a little big about how we can use Flex in order to define the layout of our pages.  We will complete a sample as a class on Tuesday and then apply our knowledge to our 10A Web Assignment: Minimalist Cards

What's Going On? November 7th through November 11th

Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science Principles

URGENT ATTENTION:

Don't forget to register for the AP exam!  You must register by November 8th in order to avoid a late fee. 
Please click here to learn more about the registration process and how you can earn college credit.

This week, we will continue working in pairs on  Activity 1.2.3: Apple Avalanche.  In this project, students will continue working with a game-like environment and explore how to trigger events with a key press.  Students will create several "turtle" or "apple" objects, add a letter to the object, and make the apple fall from the tree by pressing the corresponding letter.  Students will work with images, events, manage lists, and continue to write and call custom functions.

App Development

This week, we will focus primarily on functions.  We have already been using functions that are included as part of the Swift programming language.  Now we will spend some time investigating functions in general.  We will learn how to interpret a function header, how to interact with more functions, and how to create our own.  This week, students will take some notes, complete a demo, and summarize our work with a one-pager.

Programming the Web 1

During class on Monday and Tuesday, students will work on wrapping up our midterm assignment.  For this project, students have been tasked with creating a website that includes four web pages.  Through this assignment, students will highlight their ability to add content and format it within a page.  All midterm work is due by the end of class on Tuesday.  Students who need additional time in the lab are encouraged to come in before school or during JIT.  Once this is complete, we will move into unit 9 where we will learn about different ways to place elements on our pages, including the use of float and absolute positioning.

 

What's Going On? October 31st through November 4th

Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science Principles

Don't forget to register for the AP exam!  You must register by November 8th in order to avoid a late fee. 
Please click here to learn more about the registration process and how you can earn college credit.

We will start off this week by wrapping up Activity 1.2.2: Catch a Turtle Leaderboard.  Students continue to manage multiple files and learn to read and write to an external text file in order to maintain permanent memory storage to keep track of the best performances in our "Catch a Turtle" game.

Once this is complete, we will move into our next project: Activity 1.2.3: Apple Avalanche.  In this project, students will continue working with a game-like environment and explore how to trigger events with a key press.  Students will create several "turtle" or "apple" objects, add a letter to the object, and make the apple fall from the tree by pressing the corresponding letter.  Students will work with images, events, manage lists, and continue to write and call custom functions.

App Development 

This week, students will focus on the end-of-summative app challenge called "Multiply".  Students will
focus more on the design of their app this time around to make sure that their elements are precisely labeled and intentionally placed.  Students will then work on creating a simple calculator app and incorporate some fun images along the way.

Programming the Web 1

We will start off this week by wrapping up our lesson 8 material on "The Box Model".  In this unit, we talked about how to add specific spacing via margin and padding to our pages.  Additionally, we spent some time looking at border properties.  Students will wrap up their 8A project during class on Monday and complete our weekly multiple-choice questions on Tuesday.  We will spend the rest of Tuesday's class reviewing for our midterm project.  For our midterm project, students will have four class days to create a website demonstrating their knowledge of adding HTML elements, links, structure tags, and style.  Students will be expected to complete all work for the project by the end of class on Tuesday, November 8th.  Students who need additional time to complete the project can request to be assigned to my JIT group on Wednesday-Friday of this week.  Additionally, students can work in the lab before school.

What's Going On? October 24th through October 26th

Thought for the Week

Modified Schedule

AP Computer Science Principles

Don't forget to register for the AP exam!  You must register by November 8th in order to avoid a late fee. 
Please click here to learn more about the registration process and how you can earn college credit.

In class this week, students will continue to work on our Activity 1.2.2: Catch a Turtle Leaderboard.  Students will start to manage multiple files and learn to read and write to an external text file in order to maintain permanent memory storage to keep track of the best performances in our "Catch a Turtle" game.

App Development

During our class on Monday, students will spend a little bit of time investigating UIViews.  The idea of this UIView is to keep track of several objects together as a unit.  We can then learn to manage our views and place them in a specific order within our storyboard.  Once we have wrapped up this concept, students will begin working on our second end-of-unit app challenge, Multiply.  For this summative project, students will work on making a simple calculator that allows a user to enter in two numbers and perform some mathematical operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, mod).  

Programming the Web 1

This week, students will learn about the "Box Model" in our lesson 8 content.  Students will learn how to have tighter control of spacing and learn how to better arrange elements within our pages.  Along with this lesson, students will read chapters 7 and 10 in our textbook and complete the accompanying reading guide.  Students will also complete 10 multiple choice questions to review our concepts and one book tutorial-based web project.

What's Going On? October 17th through October 21st

 Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science Principles

We will start off this week by diving into our second unit of the year on "abstraction".  Our first project, Activity 1.2.1: Catch a Turtle, we will be creating a simple game where a circle appears on the screen.  We will work with events to determine when the circle has been clicked.  Then we will then code, using functions, to move the circle to a new place and start the process again.  This project will introduce us to writing our own functions (procedures), global variables, and more.  At the end of the week, we will add on to our project to keep track of the leading scorers of the game.

App Development

The focus of this week will be TextFields.  During Monday's class, we will finish up our "Hackwich" where we will practice working with textfields in three different ways: as an outlet, as an action, and as a delegate.  For the rest of the week, students will put what we have learned into practice by completing our TextField Code Challenge and writing a technical blog post about how to effectively use TextFields within our programs.

Programming for the Web 1

During Monday's class, students will wrap up our 6th lesson of the year.  Students will start the class by completing our multiple choice questions and will have the rest of the class to finish up 6A: Your First Style Sheet, 6B: Black Goose Bistro part 1, and 6C: Black Goose Bistro part 2.  During the rest of the week, we will focus on how to use color and background images to enhance our pages.  Along with lesson 7, students will read chapter 13 from our textbook and complete the accompanying reading guide.  Students will complete three web assignments to practice adding a variety of colors and images to our pages.  We will end the lesson with our multiple choice questions.