What's Going On? January 11th through January 15th

 Thought for the Week

Coming Soon...Exam Week

Please consult the schedule for exam week.  Please note, there is no school on Monday, January 18th.

AP Computer Science A

At the beginning of the week, students will spend some time working with Arrays.  During Monday's class, students will complete a check-in via the AP Classroom website.  Students will complete some practice multiple choice and two free-response questions that are in the style of the AP exam. On Tuesday, we will talk about two-dimensional arrays and on Wednesday, students will have a chance to apply their learning of two-dimensional arrays with our Practice Exercise Set #3.  For the remainder of the week, we will spend time reviewing for the semester exam.

App Development 1

This week, we will spend the first part of the week learning about "Alerts".  After that, students will have time to work on our summative app project, "Word Play".  This summative app is similar to "Mad Libs", where students will collect some words from the user on the first screen of the app and then place them into a story on the second screen of the app.  

Web 1
 

This week, students will have time to work on their final web sites.  During class on Monday, I will formally introduce the assignment.  Students will create and design their own web site on a topic of their choice.  The website must contain at least four web pages that demonstrate our design and structure practices we have learned about throughout the course of the semester.  The final project is due by the end of the exam period during exam week.

What's Going On? January 4 through January 8, 2021

 

Happy New Year!

Welcome back, everyone!  I hope you had some time to rest, relax, and recharge during your time over break and that you are ready to get back into the swing of things!

Coming Soon....Semester Exams

AP Computer Science A

This week, we will start our study of unit 7 where we will focus on Arrays and ArrayLists.  Basically, these items will allow us to save and retrieve lots of data with a single variable.  Monday's class will be devoted to watching a couple of videos put together by the AP board about arrays and students will summarize their learning in a "one-
pager" assignment.  Throughout the rest of the week, we will talk about how to use arrays and we will have a couple of coding opportunities to put our knowledge to the test.

App Development 1

This week, we will continue our work with apps that have multiple screens.  We will start off the week with a self-paced video with a reflection.  For the rest of the week, we will dive into some of the readings about different screens, how we can navigate between them, and Strings.  Students will also have a hackwich and a few demos to work through within the week.

Programming the Web 1

This week, students will continue their work on Web Assignment 14A, where we are creating the sub-pages for the "Clear Reflections Photography" site.  Toward the end of the week, we will talk about how we can host our pages live online, rather than only viewing them on our individual devices.

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

 Thought for the Week

Schedule for the Week

***NOTE: 

Monday:

• There is no AE on Monday
• all students will be learning virutally on Monday

Tuesday:

• Cohort 1 will attend school face-to-face
• Cohort 2 will attend school virtually

AP Computer Science A

This week, students will choose a chapter to read from the "Blown to Bits" book, available as a PDF.  Students will then answer the reflection questions associated with the chosen chapter.  This is all in preparation for our class discussion that will take place during class on Tuesday about ethics and some of the implications associated with computing.

App Development 1

This week, students will wrap up our pre-unit hackwich, "Intergalactic Travel".  In this hackwich, students will learn how to make multiple screens on an app and pass data from one screen to the next.  This is a formative hackwich that will be turned in to Google Classroom by the end of our class on Tuesday.

Programming the Web 1

This week, students will work on Web Assignment 14A as well as complete our lesson 14 review questions during our class on Tuesday.  We will continue our work with Web Assignment 14A after our winter break.  When we return, we will learn how to host our sites live online.

Have a great winter break!!!!

 

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

Thought for the Week

Planning Ahead: December 21st and December 22nd

Due to our two-day week, we will follow a modified schedule on Monday (12/21/2020) and Tuesday (12/22/2020).  All students will meet virtually on Monday.  On this Monday, we will skip our AE/Homeroom class period.  On Tuesday, cohort 1 will meet face-to-face and cohort 2 and virtual students will all meet via WebEx Teams.

Semester Exam Schedule

AP Computer Science A

This week, students will work on our unit 6 programming project, complete our review exercise set, and our practice test in order to prepare for our unit 6 summative on Friday.  Students are encouraged to reach out in class or in WebEx teams with any questions.

App Development 1

This week, students will start our end-of-unit app challenge, Tip Calculator.  For this summative project, students will create an app that might be handy when going to a restaurant.  Students will create an app that will calculate a tip and can also customize it to split the check when going out to eat with friends.  I have scheduled a minimum of three class days for students to work on this app.  I will check in with students at the end of our second work day to determine how much time will be required.  

Programming the Web 1

At the start of this week, students will have time to display their knowledge of how to properly format images for a web page by completing our Web Assignment 13a: The Clear Reflections home page.  Students will also complete our lesson 13 review questions during class on Wednesday.  After that, we will start talking about how to put our finished pages live online.

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

  Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science A

This week, students will continue our study of loops. During class on Monday, students will have the opportunity to work with Strings and for loops.  Later in the week, we will explore the 'do while' loops, sentinel values, common looping algorithms, and nested loops.

App Development

We will start off this week by checking in on our understanding of conditionals, or if...else statements.  Students will take Monday's class to summarize their learning of conditionals in a technical blog post.  For the rest of the week, students will investigate gesture recognizers via a reading assignment, a class-led hackwich, and a coding challenge.

Programming the Web 1

During class on Monday, students will wrap up our notes on responsive web design.  Students will then have Tuesday's and Wednesday's class to complete Web Assignment 11A, a tutorial-based assignment from our textbook on how to create a webpage that incorporates the properties of responsiveness.  Along with this week, students should complete their reading guides by Tuesday and we will have our lesson 11 review questions (multiple choice) during class on Wednesday.  During our class two class periods for the week, students will learn about how to properly format images for the web by using Photoshop.

What's Going On? November 30th through December 4th

 Thought for the Week

Virtual Learning

We will spend some time focusing on how to be successful digital learners.  Now that we are switching back to the hybrid model, it is time to reflect on what is going well in terms of virtual learning and what would be going better.  We will talk about the skills necessary to be successful learners and some tips & tricks to help make the best of our hybrid learning situation.

AP Computer Science A

This week, we will begin our sixth unit on loops.  During class on Monday, students will view a couple of short videos put together by the people at AP Classroom and complete a short check-in assignment to act as our intro to the unit.  During class on Tuesday and Wednesday, we will spend time focusing more in-depth on 'while' loops.  During class on Thursday and Friday, we will focus on 'for' and 'do' loops as well as sentinel values.

App Development 1

We will spend the first part of the week continuing our work with conditionals.  During class on Monday, we will review conditionals and write a couple of coding examples.  Then, students will have several class periods to work within our Conditionals Code Challenge.  We will wrap up the week with a "Gesture Recognizer" demo.

Programming the Web 1

We will start off the week by working on Web Assignment 11A where students will practice some techniques related to web page layout.  In order to complete this assignment, students can choose between creating a layout using float, flexbox, or positioning.  At the end of the week, students will begin working on lesson 12 where we will investigate some different techniques associated with responsive web design.  Looking ahead, students will have their lesson 12 reading guide due on Tuesday, December 8th.

What's Going On? November 23rd and November 24th

 Shortened Week

Due to the Thanksgiving holiday, we will have school virtually on Monday and Tuesday this week.  For these two days, we will following the following schedule:

AP Computer Science A

During class on Monday, students will make their final preparations for our unit 5 summative on "decisions".  Our summative will take place during our scheduled class period on Tuesday.  Programming Project #5 will also be due on Tuesday.

App Development 1

This week we will focus on conditionals.  Students will spend Monday's class reading and working within our Conditionals Playgroundbook with our Swift Playground app.  There is also a brief 7-minute video on the topic.  Students will complete a "check-in" assignment at the conclusion of Monday's lesson.  During class on Tuesday, we will do a Conditionals "hackwich" together.

Programming the Web 1

This week, we will begin Unit 11.  We will spend Monday's class talking about different ways we can design our layouts using CSS.  On Tuesday we will wrap up our notes and get started on Web Assignment 11A.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!  

Enjoy your break from school!  We will resume our hybrid schedule from the beginning of the year during the week of 11/30, with face-to-face instruction resuming on 12/1 for students in cohort 1 and on 12/2 for students in cohort 2.