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

 Thought for the Week

Second Semester Schedule

As we begin the second semester, please remember we are scheduled to be in classes five days per week.  Please check out the schedule we will follow:

AP Computer Science A

This week, students will continue on with our study of Unit 7.  At the beginning of this week, we will specifically focus on ArrayLists.  ArrayLists allow us to store an expanding and shrinking collection of objects.  We will spend some time coding with ArrayLists and we will wrap up the week by beginning our summative programming project #7.

App Development 2

Welcome to the second semester of App Development!  In this class, we will continue to learn about new Swift Techniques to build bigger and better apps!  We will start out the class with our "Rock, Paper, Scissors" unit.  To start us out, we will begin with a pre-unit hackwich called Three Letter Word.  In this hackwich, students will be introduced to how to save many elements in an array.

Programming the Web 2

Welcome to the second semester of App Development!  In this class, students will work with the elements of good web design, learn how to code forms, be introduced to JavaScript, and work in HTML5.  We will start off this week by talking about good elements of design that we want to incorporate into our site and also talk about the elements we want to avoid.  Since it has been a while since some of our web 2 students may have worked with HTML, we will end the week with an HTML code review.

What's Going On? First Semester Exam Week

 Exam Week Schedule

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

AP Computer Science A

Students will complete their exams over the first two exam period days of the week.  On Tuesday, students will complete the multiple-choice portion of the exam.  On Wednesday, students will complete the free-response portion of the exam.  The exam will be available on Blackboard during our scheduled exam time and must be completed within the designated time period.

App Development 1

For our final project, students will investigate a new swift technique that we have not learned about yet in this class.  Students will then create a video walking us through how to code the feature and explain how it works.  The video should be no longer than 7 minutes.  Students have the option to submit this project as part of the Mobile Makers contest and could be eligible to win prizes such as t-shirts, gift cards, and free mentoring with a professional programmer.  Regardless of whether students choose to enter the contest or not, students will be required to submit their final video projects to me by the end of our exam period.

Web 1
 

During our exam period, students will begin with our 20-question multiple-choice assessment.   Students will complete this during our face-to-face class.  Students who are "always virtual" will complete this assessment during our exam time on Tuesday.  Our final project is due by the end of the exam period.

2nd Semester Schedule

As you have probably heard, during the second semester we will transition back to five days per week face-to-face classes.  This is the schedule we will follow:

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.