What's Going On? February 22nd through February 25th

Thought for the Week

Modified Schedule This Week

This week, students will have a shortened day on Thursday and no school on Friday.  Because of this, the rest of the week will see a modified schedule.  This means that Monday will be a "Tuesday-style" schedule, Tuesday will be a "Wednesday-style" schedule, Wednesday will be a "Thursday-style" schedule and Thursday will be a shortened "Friday-style" schedule.

AP Computer Science A

We will start off our shortened week by talking about Interfaces and how we can implement an interface to make sure that all of our classes are implementing the correct methods.  Tuesday's class will be focused on the Comparable Interface, and we will end the week by talking about Event Handlers and Mouse Events.

App Development 2

We will start off the week by wrapping up our "Rock, Paper, Scissor" summative app.  After that, we will spend the rest of the week working on the "Shopping List" Pre-Unit hackwich which will get us acquainted with some of the tools we will be using in the next unit.

Programming the Web 2

The focus of this short week will be our image gallery and learning to implement some techniques to format images. We will spend Monday's class learning about some techniques and the rest of the week will be devoted to student work time to format their own 10-picture image gallery to include within their portfolio site.

What's Going On? February 15th through February 19th

 Thought for the Week

Conferences this Wednesday

I still have a few open spots available for conferences this Wednesday.  Conferences will take place via our video conferencing software, WebEx.  If you would be interested in scheduling a conference, please sign up for one of the available time spots.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PVqdDaJLI7XJ2IXpV093zrFDLZE4IJkjOVWa1-bOqMI/edit?usp=sharing

AP Computer Science A

This week, we will start our 8th unit of the year.  This week, we will focus on what makes a good class and how we can make sure that we are designing our classes with programming best practices in mind.  At the end of the week, we will focus on the use of Interfaces to make sure that our classes are aligned with proper programming protocol.

App Development 2

At the beginning of this week, we will spend some time exploring how to incorporate Safari Services and the camera within our apps.  At the end of the week, students will dive into our first summative app project of the semester, Rock, Paper, Scissors.  Students will create the game to play against the computer and have the ability to customize the game to make it more user-interactive.

Programming the Web 2

For the majority of this week, students will work on wrapping up their portfolio home page.  Monday's class will give students the opportunity to show off their pages and get feedback from other students.  On Tuesday, students will make final adjustments before we host our pages online during Thursday's class.  We will wrap up the week by looking at some techniques for formatting images for our "Image Gallery" unit.

What's Going On? February 8th through February 12th

 Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science A

This week, students will work on our first lab of the year.  This 'Consumer Review Lab' will give students a chance to examine and work within a larger body of code.  Students will spend some time figuring out how to interpret the code and will have the opportunity to add their own!  The focus of this lab is to use programming to examine the words written in a consumer review that someone might post on a site like Yelp or Trip Advisor.  At the end of the week, we will start our 8th unit on Classes, Interfaces, and Inheritance.

App Dev 2

This week, students will spend some time working with loops.  Loops allow us to repeat a portion of code and will also allow us to examine all of the elements within a collection.  We will spend Monday's class reading about loops and completing our class-led 'hackwich'.  Students will work with our lab on Tuesday and on the Code Challenge (formative) during class on Wednesday and Thursday.  We will end the week with a short multiple-choice formative within our Blackboard site.

Programming the Web 2

We will start off this week wrapping up Friday's lesson on navigation techniques.  We will spend time on Tuesday talking about how to design a logo for our portfolio site that we will use to highlight our work throughout the semester.  The rest of the week will be used by students to design and create their portfolio site home page.

What's Going On? February 1st through February 5th

 Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science A

This week, we will wrap up our seventh unit on Arrays and ArrayLists.  Students will have our class periods on Monday and Tuesday devoted to working on our summative programming project #7.  During Wednesday's class, we will review and we will complete our summative (and turn in our programming project) during class on Thursday.  The computer lab is open in the morning as soon as students are able to enter the building. Students who need additional lab time or help are welcome to come in before school.  I am available via WebEx during this time, as well.

App Development 2

This week, we will continue on with our study of collections, specifically Arrays and Dictionaries.  During class on Monday, students will work through our Collections Lab.  The lab will give students the opportunity to work more with arrays and dictionaries.   During the rest of the week, students will participate in the "Collections Coding Challenge", a formative.

Programming the Web 2

At the beginning of the week, students will work in pairs to mark-up a sample prototype website.  Students will use a pair-programming technique where one student types and the other offers information. Throughout the class, students will switch roles periodically. This will allow students to brainstorm and troubleshoot through problems together. At the end of the week, we will explore different navigation techniques and also talk about how we can design a logo for our portfolio site.

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.