What's Going On? April 26th through April 30th

  Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science A

The AP Computer Science A exam is fast approaching.  Students enrolled in the exam will take it on Thursday, May 6 at 12:00 (noon) in the flexible learning space classroom in the 200 hallway.  This means we will spend the entire week reviewing for the AP Exam.  All students are expected to participate in the review as we are reviewing material covered throughout the course which will be helpful after the exam when we work on our final projects.

App Development 2

This week, students will wrap up their summative app challenge "Za Hunter".  In this app, students will find the user's current location, display it on a map, and search the surrounding area for pizza places.  Once this app is complete, we will move on to our last new unit for the year.  Students will create the "Ninja" hackwich.  This app demo will serve as an introduction to the "Game" mode available for app creation in XCode.

Web 2

This week, we will continue our study of JavaScript.  During class on Monday, students will have the opportunity to wrap up their JavaScript with Parameters code assignment.  In the middle of the week, students will add some JavaScript functionality to their previously-created "St. Mary's" form.  This assignment will be added to our Web 2 portfolio.  We will end the week by learning how to create a quiz within JavaScript.

What's Going On? April 19th through April 23rd

 Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science A

This week, we will wrap up our final unit before we begin our review for the AP exam.  Monday's class will be devoted to wrapping up our 9th summative programming project (due Wednesday).  We will review on Tuesday and complete the summative during class on Wednesday.  We will end the week by starting our review for the AP exam.

App Dev 2

This week, we will take a look at the composition of functions (how we can get two classes to work together) and we will review how to access a user's location on a map.  We will wrap up the week by working on our summative end-of-unit app challenge, 'Za Hunter.  In this app, students will find a user's location, search the surrounding area for local pizza places, and display location information for each pizza place.

Web 2

The focus of this week will be JavaScript functions.  We will start the week by learning how to call a function and learn how to transfer control within a program.  Students will work with functions within a worksheet and in a short coding activity.  We will end the week by talking about functions that include parameters, or need additional information in order to complete their task.

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

 Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science A

We will start off this week by talking about two different searching algorithms: linear search and binary search.  We will also talk about the efficiency of algorithms in terms of "Big Oh" notation.  The rest of the week will be devoted to some programming assignments where students can put into practice everything that we have learned over the course of the unit, including recursion, sorting, and searching.

App Development 2

This week, students will investigate 'guard' statements, a way to prevent an app from crashing when we receive unexpected data.  We will then transition into learning about 'modal segues', or a view controller that briefly appears on top of another controller.  We will end the week with the modal segues code challenge.

Programming the Web 2

This week, we will continue our study of JavaScript.  We will start off the week by reviewing arrays and conditionals.  We will then move into our study of looping structures (how to repeat a section of code).  We will finish the week by discussing functions.

What's Going On? April 6th through April 9th

 Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science A

This week, we will turn our attention to sorting algorithms.  We will start off with the selection sort.  In this sort, we repeatedly look for the smallest element in our set and move it to the front of our list.  We will analyze the code of this sort and then use it to write our own programs.  We will end the week by looking at some other sorts including the insertion sort and merge sort.

App Dev 2

This week, we will start our "Za Hunter" unit.  Within this unit, students will learn about how to access a user's location on a map using MapKit as well as how to search the user's surrounding area for different points of interest such as parks and pizza places.  We will start off the week with our pre-unit hackwich called "Mobile Mapper".  Within this hackwich, we will locate and display the user's location as well as search the surrounding area for parks.  We will end the week with a discussion on "optionals", and what the operators ! and ? mean in relationship to variables.

Web 2

We will start off this week with some review of JavaScript variables and a short formative assignment.  Once we are back into the swing of things, we will talk about how we can integrate JavaScript into our webpages and how we can implement functions to make our site more efficient.

What's Going On? March 22nd through March 26th

 Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science A

This week, we will start our last unit leading up to the AP Exam.  This unit is all about recursion, searching, and sorting.  This week, we will focus on recursion, or how a method can call itself.  Along with this week, students will participate in some notes, some code activities, a practice exercise set, and a review exercise set.  Students should also begin our final notes template for the year to go along with our textbook reading.  This notes template will be due after spring break at a date to be determined later.  

App Dev 2

We will spend the first part of this week focused on finishing up our assignment notebook app.  While creating this app, students will demonstrate their knowledge of how to display data in a TableView as well as how to store data between app openings.  We will end the week by viewing the film "Coded Bias".  This documentary focuses on artificial intelligence (AI) and the world of computer science.  

Programming the Web 2

This week, we will start our study of JavaScript.  Adding JavaScript into our programs will allow us to add some interactivity and automaticity to our web pages.  We will end the week by viewing the film "Coded Bias".  This documentary focuses on artificial intelligence (AI) and the world of computer science.  

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

 Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science A

At the beginning of this week, we will work on wrapping up our "Data" lab.  On Monday, we will work with pulling data from a weather website and write some java code to do some simple analysis.  During class on Tuesday, students will have the chance to work with data related to their own interests and do some simple analysis, based on our discussion from earlier this week.  On Wednesday and Thursday, we will begin work on our final unit for the year on searching, sorting, and recursion.  Our focus will be on "recursion", or how a method can call itself.

App Development 2

We will start off this week by wrapping up our "Persistence Code Challenge".  In this challenge, students will work with ways to save different types of data.  The remainder of the week will be devoted to our summative app challenge: Assignment Notebook.  Students will create an assignment notebook app to keep track of assignments and their due dates.

Programming the Web 2

The majority of this week will be spent on our summative forms and tables assignment: St. Mary's Site.  Students will design a form designed to get information from the user and focus on formatting items with the use of tables to get items to line up nicely.  This form will serve as the basis for a future assignment once we learn a little bit of JavaScript.  On Friday, we will begin our JavaScript unit.  Students will learn how to create and process variables.

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

 Thought for the Week

Modified Schedule for the Week 

Our sophomores and juniors will take the ACT on Tuesday, March 9th.  Because of this, we will run a modified schedule.  Monday will be a "Tuesday-style" schedule.  On Tuesday, only sophomores and juniors will report to school.  Freshmen and Seniors will have the day off.  The rest of the week, will run as normal.

AP Computer Science A

We will start off this week with our summative assessment on unit 8: Designing Classes, Inheritance, and Interfaces.  Students will also have their summative programming project #8 due on this day.  For the rest of the week, students will investigate our second lab of the year.  The "Data Lab" will allow students to learn about the importance of data in making decisions.  Students will also learn how to setup and use a third-party library and how to use the data once it has been read in a program.  

App Development 2

This week, we will finish our discussion on Table Views and learn how to modify and delete contents within the view.  After this, we will learn about "persistence" in data.  This means that we will learn about how we can save some basic information and recall it the next time the app runs.

Programming the Web 2

This week, we will spend some time applying our newly-learned knowledge on how to organize information into a basic table.  Students will spend Monday's class creating a table using some of the techniques we learned about last week.  At the end of the week, we will dive into forms.  Forms provide a way for us to get information from a computer user.  (Think: entering your information when you want to purchase a product from a website).  Students will have the opportunity to put their skills to the test on Friday when they create a basic 10-question survey.