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

  Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science A

This week, students will begin their game development for our final project involving AI.  Students can work individually or in teams in order to create a Java program for a game that incorporates some principles of basic AI.  The program must include a computer player that uses some sort of intelligence to plan and implement its move and strategy for the game.

App Development 2

This week, students will continue to work on their final "Build Your Own App" and "Pitch Your Own App" programs.  The goal is, at the end of each development cycle (approximately 1 week in length), the student has a working version of the app.  App progress will be shared out with the group at the end of class on Thursday.

Web 2

This week, students will continue with our work in HTML5 Canvas.  We will start off the week by working through a bouncing ball animation as a class.  Students will then have the opportunity to modify the site to make it their own.  Thursday's class will be devoted to creating a PacMan animation as a class and on Friday, students will have the ability to find their own animation tutorial to follow and create.

What's Going On? May 10th through May 14th

 Thought for the Week

FREE Summer Opportunity - Introduction to Cybersecurity

The GenCyber Camp at Marquette University is set for July 26-31, 2021. This year it’s virtual, free, and focused on high school students
https://cs.mu.edu/~debbie/gencyber.html

AP Computer Science A

Now that the AP Exam is complete, we are going to spend some time talking about some of the current issues surrounding programming and social media.  This week, we will view two films: Coded Bias and The Social Dilemma.  These two films will help us to talk about some of the current events and psychology surrounding computer science.  These films will help us to bring awareness to our final project where students will use AI (Artificial Intelligence) within a program.

App Development 2

This week, students will begin their final "Build Your Own App" project.  The beginning of this week will be focused on the planning and designing of our app.  We will implement the "Agile Development" philosophy that includes designing our app features in stages so that we always have a working product.

Programming the Web 2

This week, students will be introduced to the HTML5 Canvas environment.  The focus of the week will be on the drawing tools.  Students will learn the basics of drawing during class on Monday and Tuesday.  These newly learned skills will be applied to our "Face" creation program.  We will wrap up the week by showcasing our creations and diving into a few more drawing tools.

Looking Ahead: Exam Schedule

What's Going On? May 3rd through May 7th

 Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science A - EXAM ON THURSDAY MAY 6 

Our AP Exam will take place on Thursday, May 6th at noon.  Students will complete the exam in the Flexible Learning Space Room (FLS).  Students will need to bring pencils and pens to the exam.  Students should NOT bring cell phones, smart watches, or other electronic devices to the exam.

This week, we will focus on more review for the multiple-choice and free-response portion of the exam.  We will work through some released AP questions to make sure that we are ready to take on the APCSA exam!

App Development 2

This week, we will work more within the SpriteKit environment to learn about how to create games.  Our focus this week will be on how to create items through the GameScene.sks file (like Main.storyboard) and we will re-create the PONG game.  We will also spend some time this week talking about Agile Development theory when planning and completing large-scale projects.

Web 2

This week, students will focus on how to make a quiz using HTML and JavaScript.  Students will create a 6-question quiz that includes both multiple choice and short answer questions.  Through JavaScript, students will auto-grade the submitted responses and provide feedback.  Students will include this assignment as part of their portfolio website under the "JavaScript" tab.

Emergency Broadband Benefit

The Emergency Broadband Benefit is an FCC program to help families and households struggling to afford internet service during the COVID-19 pandemic. This new benefit will connect eligible households to jobs, critical healthcare services, virtual classrooms, and so much more.

Click here to learn more.

Click here for information in Spanish.

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.