What's going on? January 3rd through January 7th

 Happy New Year!

Welcome back and Happy New Year! I hope that everyone found some time to rest, relax, and recharge,  Now that we're back, let's focus on making the most of what's left of our first semester!

AP Computer Science Principles

As we return from break, we will first focus on how to secure sloppy code.  We will analyze how to write and fix code to make it more efficient and less susceptible to hackers.  We will learn how to write efficient conditionals that join multiple boolean expressions.  At the end of the week, we will turn our attention to Activity 2.1.6: A pHishy Fish Tank where we will analyze a security threat to a business.

 

App Development

This week, we will continue our study of how to create multiple screens in an app and pass data between them.  We will talk more about segues, navigation controllers, and how to create an alert pop-up.

Programming the Web 1

On Monday, we will work on wrapping up our Clear Reflections Photography homepage.  Later in the week, we will talk about how to host our site live online.  We will also work on creating the subpages that go along with the Clear Reflections Photography homepage.

What's Going On? December 20th through December 22nd

  Happy Holidays!

Wishing you a restful and relaxing winter break!

Schedule for the Week

AP Computer Science Principles

This week, we will continue to take a look at how to use Tkinter to create a graphical user interface (GUI) for our program.  We will also look at how we can make our code more efficient and less error-prone.  Students should complete Activity 2.1.5 (Securing Sloppy Code) prior to leaving for winter break.

App Development 1

This week, students will complete our pre-unit hackwich called "Intergalactic Traveler".  In this app, students will learn how to create multiple screens for our app and pass information between the screens.

Programming the Web 1

This week, students will focus on wrapping up our work for lesson 13.  Students should turn in their lesson 13 reading guides on Monday and we will complete our lesson 13 multiple-choice questions on Tuesday. Students should submit their "Clear Reflections" home page by the end of class on Wednesday.

What's Going On? December 13th through December 17th

Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science Principles

This week, we will focus on creating programs with a graphical user interface (GUI) with Tkinter.  Students will work on using multiple screens and learning how to design and place elements into a frame for presentation.

App Development

This week, students will be working on the "Tip Calculator" summative end-of-unit app challenge.  In this app, the user can enter the amount that needs to be paid for a bill at a restaurant.  With the tap of a button, the tip amount will be calculated.  

Programming the Web 1

The first part of this week will be devoted to our lesson 12 project. In this textbook tutorial, students will demonstrate their ability to make a website responsive with media queries.  This means that we can design different looks for a webpage for when it appears on a desktop and when it appears on a phone screen.  Students will turn in their lesson 12 reading guide on Monday and complete their lesson 12 review questions during class on Tuesday.  On Wednesday, we will shift our focus to lesson 13 where we will learn how to get images ready to display online with Photoshop.

What's Going On? December 6th through December 10th

 Thought for the Week

Hour of Code Opportunity

The Hour of Code is a global movement reaching tens of millions of students in 180+ countries.  Join us to learn a little bit about the growing field of computer science on Wednesday, December 8th in room 300.  See Mrs. Kamenar if you have any questions!

AP Computer Science Principles

This week we will continue our study of Cybersecurity.  Students will complete an activity where we talk about encryption and how we can safely send information through the internet.  We will end the week by reading about how how to increase password strength and multi-factor authentication.

App Development 1

This week, our primary focus will be on Gesture Recognizers.  We will learn how to respond to a tap, double tap, and some of the other gestures we might use on the screen of our phone.  Students will also have a technical blog post to summarize their learning of conditionals.

Programming the Web 1

The majority of this week will be focused on lesson 11, where we learn some more layout techniques using CSS.  For this week, students will be responsible for completing our lesson 11 Mt. Olympus web page.

What's Going On? November 22nd and November 23rd

Happy Thanksgiving!

Modified Schedule for the Week

This week, students will have school on Monday and Tuesday.  We will not have school Wednesday through Friday for Thanksgiving break. Here is the schedule we will follow next week:

AP Computer Science Principles

During our two class days, students will wrap up our second summative assessment for the year.  For this summative, students have been challenged to create a game that uses movement, as well as a variety of other components.  Students have two parts to the assignment: creating the game and analyzing the code that went into creating the game.  All work for this summative and unit 1.2 is due by Tuesday, November 23rd.

As part of our AP Exam, students will need to create an app and analyze its contents.  In order to prepare for this official assignment, we are completing this practice "Create" project.  This is the second of our practice "Create" tasks that we have done for the year.  

App Development

The focus of this week will be on conditional statements.  So far, the majority of the code that we have
written executes one statement after the next.  The use of conditional statements will allow us to pick and choose which code is performed based on meeting different conditions.

Web 1

This week, students will focus on wrapping up our lesson 9 on floating and positioning.  Students will turn in their lesson 9 reading guides during class on Monday.  On Tuesday, we will complete our weekly multiple-choice question summative and turn in our 9th Web Assignment of the semester.  Students who need additional time to complete their work are encouraged to come in before school or during our lunchtime JIT session.

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

Sign up For Conferences: Wednesday, November 17th

Our next opportunity for parent-teacher conferences is on Wednesday, November 17th.  These conferences are available by appointment only.  Please click on the link below to sign up for a time slot.

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30e0f4daba628a1fe3-math

Thought for the Week

How would you classify your mindset?

AP Computer Science Principles

Monday's class will be devoted to wrapping up Activity 1.2.4: Turtle Escape.  In this project, students will use loops and conditionals in order to create the drawing of a maze that includes doors and barriers.  Students will also add a game piece that is controllable pressing keys on the keyboard.

Once this activity is complete, students will move into our summative activity 1.2.5: Shall We Play A Game?  In this activity, students will design and implement a game that demonstrates their ability to use loops, lists, key presses, functions, along with some other elements that we have worked with over the course of the year so far.  When students are done with the summative, they will create a brief video and answer some reflection questions.  This is the second opportunity for students to practice making the "Create" task that we will submit to the AP board as part of our AP score in May.

App Development

We will spend the majority of this week focused on functions.  In programming, we can use functions to make our code more efficient.  Anytime that we find ourselves copying and pasting code from one place to another, it would be best to write a function.  This week, we will learn about the make up of functions, write our own custom functions, and work on our functions code challenge.  We will end this week by talking about the scope of variables.

Web 1

The first half of the week will be spent on finishing up our midterm assignment.  All midterms must be completed and turned in by the end of class on Tuesday.  After this, we will move on to lesson 9.  In this lesson, we will talk about how we can modify the "flow of control", or how items are placed on our webpage.  We will be able to modify the placement of text and images through "floating" and through "absolute positioning".  Along with this lesson, students will read chapter 15 from our textbook and complete the accompanying reading guide.  We will complete two tutorial-style assignments to demonstrate our ability to use the float and absolute positioning property.  We will end the lesson with our multiple-choice questions.

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

Thought for the Week

 Parent-Teacher Conferences by Appointment

Would you like to schedule a time to meet to talk about your student's progress?  Check out the link below
to sign up for a time slot during our scheduled parent-teacher conference night on Wednesday, November 17th from 5pm-7pm.

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30e0f4daba628a1fe3-math

AP Computer Science Principles - AP Exam Registration Deadline is November 8th!

AP Exam Information:

At this point, all students should be enrolled in our class through the AP Classroom platform.  This platform is a great resource for instructional videos and practice exam questions that will prepare us for the AP exam in May.

The deadline for registering for the AP exam is November 8th.  After that, students may enroll in the AP exam but there will be a $40 late fee.  Please check out the following document for information on how to sign up for the exam:

 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YF-fAy1T99rqGxQk9UkqIcpEqeWwFQxUVza40a6j3k4/edit?usp=sharing

APCPS: Agenda

Our time this week will be split between Activity 1.2.4: Turtle Escape and some preparation for the AP Exam.  On Monday and Thursday, students will work on Activity 1.2.4 where they will work on creating a maze program that will allow a "Turtle" object to navigate throughout a maze.  On Tuesday and Wednesday, students will spend some time viewing some videos provided by AP Classroom and completing some sample AP Exam-style questions.

App Development

This week, we will begin our third unit of the year.  We will start off this week by completing our Pre-Unit hackwich, Commission Pay.  We will then spend the rest of the week diving into our discussion of "Functions".  Students will learn how to write more efficient code by writing their own custom functions.  

Programming the Web 1

This week is our midterm.  Students will work to create a four-page website.  Students will be provided the content (images and text) and they will have the week to format it to the shown specifications.  All midterm projects are due at the end of class on Thursday.  Students will need additional time beyond our class are welcome to come in during JIT before school or during lunch.