What's Going On? April 24th through April 28th

 Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science Principles

We are nearing our time for the AP Exam and our final deadline to submit the APCSP Create Performance Task.  All projects must be submitted by May 1st at 11:59pm EST.  No late work will be accepted.  

During this week, we will continue our review process for the exam.  Students will be assessed on their knowledge of five major topics.  Based on a diagnostic test that students took a few weeks ago, we will look at common misconceptions for each of the "big ideas", talk about test-taking strategies, and continue to practice answering questions.

App Development 1

This week, students will work on our summative end-of-unit app challenge called "Tip Calculator". This app will be designed to be used when someone goes out to eat at a restaurant and would like to figure out how much of a tip to leave the server.  An additional feature can be added to calculate how a bill can be split equally amongst several people.

App Development 2

This week, we will begin our last official teacher-driven unit of the year before the "Build Your Own App"
contest.  In this unit, students will experiment with animation and physics.  In our pre-unit hackwich, students will make a "Pong-ish" game where we can create a ball and a paddle and have things bounce around.  Students will be exposed to the "GameKit" mode of an app, rather than working in a single view application.  In this new-to-us mode, we will get a new set of files and a slightly new way to create our apps.  We will learn how to create an object, add properties to it, and define what happens during a collision.  

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

Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science Principles

This week, we will spend time reviewing our first AP practice exam and talking about test-taking strategies.  We will also begin our intensive review period leading up to the exam.

App Development 1

This week, our primary focus will be on "Conditionals".  We will spend Monday's class reading about conditionals, recording some notes, and trying out a demo together as a class.  We will spend Tuesday's class period working on a code challenge.  On Thursday we will investigate some gesture recognizers (tap, pan, and swipe).  We will wrap up the week by summarizing what we have learned about conditionals with a technical blog post.

App Development 2

This week, students will work on their summative end-of-unit app challenge called "Za Hunter".  In this challenge, students will use a map to show the user's location and be able to zoom in on that location in the world.  Students will also be able to search the surrounding area for pizza places, which will be identified by a map pin.  When the map pin is tapped, more information about the restaurant can be seen, such as the restaurant's address and phone number.

 

What's Going On? April 11th through April 14th

Thought for the Week

Prom Spirit Days

Prom is coming up on April 15th.  Join in the fun by participating in the scheduled dress-up days for the week.

AP Computer Science Principles

We will start off this shortened week by exploring linear search versus a binary search.  We will practice looking at data through this lens as well as practicing some AP-style questions.  We will spend our classes on Wednesday and Thursday completing a practice AP test from our 5 Steps to a 5 Book, so be sure to bring your book to class!

App Development 1

This week, we will take a more in-depth look at functions.  This week, students will spend some time completing the "Functions Code Challenge" and we will also take a look at the "Scope" of a variable.

App Development 2

This week, students will explore "Modal Segues", or screens that appear on top of our existing screens.  We will also spend some time with a code challenge and taking a more in-depth look at locations and maps.

What's Going On? April 3rd through April 6th

 Thought for the Week

This Week's Schedule

This week, we will have a four-day school-week.  That means that we won't have a "Monday"-style day.  Everything will be moved up by a day.  This means that Monday will be a "Tuesday"-style day, Tuesday will be a "Wednesday"-style day, Wednesday will be a "Thursday"-style day, and Thursday will be a "Friday"-style day.

AP Computer Science Principles

When we return from spring break, we will take a look at issues related to copyright.  We will also start to take a look at data as a whole and learn how we can work with large pools of data in order to make connections and draw comparisons.

App Development 1

We will start off the week by diving into our "Pre-Unit Hackwich" called "Commission Pay".  In this foundational app, students will learn how to pull information from text fields, work with data, and perform mathematical calculations

                                        App Development 2

In our upcoming unit, students will learn how to incorporate Apple Maps into our apps.  Students will complete a pre-unit hackwich called "Mobile Mapper" where we learn how to add a map, find our current location, and make a simple search.

What's Going On? March 20th through March 24th

 Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science Principles

This week, we will talk about distributed and parallel computing.  This goes along with our study of data and how a computer interprets information.  Students can expect to see a summative assessment on Thursday before spring break.

App Development 1

With our time before spring break, students will work on our second summative end-of-unit app challenge called "Multiply". In this app, students will get two numbers from the user and perform a variety of arithmetic operations (add, subtract, multiply, divide, and mod).  Students will also have the opportunity to play with images by making a "funny" picture appear if the answer is even and a "funnier" picture appear if the answer is odd.

App Development 2

During class on Monday, we will explore the idea of "Persistence", or how to save data between app openings.  Students will learn how to save "simple" items such as numbers, text, and arrays using "UserDefaults" and more complicated items such as "objects" by using JSON encoding and decoding.  Once we have finished exploring this, students will tackle their second end-of-unit app challenge called "Assignment Notebook".  In this app, students will be able to enter assignments, view detailed information, sort the assignments based on their due dates, and save the information.

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

Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science Principles

This week, we will continue looking at Data.  Students will practice converting between different number systems, including binary, decimal, and hexadecimal.  We will also take a look at how an image can be represented digitally.  After we gain a firm understanding of how data is represented, we will look at how it can be shared across a computer network.

App Development 1

This week, we will continue working with TextFields.  Students will learn how to connect a TextField to our code as well has how to get information out of a textfield to use within the app.  At the end of the week, we will be introduced to UIViews.

App Development 2

Now that we have had some time to practice writing classes and have learned a bit about inheritance, it is
time to apply our knowledge.  We will be taking an in-depth look at TableViews and learn how they can be used to display sets of data.  

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

 Thought for the Week

JUNIORS: ACT ON TUESDAY, MARCH 7TH

AP Computer Science Principles

On Monday and Wednesday, students will have class time to wrap up their "Create" performance task.  By the end of class on Wednesday, students will have been given the required 12 hours of class time to work on their projects.  Our projects are due to the AP board by May 1st at 10:59PM EST.  I highly suggest that students turn in their projects AT LEAST one week prior to the deadline.  Any tech issues that arise during the submission process that result in an item not being submitted on time will have a negative impact on the overall AP score.  

On Thursday, we will start investigating some new material.  Our primary focus for this class will be looking at the different types of number systems that are used within a computer: binary, hexadecimal, and ASCII.  For the AP Exam, students will need to understand these numbering systems, how they can be used, and how to convert between them.

App Development 1

We will start off this week by wrapping up our lesson on "Operators".  With this lesson, students have a code challenge to complete as well as our third technical blog post where students summarize what they have learned.  For the rest of the week, we will focus on text fields.  Text fields allow us to get some input from the user and create some interactivity within our app.

App Development 2

This week, our primary focus will be on writing custom classes and using them to create objects within our app.  Last week, we created a class called "Item" that was used to store the name and quantity of each item on a shopping list.  We will continue to work with this idea as well as extend this to "Inheritance".  This is the idea of having classes build off of each other.  For example, we might create a class for a "Vehicle".  In this class, we could talk about the number of wheels on our vehicle.  Then we might extend this and create a class called "Car".  We would set the number of wheels to be 4, and we could bring in a new property, like gas mileage.