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

AP Registration Information

The deadline to register for the AP exam is November 6, 2020.  (After this date, it is still possible to register for the AP exam, but there is a $40 late fee.). The cost of the exam is $97.  The exam is scheduled for May and, at this time, is currently still scheduled to be a traditional AP exam.  Students will need to click the "Register" button within the AP Classroom website.  The exam can be paid for through this Total Registration link.

You can see the entire letter about the AP exam sent from North High School here.

AP Computer Science A

This week, we will begin our work on our fourth unit where we will focus on the different ways we can store and interact with numbers.  For our asynchronous class on Monday, students will work with our AP Classroom site and view the four short videos related to variables and expressions.  Students will have two short quizzes to complete prior to Tuesday's class in order for me to check our level of understanding on the topics.  Students will have four practice exercise sets to complete throughout the week, as it is important to code a little bit each day.  We also have our reading assignment and the accompanying reading guide to complete by Friday of this week.

App Development

This week, students will spend the majority of our time working with operators.  That means, applying some basic math functions within our apps.  For Monday's class, students will watch our WebEx Team Meeting Video and complete a short practice assignment within the Swift Playgrounds app.  Students will complete a code challenge on Tuesday and Wednesday.  On Thursday, students will summarize their learning with a technical blog post and a formative multiple-choice assessment.  We will wrap up the week by taking a look at textfields.

Programming the Web 1

Students will start off the week by working on web assignments 6B and 6C.  Both of these assignments are tutorials taken from our textbook.  For Monday's assignment, students should view the video lesson on how to get started with assignment 6B and complete the tutorial.  Our lesson 6 reading guide should also be turned in on Monday.  Students should start pre-planning their answers for our summative multiple-choice questions on Tuesday.  On Wednesday, students should upload their completed lesson 6 web assignments and complete the 10 multiple-choice question assessment on Blackboard.  At the end of the week, students will begin working on lesson 7 where we will investigate how to add colors and background images to our web pages using CSS.

What's Going On? Monday October 5th through Friday October 9th

AP Computer Science A

This week, students will spend some time working with our unit 3 content on implementing classes by completing our summative programming project #3 (due Friday).  Students will have work time during our classes on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to complete this project.  For homework, students will have our review exercises due on Wednesday and our summative review due on Friday.  During this week, we will also do a short check-in with a few AP-style multiple-choice questions related to our unit.  We will wrap up the week by taking our unit 3 summative on Friday.

AP Registration Information

The deadline to register for the AP exam is November 6, 2020.  (After this date, it is still possible to register for the AP exam, but there is a $40 late fee.). The cost of the exam is $97.  The exam is scheduled for May and, at this time, is currently still scheduled to be a traditional AP exam.  Students will need to click the "Register" button within the AP Classroom website.  The exam can be paid for through this Total Registration link.

You can see the entire letter about the AP exam sent from North High School here.

Programming the Web 1

This week, we will start off the week by working on our Web Assignments 5A and 5B.  With these assignments, students will practice their skills in adding images, image links, and image maps.  Students should turn in their lesson 5 reading guides on Monday.  Tuesday's homework will include preparing our answers for our multiple-choice summative.  Students are considered "on pace" for the class if, by the end of the day on Wednesday, the lesson 5 web assignments have been turned in and the lesson 5 review questions have been completed on Blackboard.  

On Thursday, we will begin our work with lesson 6.  At this point in the semester, we have learned about pretty much all of the HTML tags we will need.  It is now time to focus on style.  Within this lesson, students will learn how to change the look of their pages using CSS.  At the end of the week, students should begin working on their lesson 6 reading guide and have it ready to turn in by Monday, October 12.

App Development

It is my hope that this week, students will have access to our XCode program via our MacInCloud environment.  Students have been given logins to access a Mac computer virtually while we are learning away from school.  Due to this access, I will begin teaching lessons synchronously.  This means that students can log in during our regularly scheduled class time and be a part of the lesson.   This week, we will start off with a "pre-unit hackwich" to introduce a few of the concepts that students will be studying throughout our "Multiply" unit. Later in the week, we will take a look at some of the things that go into designing an app as well as the process for developing an algorithm.  We will wrap up the week by checking out operators.  In other words, how we can do some basic math calculations within our code.

What's Going On? Monday September 28th through Friday October 2, 2020

AP Computer Science A

This week, we will begin our unit 3 area of study where we will focus on "Implementing Classes".  Students will learn how to write their own classes and how to create instances of an object using their self-defined class.  Along with this week, students will have four different practice exercise sets in order to practice coding each day.

AP Registration Information

The deadline to register for the AP exam is November 6, 2020.  (After this date, it is still possible to register for the AP exam, but there is a $40 late fee.). The cost of the exam is $97.  The exam is scheduled for May and, at this time, is currently still scheduled to be a traditional AP exam.  Students will need to click the "Register" button within the AP Classroom website.  The exam can be paid for through this Total Registration link.

You can see the entire letter about the AP exam sent from North High School here.

Programming the Web 1

This week, we will start off the week by working on our Web Assignments 4A and 4B.  With these assignments, students will practice their skills in creating absolute, relative, and fragment links.  Students should turn in their lesson 4 reading guides on Monday.  Tuesday's homework will include preparing our answers for our multiple-choice summative.  Students are considered "on pace" for the class if, by the end of the day on Wednesday, the lesson 4 web assignments have been turned in and the lesson 4 review questions have been completed on Blackboard.  

On Thursday, we will begin our work with lesson 5.  In this lesson, we will switch to work with the industry-standard program "DreamWeaver".  Within this lesson, students will learn how to work with images and image maps.  At the end of the week, students should begin working on their lesson 5 reading guide and have it ready to turn in by Monday, October 5.

App Development 1

This week, students will spend our virtual days working more with variables.  Our activities with variables

will include working with Swift Playgrounds: Learn to Code 2 and working on application analysis through a Swift Variables worksheet.  Our time in class will be devoted to coding our summative end of unit app challenge: Hello World.

What's Going On? Monday September 20th through Friday September 24, 2020

 AP Computer Science A

This week, we will continue with our unit 2 study on introducing classes and defining variables.  Monday's WebEx meeting will be devoted to talking about Graphical Representations in Java.  The rest of the week will be application time for students while we work on Programming Project #2.  We will wrap up the week with our second summative assessment.

Programming the Web 1

We will begin this week during our virtual class on Monday by registering for our transcripted credit through WCTC.  Students who earn a "C" or higher based on the WCTC grading scale will earn FREE transcripted college credit.

Once students are registered we will be wrapping up Unit 3.  In this lesson, students are applying different list style tags and different section tags to create their web pages.  Students should turn in their Unit 3 reading guide on Monday.  We will complete our Unit 3 Summative multiple-choice assessment during our class on Tuesday and our Web Assignments (3a-List Types and 3b-Black Goose News) should be completed and submitted by the end of our class on Wednesday.

On Thursday, we will begin Unit 4 where we will focus on creating links within our webpage.  Along with this lesson, we will read chapter 6, complete the accompanying reading guide (due Monday 9/28), complete our multiple-choice summative assessment, and two web assignments.

App Development

This week, students will focus their attention at the beginning of the week diving into variables and constants.  During our class on Monday, students will participate in a WebEx teams meeting where we will go through our Variables and Constants Hackwich with our iPads.  Students will have the opportunity later in the week to work on a variables code challenge, summarize their thoughts in a technical blog post, and complete a short quiz.  We will wrap up the week by getting started with our first Summative End-Of-Unit App Challenge.  In the "Hello World" app, students will demonstrate their ability to add items to the storyboard of our app as well as make some changes within the code.

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What's Going On? Monday September 14th through Friday September 18, 2020

Please Note: All classes will have a "live" lesson within WebEx teams during our Monday scheduled class time.  Please use the WebEx teams app (available in Self Service on student iPads) to join the lesson!

AP Computer Science A

This week, we will begin our study of Objects, Classes, and Variables.  Students will learn about how to create an object, work with methods in a class, and begin working with variables.  Along with this week, students will have a reading guide to go along with our chapter textbook reading.  Additionally, students will have a couple of practice exercise sets to try out some of the programming skills that we will learn about over the course of the week.

App Development

We will start off this week with a group discussion of UIImage Views.  Students will work with the Swift Playgrounds app on our iPads to go through some code within the UIImageViews.playgroundbook file that will allow students to "play" with some code while we are away from the lab.  When we have time to code in the lab, we will focus on finishing up our "Buttons and Labels" code challenge as well as see how we can apply UIImageViews to our apps.  We will finish up the week by checking out variables and their role in a Swift app.

Programming the Web 1

We will start off this week with our first web page creation assignment.  Students will join in a live lesson on Monday through WebEx Teams to see how to start our Web Assignment 2A: Black Goose Bistro.  Students will use the tutorial in our textbook to work through the coding exercise to add in headlines, paragraphs of text, and images.  Students will also have the opportunity to work a little bit with styling the page using CSS.  Additionally, students will create their own personal web page with Web Assignment 2B.  We will have our lesson 2 summative review questions during class on Wednesday as well as turn in our web assignment.  We will end the week by diving into lesson 3 where we will learn about how to create lists and add additional HTML markup to our web pages.

What's Going On? September 8th through September 11th

 AP Computer Science A

This week, we will wrap our "Introduction to Java" unit.  Students will have Tuesday and Wednesday to complete our first programming assignment. Students will also participate in a variety of review activities prior to Friday's first summative assessment.

App Development 1

This week, students will continue our work within the Swift Programming language.  Students who are learning virtually for the day will focus in on our playground readings for the topic and view a brief video.  Students who are learning face to face for the day will have a hands-on coding activity to complete.  Our topics for the week will include creating actions & outlets.

Programming the Web 1

This week, students will wrap up our work with lesson 1.  We will spend our first face to face class of the week finishing up Project 1A (summative) where we investigate the different layout techniques used in creating web sites.  Toward the beginning of this week, students will be wrapping up our first lesson reading guide and multiple-choice assessment (summative).  Later on, we will move on to our second lesson reading assignment and dive into our first web page creation.

Welcome to the 2020-2021 School Year, Computer Science Students!

Hello Computer Science Students! Welcome to the 2020-2021school year! My name is Mrs. Kamenar and I will be working with you during your computer science class this year. This year, I am starting my 16th year teaching math and computer science at Waukesha North. This year I will be teaching Honors Geometry, App Development 1 & 2, AP Computer Science A, Programming the Web 1 & 2, and Yearbook. In addition to teaching, I am also the head women's cross country coach and yearbook advisor. I hope that everyone was able to find some time to relax this summer. While my family and I weren't able to do some of our usual summer activities, we still found a way to have fun and enjoy each others' company. Our summer included a few camping trips, lots of hiking, and playing with our new dog Ranger.

My goal is to keep you up to date with what's going on in the classroom through this blog. Between the blog and our class schedule of events that will be posted on our BlackBoard class website, it is my hope that all students and parents will be informed about what's going on in the classroom whether we are learning virtually or face-to-face.

Where Can Students Find Everything?

One of the first things to keep in mind is that all of our class material will be found through our Blackboard class website.  When students are learning virtually or are not able to attend class, this is the first place to look.  This site will contain links to our content, assignments, and other resources.

How Is Attendance Taken?

On days that students are face-to-face, the teacher will complete the attendance process.  On days when students are learning virtually, students must check in their own attendance within the timeframe of our class period. To do this, students will need to log in to their accounts on Infinite Campus.  Here is a quick video that shows how to complete the attendance process: https://youtu.be/y2GlGugUjUI?t=346

Students who are assigned to Cohort 1 will meet face to face on Tuesdays and Thursdays and virtually on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  Students who are assigned to Cohort 2 will meet face to face on Wednesdays and Fridays and virtually on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. 

School Schedule

Here is the hybrid schedule that we will follow:  Students are expected to log in virtually during the time frame listed.  

App Development 1

In this class, students will learn how to program for Apple devices using theSwift programming
language. This week, we will take a look at our programming environment and learn a little bit about how we will navigate our learning in the face-to-face and virtual environments.


Web 1

In this class, students will learn the basics of web page design using HTML and CSS. This week, we will take a look at our coding environment and learn a little bit about how we will navigate our learning in the face-to-face and virtual environments. This class is offered in partnership with WCTC, which means that students who enroll in this free program and complete the course successfully are eligible to earn WCTC college credit. We will also talk about the basics of web design.


AP Computer Science A

In this class, students will learn the Java programming language in preparation for the AP exam in May. This week, we will focus on some of the basic Java programming structures as well as some errors that we may encounter along the way.  We will also take a look at our programming environment and learn a little bit about how we will navigate our learning in the face-to-face and virtual environments.


I am really excited to get to work with you this year. I hope we are all able to learn a lot and have some fun along the way! If you have any questions as we move through the year, please don't hesitate to contact me. If you have questions, feel free to e-mail me at kkamenar@waukesha.k12.wi.us. You can also follow me on Twitter: @MrsKamenar.