What's Going On? May 31st through June 3rd

 Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science Principles

We will start off this week by viewing our Social Media PSA videos.  Within these videos, students were presented with the opportunity to share their ideas on social media and give their recommendations for how students can thrive socially, emotionally, and academically.  We will critique our videos during Monday's class and complete an assessment of our work.  For the rest of the week, we will prepare for our PLTW end of course exam.  

App Development

This week, students will have the opportunity to work on their final project for the class.  Students can choose to either build a fully-functional app or learn how to use one new feature of their choosing.  Students can choose to either work alone or as part of a small group.  When students have completed their task, they will create a brief 5-minute video highlighting their project.

Programming the Web 1

This week, students will have the opportunity to work on their final project for the class.  Students can choose their topic for their four-page website.  Within this site, students will highlight what they have learned over the course of the semester.  Students should focus on good HTML structure as well as the style of the site.  The site must illustrate good principles of design.  When finished, students will post their final project online for the world to see.

Exam Schedule

What's Going On? May 23rd through May 27th

Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science Principles

This week, students will focus on filming their "Social Media" project.  The goal of this project is to think about how students will best thrive academically, socially, and emotionally while using social media.  Students will create a five-minute video presentation to talk about the pros and cons of social media and talk about the recommendations they have for incoming freshmen regarding their social media useage.  Within the videos, students will reference at least three sources they have come across in regard to social media.

App Development

This week, students will focus on wrapping up the "Word Play" summative app.  In this app, students will demonstrate their knowledge of how to create multiple screens, pass information between the screens, and create alerts.  Once this is complete, students will move into their final project for the semester.

Programming the Web 1

This week, students will focus on creating their final web project.  For this assignment, students will choose their own topic and create a website around it.  Through this website project, students will demonstrate their ability to create a site highlighting many of the HTML and CSS tools that we have learned throughout the semester.

What's Going On? May 16th through May 20th

  Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science Principles

Start off this week with a discussion based on the documentary "The Social Dilemma".  Students will share out the points that stuck out for them.  We will share what we agree and disagree with within the film.  After our discussion, the rest of the week will be focused on furthering our study of Python through a project.

App Development

This week, we will talk about Navigation Controllers, Strings, and Alerts.  At the end of the week, we will apply our knowledge to our summative app, "Word Play".  In this app, students will create a "Mad-Lib"-style story and demonstrate their ability to create multiple screens and pass data between the two.

Programming the Web 

This week, we will learn about how to host our websites live online.  Students will create a free account to a hosting site.  We will learn about the process to make our work public to the world.  Along with this week, students will complete our lesson 14 review questions and complete web assignment 14A.  For this assignment, students will add three sub-pages to our "Clear Reflections Photography" homepage. 

Looking Ahead: Exam Schedule

What's Going On? May 9th through May 13th

Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science Principles

The AP Exam is finally here! We will have our AP exam on Monday, May 9th at noon.  Please report to the testing location by 11:30 with a few #2 pencils and a pen.  You will not be permitted to have a cell phone, smartwatch, or other electronic devices during the AP exam, so be sure to store them in your locker or another secure location.  The exam testing time is set at 2 hours.

App Development

This week, we will start our "Word Play" unit.  We will start off the week by completing our pre-unit hackwich called "Intergalactic Travel".  In this app, we will learn how to make multiple screens and how to send data between them.  Once this is complete, we will take a look at the purpose of a UIViewController, learn how to add new screens and coding files to our project, and how to transition between them.

Programming the Web 1

Our focus for this week will be on graphics.  We will use Photoshop in order to properly format images to include in our webpage so that the images look their best and the pages load in an acceptable length of time.  Along with this week, students will read from our textbook and complete the lesson 13 reading guide (due Tuesday).  We will also have our "Clear Reflections" homepage to complete and our lesson 13 review questions (both on Thursday).

As a reminder, students who need extra help or some time in the lab are encouraged to come in before school or during lunch for JIT.

Exam Schedule

Please check the ***UPDATED*** exam schedule for our last three days of school.

What's Going On? May 2nd through May 6th

  Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science Principles

It's crunch time!  Monday, May 2nd at 10:59pm is the deadline for the APCSP "Create" Performance task.  Please be sure to upload your assignment as it accounts for 30% of the overall AP score.  The digital portfolio site has been experiencing increased traffic, so please expect delays.  Be sure to give yourself plenty of time to complete the upload process!  Please contact Mrs. Kamenar ASAP if you have technological issues.

This week, we will be going through our last three "Big Ideas" for the AP exam.  Please be sure to bring the "5 Steps to a 5" book to class with you each day.  The AP Exam is on Monday, May 9th at noon.

App Development

It's time for our summative end-of-unit app challenge, Tip Calculator.  For this assignment, students will design and code an app to be used when visiting a restaurant.  The user will be able to enter in the bill amount, select a desired tip percentage, and calculate the gratuity to be left.  Additionally, students can add a feature to let you know how much each person needs to chip in when you split the bill with friends.

Programming the Web 1

This week, our primary focus will be on responsive web design.  Students will learn how to add in "media queries" to design different web page looks for desktop, tablet, and phone devices.  Along with this week, students will need to read chapters 17 and 19 as well as complete the accompanying reading guide (due Tuesday).  We will have one tutorial-based assignment (12A) and a set of multiple choice-review questions that will take place on Wednesday.  We will end the week by talking about how to optimize graphics for webpages.

Correction to the Exam Schedule

There has been a change to the exam schedule that was posted last week.  Please view the updated schedule for the end of the year below.

What's Going On? April 25th through April 29th

Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science Principles

This week, we will start digging into our review for the AP Exam.  We will start off the week by completing the diagnostic test from our 5 Steps to a 5 book.  We will then talk about exam tips and what we can expect to see.  We will then further dive into the different core areas of the exam.  Students can help themselves prepare for the exam by viewing the daily review videos put together by the AP board.  The videos have been posted on our Google Classroom site and can also be accessed via YouTube.

As a reminder, the AP Create task must be uploaded to the digital portfolio site by 10:59pm on Monday, May 2nd.  This Create task accounts for 30% of the overall AP score.  The two-hour multiple choice portion of our exam will take place on Monday, May 9th at noon.

App Development

This week, we will focus on two topics: conditionals and gesture recognizers.  Conditionals will allow to us make decisions within a program as it is running based on true and false statements.  At the end of the week, we will talk about gesture recognizers.  We will learn how to get our app to respond to taps, touches, dragging our fingers across the screen, and more.  

Programming the Web

We will start off the week by talking about some different ways to organize our page layouts using CSS.  Along with lesson 11, students will complete one web assignment where we adjust the layout of a given page.  At the end of the week, we will start to talk about how we can make our web pages responsive.  This means that we can make our web pages have a different look based on the size of the viewer's device.  We will be able to create an optimal viewing experience whether the user is on a phone, tablet, or desktop. 

Looking Ahead: Exam Schedule

We will end the semester with our exams.  Please note that the exam schedule has changed from 1st semester.  We will now have 90 minutes for each exam.  

What's Going On? April 19th through April 22nd

  Thought for the Week

Schedule for the Week

AP Computer Science Principles

This week, students will be working on their Data Summative project.  For this project, students are looking to answer a question with data.  Students are able to find data from sites such as the USDA quick stats site or the data.gov site for different data sets.  The students then downloaded the data as a CSV file.  Using Python, students will process the data and create a graph.  Based on the graph, students will draw conclusions and try to answer their questions based on the data.  All summative projects will be due by the end of class on Thursday.

Once the summative project concludes, we will begin our review for the AP Exam.  Please click here for a letter about the details of the AP Exam period.

App Development

This week, our focus will be on the scope of a variable and conditionals.  We will talk about how we know where variables can be accessed and why.  We will also talk about how we can use code to make decisions within our app.  Students will have a short check-in on Thursday and we will work on a coding demo during class on Friday.

Optional App Dev Contest Opportunity

Straight from the Mac App Store… https://apps.apple.com/us/story/id1616229881Calling all students who love to code! Showcase your passion by creating a Swift Playgrounds app project for this year’s Swift Student Challenge. Winners will receive exclusive WWDC22 outerwear, a customized pin set, and a one-year membership to the Apple Developer Program ($99 Value)!

Programming the Web 1

On Monday, we will wrap up our study of the layout tools for "floating" and "positioning".  Students will complete our lesson 9 review questions and wrap up the work for the lesson 9 web assignments during class on Tuesday.  For the rest of the week, we will take a look at the use of "Flexbox" to control the layout of our page.  We will wrap up the week with a group tutorial assignment on how to create "minimalist cards" using Flexbox.