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.  

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

 Snow Day!

I'm sure that you have heard by now, but we will not have school on Thursday, February 16th.  Enjoy your snow day!  I will see you again on Monday.

Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science Principles

This week, students will continue to work on their APCSP "Create" Performance task.  At the start of the
week, students will have 8 hours and 6 minutes of additional class time to work on their projects.  At the end of class on Wednesday (2/16), I had students complete a form where their assessed their own progress on the project so far.  I have sent this information home, as well as a note about what I have seen in class, to keep lines of communication open on this very important project.  All projects must be submitted to either me or the AP board by May 1st at 10:59 EST.  This project accounts for 30% of the AP score.

App Development 1

We will start off this week by working on our first summative end-of-unit app challenge, "Hello World".
  In this app, students will show off their ability to add elements to our storyboard, make connections to our code, and experiment with using variables.  At the end of the week, we will move into our second unit where we will focus on using text fields to get some user interaction into our apps as well as performing some basic math operations.

App Development 2

This week, students will be working on our first summative end-of-unit app challenge, "Rock, Paper, Scissors".  In this app, students will display images to represent rock, paper, and scissors, for our human player to choose from.  Students will also randomly select a choice for the computer.  Using logic statements, students will be able to declare a winner of the round.  Additionally, students will work on linking to a website to display the rules as well as using the camera and photo library for the user to customize their experience.

What's Going On? February 13th through February 16th

Thought for the Week

Modified Schedule This Week

As a reminder, we will have an early release day on Thursday and we will not have school on Friday, February 17th.  Because of this, the schedule for the entire week will be shifted by a day. This will make Monday a "Tuesday"-style schedule, Tuesday a "Wednesday"-style schedule, Wednesday a "Thursday"-style schedule, and Thursday will be a "Friday"-style schedule with shortened class periods.

Conferences By Appointment: Wednesday, February 15th

This Wednesday, from 4-6, Waukesha North will hold parent-teacher conferences.  These conferences are available by appointment only.  If you would like to meet, please reserve your spot by clicking here.

AP Computer Science Principles

This week, students will continue working on their APCSP Performance "Create" task.  At the start of this
week, our countdown is at 10 hours and 4 minutes of class time dedicated to working on writing an original programming project and crafting the responses to this project via the AP writing prompts.  Students are welcome to work on this project outside of class and can always request to be added to my JIT class to have additional time to work.

App Development 1

This week, students will spend the first part of the week wrapping up our "Variables Code Challenge" and summarizing what we have learned in our second technical blog post.  Then, we will move into our first end-of-unit app challenge called "Hello World".  Students will demonstrate their ability to add items to the storyboard, make connections, and work with variables in our first summative project.

App Development 2

At the start of this week, students will have time to wrap up the Loops Coding challenge.  For the rest of the week, students will learn how to work with web pages within our app and how to access the features of the camera.

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

 Thought for the Week

AP Computer Science Principles

On Monday, students will have the opportunity to wrap up any remaining projects we have been working on so far this semester (2.1.4: Designing the User Experience, 2.1.5: Securing Sloppy Code, and the Tic-Tac-Toe Tutorial) and to brainstorm ideas for our AP Create performance task.  For the rest of the week, students will have time to work on their projects.  As dictated by the AP board, students will have 12 hours of class time to work on writing their code and responses for the project.  All projects will either be turned into the AP board or to me for grading.  The AP board deadline for the Create task project is May 1st.

App Development 1

This week, students will first learn how to add an Image View to our projects.  This is like a picture frame that can hold a variety of photos.  Next, we will learn about variables and constants.  Students will read about and apply their work with variables throughout the week through a demo assignment and a code challenge. Students will finish the week by summarizing their thinking in our second technical blog post.

App Development 2

We will start off this week by working on our Collections Code Challenge.  In this code challenge, students will work with arrays and dictionaries in order to display information in an app.  Students will use an array to save their favorite movie titles and display them.  We will work on adding to our list and removing items from our list.  Additionally, students will create a dictionary to keep track of their favorite movies along with the star rating.  For the rest of the week, students will focus on loops and how we can use them to repeat a section of code or to iterate through a list.