Code Lesson: Crunching Public Data

This course is available for pre-enrollment at Code Lesson.

The course Description:

Go beyond the spreadsheet! Crunching Public Data is an introductory programming course intended specifically for public- and private-sector knowledge workers who want to make sense of data stored in tabular format, then analyze and visualize it in meaningful ways. In the course we make use of actual data from the US government site data.gov to give students real-world experience with data analysis, particularly with data sets in the megabyte to gigabyte range that are larger than spreadsheets can typically handle.

This has a lot of promise for the CS Principles Data Portfolio - cant wait to see what they cover. The plan is to use Python to do the processing.

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dudes....i have uploaded computer graphics notes........

file size:1.7mb

click here to download

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Were doing a little crafting in the lab today.

(Source: Next to Nicx)

My CS Principles kids are plugging away on their Internet Portfolio papers. They have chosen some very interesting problems to write about. We are also doing the CSS section of Code Academy. My plan is for them to do a web page about thier paper to present their solutions.

A few of  the kids have gotten ahead. On the paper, and the CSS, they even have done all of the Ruby stuff in Code Academy.

So were making paper robots.

• Paper robots advent calendar
• Paper Toys

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Reminder:  vocab definitions for vocab list #6 are due tonight!  Here is how many definitions still need to be completed:  1st hour - 4; 2nd hour - 6; 3rd hour - 6; 5th hour - 10; 6th hour - 8. After watching todays video we will again be learning more symbols on the keyboard.  Normally what we learned yesterday would take 2 days to go through, but since weve fallen behind a little I wanted to try and catch up a little by doubling up on the symbols.  So, well review what we learned yesterday and then continue with the new keys today.

The new keys we will be learning will be the # (right shift + L2), & (left shift + R1), + (left shift + R4), @ (right shift + L3), (  (right shift + R3), and )   (left shift + R4).

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you can disable the CD drive and USB in the BIOS or go to
regedit:
Hkey_Local_machinesystemCurrentControlSetdervicescdromstart
1=eable, 0=disable
hkey_local_machinesystemCurrentControlSetdevicesusbstorstart
3=enable, 4=disable

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The class of 2012 has left the station!

Today is the last day of school. Unlike many of my fellow teachers I am always sad at the end of the year - kind of sick, I know.

While I am really ready for a break, many of my seniors have been in the program for 3-4 years. Some even participated in our middle school camps. I have taught older brothers and sisters. It makes it hard to say goodbye.

The train above represents only 18 of our graduates out of the computer science program this year. I waited too late to catch many of them. We have 45 senior in total graduating.

I know the picture is hard to read (sorry, I am stretching Paint to its absolute limit) but they are heading off to great schools and programs all over the country. It has been a great group and I am going to miss them.

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One of the bigger issues in getting ready for the APCs exam in May is transitioning from coding on a computer, with full support of a compiler with error checking, to writing code down on paper.

To get the kids used to doing this I use the 60-80-100 Quiz.These are short problems where they wrote out the code. If they get it right, they get a 100. Make a few mistakes they get an 80, and if the code doesnt resemble anything we are working on it is a 60.

The rationale is an 80 is not likely to tank your grade for a marking period. they get immediate feedback and start to build confidence in their ability to write out code.

Early in the year we do simple things like:

write an if statement to test of both x and y are equal to 67;

When I grade these I am checking for three main things:

• did they set up the if correctly
• did they use &&
• did they use ==

Super quick and easy to grade. I grade them in class while they do some practice on the computers and I hand them back immediately. They get instant feedback while they are still thinking about it.

As the year moves on I up the difficulty, trying to mimic the style and complexity of the Ap Free Response questions.

So later we might try something like:

Write a method that accepts an ArrayList <Integer> parameter and removes all even numbers.

again I am looking for specific things here...but this also lets me reinforce things like:

• How do you get an int from an Integer
• Should you use a for-each loop if you are removing items form the ArrayList

Notice also that it is set up as a method. Since many of the Free Response questions are in the context of a method the more practice they have with using methods, the better.

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