Tag Archives: Teaching Materials

Good Luck to all on the AP CS A Exam

Good luck to all on the upcoming AP CS A Exam!

As I have taught the course for nearly twenty years and spent many years studying exam trends as a grading reader, a grading leader, and consultant, I am aware of the main topics to cover, but I really focused heavily on four main areas with my students in prep for this year’s Free Response section.

1.  ArrayList of Classes / References -  there is always a question that requires students to work with an ArrayList<NeverSeenThisClassBefore> that involves lots of drilling down to get to the various pieces.  You must be comfortable with abstraction to handle this type of question.  Working with GridWorld helps!  Working with lists of integers and doubles will not be enough.  Go all of the way back to 2006 and you can see where this whole question thread started.

2.  Make a Class from scratch – you may have to implement an interface or extend an abstract class, but probably not.  That type of question went away about 5 years ago.  More than likely, the students will have to extend Bug or Critter to make a new class that will involve method overriding and such.  Pretty simple, but requires some practice.  You could get an APLine question, but most likely, it will be a GridWorld question.

3.  Processing an Array – this could be an array of classes like last years Horse[] question, but who knows.  2012 was the first year the AP exam had an array of classes / references.  Most of the time the array question just involves some algorithmic stuff with numbers like finding smallest, largest, difference between smallest and largest, etc.

4.  Matrices – matrices are back and boy am I glad.  I love the matrix – what a great movie!  Last year was the hardest matrix question in the world – you had to count 255s!  This year will probably be more like the route cipher from 2011.  I have prepped my students on Matrix[SomeClassFromMars][SomeClassFromMars] as I assume that a matrix of classes would throw a serious curve ball at most students.  I also did some work with transposition ciphers as I really like ciphers.

I will post comments after I see the actual Free Response questions next week and let you know if I was close or not even in the ballpark.  I have been very accurate with my predictions in the past.

If you want to see slides I have used as AP Exam review slides in the past, I have some of those posted that you can download.

If you like my humor and want to spend a week hearing more about how I prep students to rock this exam, check out my workshops over the summer.

Finish Strong and Rock the AP Exam!

AP Summer Institute – Houston #2

AP Summer Institute #3 is history.
I had a huge group in Houston from all over the US.
The workshop started on July 18th and ran for four days.
The Region Center in Houston always has great food.

We covered tons of material, including Scratch, Jeroo, GridWorld, and lots of Java.
We discussed teaching with Codes and Ciphers, teaching List Processing using multiple environments, and using GridWorld games like Sliding Puzzle to teach Object-Oriented Programming.

Attendees came all of the way from Ohio, Arkansas, Texas, and Massachusetts. All sorts of folks attended, including an Astronomer, Fortran Programmer, and multiple former Disney employees. It was a great group of people and it was nice to get to know them all.

I am currently conducting an AP SI in Fayetteville, Arkansas at the University of Arkansas.
See all of my workshop dates and available materials.
Follow my travels across the US to my workshops via my son’s travel blog.

SIGCSE in Dallas – Vol. I

Sign up an attend SIGCE in Dallas, Texas in March of 2011 if you have not already done so.
Dallas is a great city and SIGCSE will be packed with great presentations and discussions for teachers at the high school and university level.    http://www.sigcse.org/sigcse2011/

Need a place to stay?  The Embassy Suites at Market Square is nearby and a great place.
http://embassysuites1.hilton.com/en_US/es/hotel/DALFWES-Embassy-Suites-Dallas-Market-Center-Texas/index.do?brand_id=ES&brand_directory=/en/es/&xch=768816798,YAKFDSX51UQVYCSGBIUM22Q

Need a place to eat?  Babe’s Chicken House if Awesome!  The one in Roanoke is the Best!  If I ever steer you wrong on food, I will pay for your meal!

Check my blog later for more SIGCSE inside information.

Ciphers and Codes – Vol. II

Code and Ciphers and very interesting topics to discuss in a Computer Science.  There are many ciphers that can be used as Computer Science assignments.  I use Ciphers and Codes as a curricular thread throughout my AP A CS class to provide students with relevant reasons to learn more about Computer Science.   Ciphers and Codes have been around for a very long time and can be seen throughout history.

A very good book about Ciphers and Codes is “The Code Book” by Simon Singh.  Mike Scott, UT CS faculty member, discussed this book at the 2010 First Bytes Camp for CS Teachers.

I made an earlier post called Ciphers and Codes – Vol. I and provided some slides, a lab, and a lesson plan.  I include in the lesson plan a reference to a National Treasure special edition DVD that has a short video about Codes that has commentary by  Simon Singh.  It is a very good video to show students as it has some great cipher information although it can be a bit dull in a spot or two.

Timing out the cipher lessons in your class to correspond with the Social Studies classes is a great idea.  For example, find out when they are going to talk about the Zimmerman Telegram in U.S. History and teach a related Cipher lesson at the same time.  Everybody wins!

Cross-curricular projects work great to show students what they can do with Computer Skills and to provide relevance for why they need the skills.  These projects also provide a nice context for teaching Computer Science concepts.  Students tend to get a bit more excited about what they are learning if they realize what they will eventually do with it.

DreamSpark

DreamSpark Software

Alfred Thompson has a great blog post up about the DreamSpark program Microsoft offers to students for FREE!  Yes, indeed – I did say FREE!  I am not plugging Microsoft or on the payroll ( yet ), but I do think the program is great and hope more people learn about it.  My students love all of the different tools provided.   We hope to do more with it this year.

CS News – CMU Using Robots to Create CS Majors

CMU Using Robots to Create CS Majors

CMU is going to use the tremendous interest in robotics to get more students interested in Computer Science.  Many of us at the high school level have been doing this for years.  Students love working with robots due to the fact they can see the results of their ideas in action.  Robots move and act out the solutions to the problems that students create.  This is very engaging and exciting.  Elementary, middle, and high school students find robotics very engaging.  Using robotics also shows students another side of Computer Science that is very kinesthetic and social.  Two things that are often lacking in typical Computer Science classes.
Way to go CMU!

Google Android App Inventor

Google Android App Inventor – direct link to the Google Site
Article about the App Inventor

I am a big fan of Scratch and feel that it is a great educational tool that accommodates a large number of different learning styles.  Students gain confidence quickly with Scratch and learn tons of very important Computer Science concepts, including problem solving and algorithm development.  Scratch helps to make Computer Science accessible to many students that otherwise would not have given the discipline a go.

I really like that the Google Android App Inventor is built using a block programming structure similar to that of Scratch.  A student or child of any age will be able to use this tool.  I have two elementary age sons that both program using Scratch and I am looking forward to seeing the Android Apps they create.

The Google Android App Inventor will be another great tool to use in schools to help teach Computer Science.  Students will really enjoy that they can write useful applications that can run on their phones.

Here are a few articles that provide some compelling  justification for learning how to design and create Android Apps.

http://www.wirelessweek.com/News/Feeds/2010/07/wireless-who-is-making-those-160-000-android-phones-activat/

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/07/08/latest-comscore-data-android-market-exploding/

UIL Capital Conference

The University Interscholastic League will be hosting the 14th ANNUAL UIL CAPITAL CONFERENCE in Austin on the UT campus on July 9th and 10th.  This conference is designed to allow teachers and UIL Academic coordinators to discuss the UIL Academic Competitions and the rules, procedures, and contest of the individual competitions.   The conference will have a 2 day Java workshop and a PC^2 workshop.

If you are at the Capital Conference, stop by and chat as I will have a booth setup somewhere on site with information about  contest preparation materials and curriculum materials for the upcoming school year and UIL Academic season.  I will have some cool giveaways, sample materials, and demos running.

I will also be making a stop of at the Salt Lick for the world’s best barbecue.  If you are ever in the Austin area, you have to drive out to Driftwood and eat the original Salt Lick Location.  It is amazing stuff.

Follow up – The Capital Conference was great!  I saw lots of people and had a great time.  Thanks to all that stopped by to chat.   The BBQ at the Salt Lick was world class as usual.

UIL Capital Conference

UIL Capital Conference

AP Computer Science Summer Institute Report

Well,
My AP Summer Institute officially wrapped up on Thursday.  It was a great week and we covered lots of material and had fun doing it.

I had participants from all over with the furthest coming from Florida.  Last year, I had a participant from China which was cool as well.  I found out that some of my attendees this year had mad skills, including Senior Olympic archery, Vice-Presidential experience, Athletic Training, CIA experience, Social disturbia ( pretty sure that is the proper description and a pretty common comp sci diagnosis ), Home Improvement, Buried Treasure Hunting, Aerobics, Tennis, Fire Safety, and Computer Science.  I list Computer Science last as it just does not stack up against the rest.  How could Computer Science compete with Buried Treasure Hunting?

During the workshop, we spent a good deal of time discussing how you could and should use GridWorld all year long when teaching the AP A Course.  The case study is very dynamic and makes the course much more fun and engaging for the students.  It provides a nice game platform as well.

I also spent tons of time on the basic fundamentals of the AP A course, including ifs, loops, arrays, ArrayList, interfaces, abstract classes, and recursion, but not necessarily in a programming centric way.  I tried to present ways to teach the topics that makes them relevant and gives them context to which students can relate.  When teaching matrices and interfaces, I teach these topics in the context of Codes and Ciphers to show the students some of the ways Computer Science is used beyond just typing in braces and semi-colons.  It works well and I think the workshop participants found the approach effective as well.

Pre/AP was discussed and I included tools like Scratch, Alice, and Jeroo as pre/AP courses do not have to be taught using Java.  I spent time showing how you can use Scratch, Alice, and Jeroo to teach any AP level topic effectively.  We did some nice list processing in Scratch.

Scratch Pong Game

Scratch Pong Game

We also spent time discussing ways to broaden participation in Computer Science.  Participants visited the ACM Education Policy Committee site to see the resources posted there.

The workshop wrapped up with a look at the new AP Computer Science Principles course that is being developed.  Participants visited the AP Computer Science Principles site as well as Dan Garcia’s Full Frontal Nerdity site ( you have to love the name ) to see some of the resources posted for Dan’s new pilot AP CS course.

Lunch everyday was awesome!  I am very motivated by food that was a huge plus for sure.  It was a great time and I am sad it is over.

I should have taken some pics, but I didn’t so imagine you see people writing code and looking really excited when looking below this line.
(:)(:)(:)~~(:)(:)(:)
(:)(:)(:)~~(:)(:)(:)

CS News – Learning Engineering Early

Learning Engineering Before They Can Spell It

This is a great article that shows that you can teach students some fairly complicated stuff when they are young.  Young children have not developed the same negative views about engineering and computer science as teenagers often have.  I have been able to visit the classes of my sons( 2nd and 3rd grade) and teach the classes how to program in Scratch.  I have found they are not scared of computer science nor do they view the process as hard in any way.  It is great to see schools attacking the lack of engineers problem by starting with younger students.  I think this is the right way to get more students to study engineering and computer science.  It is often too late to change the perceptions when the students are in high school.