End of Peer Tutoring

Today was the final period of peer tutoring. To be honest, I learned quite a lot from my classmates, and I would say that I helped them review about the programming topics we've practiced for the last few months. Well, the weekend is nearing, and I can't wait!

More tutoring!

Today we spent the class with peer-tutoring and mastering the language. We were slightly off task, with experimenting with a few foreign programs on the web, but after that we were back on track. Tomorrow will be another class of tutoring, so there's plenty of time practice!

More Sub-programs

Procedures are used to output a set of ordered instructions, in one call. That was the lesson we had today. Our peer-tutoring groups were created with the goal being for everyone to be "a level 4" in programming Turing.

New Concept: Functions

Mr. Arkin taught us a few new keywords, that are quite effective if used. Keywords "function" and "result" are used to declare a function that will process one or more parameters to result in a value. We also learned that initally writing algorithms in pseudo-code will help phrase our code more clearly and efficiently. For homework, we were assigned to create a sub-program using function that will generate the next consonant when provided a letter of the alphabet. Seeya tomorrow!

Mr. Arkin Is BACK!

Welcome back Mr. Arkin! We were introduced to for statements today / counted loops. Last week we were able to work on the substring assignments every day, I must say we are progressively mastering the concept. Mr. Arkin assigned us to modify #9 to provide the next consecutive letter. That's all for today! Seeya!

Substring Work Period

Today Mr. Arkin was not here, and we were given time to work on the Substring assignments and explore Turing. Hope you're doing well out of school Mr. Arkin!

Another Working Period!

Mr. Arkin gave us a chance to "show off" programs that we created, and Mr. Arkin showed us a game he made on his spare time, and it was quite cool, actually. It's a two-player game, where one player enters a word, and provides a hint to help the other player guess. There is only a limited number of guesses the second player can take, and every missed guess instructs the program to reveal a hidden letter, one at a time. After all the "lives" are used, it's game over, and player 1 wins. The rest of the class was working time for us to master programming and at the same time, study for the upcoming test, date TBA.

Work Period

Today was a work period.

The Way of the Array

Starting from the beginning of class we jumped right into a "new" concept, arrays. The array is used for collecting large amounts of similar data from the user, and without making a variable for each piece of data, we can make the variable into an array type where each subtype signifies a different set of data. We were asked to modify Repetition Assignment #12 to process using arrays, and we were provided work time to do so. It took the rest of the class to do, but I finalized the modification by the end of class, and to be quite honest, my program is looking very nice.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MR. ARKIN! HOPE THIS IS YOUR BEST ONE YET!

DISAPPOINTMENT...

I am extremely upset with the results that turned out with the Printer Comparison assignment...today we spent the time reviewing the assignment, and I realised that I just had a few grammar mistakes and misuse of symbols...that's all for today..

Work Period

After a weekend of everyone working on the Printer Assignment, we recieved a work period for the repetition assignments.

Missed a Class...

Unfortunately, today I wasn't present at ICS due to a Sonata competition that I did fairly well in, ending up 2nd. BUT, I heard there was a new assignment on the board, an assignment comparing various printers. Well, at least it seems quite interesting, after more than a month of raw programming and tests/quizzes, and it'll be a chance to improve my mark, after horrible programming test I had the other week. We only get the weekend to finish it, so I'd better get working...

Repetition Code Analysis

In today's class, we had to exchange repetition assignment #6 with a partner, and to perform a desk check and analysis on the partner's assignment. As always, we were allowed quite a bit of time to work on our assignments and ask questions. That's all for today. See you tomorrow!

Survey

Today we were to complete a survey intended to improve the classroom environment, by getting our opinions as to what should change (start, stop, continue). We were given a few minutes to complete that and we got right to work afterwards. We had a homework check and we were to give in our best assignment so far, and Mr. Arkin gave them back, including suggestions to improve. We had time to work on our assignments as well.

Work Period (again)!

Monday is here again, and today, we were provided time to work on and finish out repetition assignments. Mr. Arkin also gave us a model answer for number 2 on the repetition assignment list, and it was quite a program! It was quite in depth, and I never actually thought of that concept. Today, I used the time we were provided quite effectively and I finished a few assignments in that time.

Repetition!

 Today we were finally introduced the new concept of repetition! There are three new key words, or phrases: loop, end loop and exit when. Loop and end loop act as delimiters to the loop body and exit when exits the loop when a specified condition is fulfilled. We were assigned a bit of homework, including the first few repetition assignments. See you on Monday!

Lest we forget...

Today is Remembrance day of 2011. We attended an assembly about this day and it was very, very somber. We also had our tests handed back, and had a review. I knew I could've done better, but I never knew I did this poorly. I'll have to make up the marks with the coming tests, and I'll study harder than I've ever before.

First Programming Test

Our first ever full programming test took place today, and I know for a fact that I messed up somewhere on the test. I misread one of the questions, so I completely didn't know we had to provide examples for one of the questions... Wow, what should have been a simple test turned into an unnecessarily complicated one. Well, hopefully I did decently well. See you in tomorrow's post!

Test Tomorrow

Hardcore review is one word to describe today's class. The room was flowing with questions and answers for the whole period and we recieved quite a bit of info on the test tomorrow from Mr. Arkin. He also answered our questions about various topics regarding the Turing language we've been studying and applying. Well, hopefully tomorrow we will do well on the unit test! I'll see you in tomorrow's post. Seeya!

Analysis Presentations

Today, ICS was the last period of the day for us, and we spent the class sharing and presenting our posters for the Selection #6 analysis. All of the groups presented today, each group adding on facts to the previous group(s), and it was quite a class today. After that, we looked at the other class' posters, and wrote down additional facts and points that we missed. We also had a mini-party celebrating Mujtaba's citizenship on friday, with chips, pop, and improvised cups (juice boxes with the top cut off!) :) See you in tomorrow's post!

Continuing Code Analysis

We continued analyzing the code section by section today, continuing on from where we left off yesterday. At at the end, we weren't quite done, but we got most of the primary components written down. We also had a quiz today, when we had to write a simple program to calculate the mean of two integers. The weekend is here once again!

Mastering of the Desk Check skill

Yes, today was quite a busy day in our ICS class right after lunch. We got right into groups of four and starting desk checking a unit conversion choice program Mr. Arkin provided us. Today for homework, we will have to desk check 3 whole programs from our selection assignments, which I'm going to power work on right after I publish this post. After the desk checking, we had to list all the concepts and key words in the program on a chart paper, from each section of the program. Seeya tomorrow!

TYKTWD

Today is Take Your Kids to Work Day! Hopefully I'll accomplish and learn lots and last night I definitely got the amount of sleep Mr. Arkin recommends to us. I'll try to put in an hour more of sleep every day now, since 8 hours isn't enough, for kids our age. Well, a break off from school in the middle of the week is just what we need! We'll be sure to have a fresh start tomorrow at school.

Case Statements, another way to "select"

Today, we had a brief lesson on case statements, which are basically a more organized way to give values to specific variables, especially a large number of them. It's more efficient to use case statements rather than if statements in these cases, since you don't require to write a seperate line for each "elsif". I finally brought blogger back to life at home, and I am posting this from my home pc. Tomorrow's Take you kids to work day, and that's all for today, so long!

Catchup period

Today was a catch up day for our selection assignments, and again, blogger is not functioning on my PC at home. Well, I've finished everything on friday, so today was a period for me to work on cleaning up my html.

Work Period!

Today. Mr. Arkin was absent! Today's class was quite interesting, because it was quite quiet and we accomplished lots of work, such as fixing our websites and finishing the selection assignment chain. Yesterday was the interview...and..I guess it just didn't turn out very well. Well, it's a brand new day and it's time to start new. That's all for today, seeya!

Q&A for Selection 1-7 and Work Period!

Well, today is just a work period, so it's more time to finish up the selection assignments. Yep, I'm using a few minutes of my work period to type this up. Today, I uploaded Monday's and Tuesday's posts since there was some sort of error at home with blogger. I should be finished the selection assignments today...and an interview with Mr. Arkin tonight. Wish me luck! Seeyaaaaaaaaaa!

Boolean Ops.

Sorry! I haven't posted for the last two days because I can't publish my posts on my pc at home. Maybe there's some bug with the site on the Opera browser...I'll try accessing it on Chrome or Firefox later... Right now I'm at class and it works on explorer..ok. Well, we got a deeper explanation on boolean operators such as 'and', 'or' or 'not'.

Missed a day for XC (Oct. 26)

I wasn`t at class today, but I heard we had a quiz on our past unit, input. Well, I think I`ll do well, hopefully at least, since it is the first quiz of the year. That`s all for today.

Tracing Execution

Today, we learned a very important skill in terms of programming, potentially the most important single skill we will every learn... tracing execution of code in programming (specifically Turing). Basically, we were told to exchange programs with a partner, and we were the "computers"...we had to compile and output the data while providing the values of each variable. Essentially, we were both the user and the PC. Finally, we had a quick lesson on arithmetic operators and relational operators. Yep, we learned quite a bit today. SEEYA!

FINISHED!

As of right now, I have finished, printed out and made sure there aren`t any flaws in my programs for the input assignment. It took me almost a week, but I`m finally finished!

Missed many classes...

Wow, today was only the second full ICS class of the week for me! My last blog post was on monday, which was the other class I had. I missed Tuesday's class due to the regional cross country meet I ran at, and did pretty well, and yesterday was the student rep speeches assembly and also info on volunteering. Now, we are continuing to work on the Input Assignments, and we are expected to be nearly finished.

WOWWW!

Oh wow! Honestly...I completely forgot about updating my blog for the past week! Anyways, our class is now pretty adequate at programming with Turing, although it is kind of a "beginner" language. Last week in a nutshell: lots of notes, repetitive work and learning! We are on our way with programming and making good progress!

PARTY! (the same blog title that everyone else is using)

Wow, perfect timing. The last period of the day. The last day of the week. This is exactly what we needed a party with lots of junk food and drinks to end the long week we had at school, right before the long weekend. We didn't have to do anything to do with programming or HTML coding today, other than writing this post at school. Yep, right now I've decided to use my "party" time to finish this so I'll have less homework to do at home! YAY!

Turing and Flowcharts

 Well, I started the day off with ICS, and today, it wasn't so bad! Arkin demonstrated to show us how to properly use flowcharts, and if they are followed correctly, they can be quite effective. We noted down a sketch of a flowchart for website developing and another one that can be used for the process of programming. After that, we experimented with some simple commands using the Turing language that is standard at V.P. such as arithmetic expressions, etc. Tomorrow, we are having our first ever PARTY!...for finishing the web design unit!

MORE BINARY!

Wow... today was all about decoding binary into 8 bit characters such as letters, numbers and special punctuations. We were assigned to decode the binary code on Mr. Arkin's blog, which was quite annoying...it took us a while to do it, but evetually we decoded the message, although we could've used any converting program posted on the web to make things a lot easier... Overall, this unit is pretty basic and it should be pretty easy.

More Definitions!

Just more and more definitions today! Not much to talk about...we learned a bit about the basics of binary code, although it's pretty elementary for most of us and we talked about operating systems and primary/ secondary memory.

Lots of Work Upcoming.

Wow, today was notes notes and notes! We are now transitioning to hardware, which was the theme we had today. We discussed about different types of memory, primary and secondary. We brainstormed different examples of each and eventually got to memory units. They are usually powers of 2 (e.g. 8 bit, 1024mb, 64 bit operating systems, etc.). Aside from that, I have to really get working on the basic computer glossary... I recently finished the first one, now a second one needs to be finished.. Oh well, that's school.

More learning..

Okay.. today we mainly brainstormed definitions for computer terms, not anymore terms that are directly related to the web. We were introduced Notepad++, which is quite useful, although the same features can be found on better script editing programs such as Adobe ExtendScript (which is what I use). Wow, we were assigned to include small images for EACH of the terms... that's going to be a huge pain... including the fact that I haven't completely finished the glossary. I'd better get to work.

Missed class :(

Unfortunately, today I went to the Milne Park Cross Country meet, so I wasn't able to go to class today. Apparently, we were taught how to upload via SFTP and our homework was to do the basic computer glossary... which I don't know what it is. Today I will finish up my glossary and yeah...cross country was fun. Very relaxing day.

Lots of Things Accomplished

Okay, today we had a review on the basic html structure we are expected to use. We continued working on our glossary, specifically inputting the formal definitions, which is a real pain for me right now, it takes so much time! Right now I am attempting to log in to the class server but I can't connect for some reason...I guess I have to ask some classmates if it's working for them or not. That's all for today, see you tomorrow.

Stressful

Wow, a lot was going on in class today... good AND bad things. The good was that I got a decent amount of work finished- getting my definitions for all the terms in my webpage and removing some invalid components... The bad was that I got into some trouble with Mr. Arkin and I'll leave it at that. Tonight I will be continuing to work on my glossary...

Busyy Dayyyy

Today we were taught some of the basics of list making via html, including the different list types, such as ordered, non-ordered, and definition lists. Following that we were assigned to complete a class glossary and upload it to our website. For today, we brainstormed some quick, casual definitions for each term, then later on we would research some formal ones from the web or a book. Relating to that, we were taught the proper formats for citing resources. Overall  everyone was at work and there's a lot to do.

...

I just came back home, ready to upload my peer marking sheet, when I found out the password was changed... I couldn't get the peer marking sheet uploaded, so in terms of fairness, I'm feeling it's pretty bad. Anyways, I'm glad theres many others who didn't get the chance to upload as well. Hopefully all the work we put in September wasn't put to waste...

Working Day

Today, we never had a lesson, but I'm pretty sure it was a very productive day for everyone in the class. Tomorrow is the due date of out assignment and we're all rushing to finish. That's for today!

Today

We confirmed the marking scheme for the autobiography today, and continued working, and also went over some troubleshooting tips. That's about it for today.

Questions answered.

Today Mr. Arkin cleared up all the questions about referencing to files in different folders/subdirectories. For example, to go to a subdirectory, the subdirectory name must be input, slash, and then the file name ("images/fire.jpeg">. To go up a level from a subdirectory to the parent folder, "..." then slash must be input. (".../images"). The marking scheme was explained, then we continued working on our assignment, just like every day.

A Typical Day

Today, our lesson was about file transferring over the world wide web and we learned more about servers and clients and how they work together. After listening to the lesson we resumed working on our sites, specifically finishing our auto-biographies, which I still need to edit. Overall, today was pretty normal, except that I got to class a few minutes late today -.-

Yeah...

Not the best class so far...we learned a few special character entities, but of course we can always google that up. And Arkin DJ'ed today and we'll have another person do it next time. Well, that's about it so... peace.

Function Shortcuts and more work on webpages...

Alight, today pretty much followed the same structure as every other day. We had a lesson on the very commonly used shortcuts for Windows and the firefox browser. Some shortcuts were very primitive, and they just aren't efficient enough to match the new features of Windows XP or Windows 7. Nevertheless, it was good to know them (I actually never knew they existed previously). Anyways, today was not at all productive for me considering the construction of my website, in fact I don't think anyone was. But, I'm going to be working on making the themes uniform on my site tonight so it will look a lot more proffesional.

Some Problems Solved.....

Today wasn't much less confusing than it was yesterday, surprisingly...I hoped that I would've found out the source to my broken link, but unfortunately it didn't happen. I tried modifying everything, but it just doesn't seem to work. Maybe there's something that I just don't know about this. Anyways, in terms of the whole class, a lot seemed to have been accomplished. The majority of people now have their pages uploaded and validated, which is good, although today it was very hard to connect to our classroom's server since so many people were trying to connect and there's a limited capacity. -.- Okay, at least I'm not falling behind.. almost got my Superpowers assignment finished. I wonder what we're going to learn tomorrow?...

A Hard Day for all...

From the beginning of the class to the end, there were signs everywhere of EXTREME CONFUSION. After Mr. Arkin assigned us to upload our website to touque.ca yesterday, it was all stress since a lot of people didn't know how to do it. In fact, it took me a while last night to figure it all and get the validation right... -.- well, at least I figured it all out by the end of last night...I still have to finish the Autobiography assignment though. Today it just seemed like most people weren't able to get Filezilla up and running not to mention logging into our class account. I would like to mention Felix Lam for providing me the access codes for our class account! Helped me alot! If I couldn't get into our class account, I wouldn't have made any progress last night...Anyways, hopefully everyone would've figured everything out tonight, and we could actually be productive next class! Today was a big pain for all, but tomorrow has got to be better! ~DO OUT

Confusing Class...

Today was a day for figuring things out and lots of confusion all around the class. To start the class off, Mr. Arkin gave us a lesson about uploading to filezilla and trasferring our webpages to the main hub, which we can access from any computer. That was the part I was stuck on for pretty much the rest of the class- accessing our class' server. Otherwise, working on the Super Powers assignment was okay; nothing very special really came up... Tonight I think I'm going to work on uploading whatever I have atm and also adding on to my website of course :)

SO FAR SO GOOD!

Ok, today was quite stressful, having gym in the morning, draining all of my abilities to properly think. As soon as lunch was over I was pretty tired and almost fell asleep in english class! By the time I arrived at ICS, I was just about ready to sleep. Despite this, I actually accomplished something, by practicing using the tags and organizing my containers in HTML format. We played around with a collection of cool java widgets such as  clocks that follow your mouse, introductory pop-ups, and more, obviously created by other users. :) I think today is the last day I will be experimenting with the HTML and CSS language, because over weekend I will be working on the Super-Powers assignment!

I have to get started on the essay portion of the assignment... I got the basic style sheet set up and a brainstorming of what I'm going to include on the site, but I just haven't gotten to the actual writing part. I guess I got a story to write up. I'm pretty sure I have my fictional super power now...visit my site later to find out!

MADE MY FIRST WEBPAGEE!!!!!

Today we experimented with the html and css properties we learned yesterday! A lot of people, including myself had lots of trouble in the begginning, but we eventually solved our problems and everything worked great. Experimenting with the different tags and researching them was very fun and we freely modified our web pages to whatever we liked. Our supply teacher, Ms. Ecker is pretty nice, but she is a bit clueless about what's going on. UPDATE: YES!!!! I GOT MY LINK TO MY AUTOBIO TO WORK!!! On firefox at least... I still need to view my page on Internet Explorer.

Fundamentals of HTML and Cascading Style Sheets

We were given a tutorial on the basic elements of HTML coding and an intro to CSS today with Mr. Arkin. I learned the basics of using tags, the meanings of many "before unknown" technical terms such as container and rendering...seems like a very fun course. Happy Rosh Hashanah to Mr. Arkin and all my Jewish friends.

1st Day at VPCI

At computer studies today we learned about Mr. Arkin and we received a brief introduction of this course. We introduced ourselves to each other and at the end of the class our assignment was assigned. This class is going to be verrry interesting and i'm curious about what awesome things we're going to learn this semester. So far it's so good.