Goodbye Class of 2012

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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The Origin of the Idea

Hello. On this blog I will be walking you through the process of building a computer. I got the idea to build a computer from working with the Raspberry Pi that we got in class and working with the Makey Makey we also got in class. I also got the idea from my Step-Dad. He built his own computer so I wanted to make one when I heard that he built one.  

I plan to build a computer. Ill build a desk top computer at first then maybe later I will be building a laptop computer. I plan to make my computer almost completely from scratch. I will also plan to make my own monitor as well. I will also try to make my monitor almost completely from scratch.

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Improve Speed Of Computer With These Long Term Strategies

If you have a day or 2, I highly recommend you to apply these strategies. Unlike other techniques, it might take 1 or 2 days to improve speed of computer. However, these strategies work better than shortcuts that work temporarily.

Step 1: Remove unused programs and files

A computer is like a library. The more books you have in a library, the harder it is to find the book that you want. When you have lots of files and programs installed in your PC, it will take time to find and load as well. By removing programs and files that you don’t use, your computer will run much faster.

To remove programs, you can use the following steps:

Click on “Start” menu
Choose “Settings”
Choose “Control Panel”
Choose “Add or Remove Programs”
Select Programs that you are not using anymore and uninstall or remove it.

To remove the files, just right click the file and delete. After deleting those files, make sure you empty your recycle bin by right clicking on “Recycle Bin” and choose “Empty Recycle Bin”.



Step 2: Move files to external drives

Move seldom or common used files to External Hard Disk or USB Flash Drives. This is also another step to reduce the “books” in your “library”. These tools are getting cheaper nowadays and very affordable. I highly recommend external hard disk because it has more space and not easy to lose it (people around the world are losing more than 1 million of USB flash drives almost every year).

Moving them is quite simple. Just select, cut and paste it on your external hard disk.

Step 3: Cleaning up your desktop

If you are just like me, you probably have tons of files, program shortcuts and folders on your desktop. It is very convenient and I totally understand it. But having lots of stuffs on your desktop will slow down your computer’s performance.

Cleaning up your desktop make require some planning. Create a folder on your desktop and name it as “Work” or “Studies”. You can create 2 or 3 more folders. Next, create more folders in those folders to organize all your files and programs. Keep a habit to organize your files into these folders.

Step 4: Detect errors and repair

If you have been using your computer for months, your hard drive might start to develop errors and bad sectors. These errors will slow down your computer. Fix this errors once a week by following these steps:

Click on “My Computer”
Right click the drive you use (normally Drive C)
Click on “Properties”
Click on the “Tools” tab
Click “Check Now” button
Check the box that says “Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors”
Fix if bad sectors are discovered.

Step 5: Defragment

This is a popular way to improve speed of computer. The steps to defragment are quite simple. Start with clicking on the “Start” menu, choose “All programs”, “Accessories”, “System Tools” and “Disk Defragment”. Click on “Analyze”. Once your computer finish analyzing, click on “Defragment”.

Step 6: Clear hidden Windows errors 

About 90% of SLOW computers are cause by hidden Windows error. Cleaning these errors would be hard if done manually. Fortunately, There’re programs such as PC Speed Doctor to do it for you automatically.

Step 7: Overclocking

Overclocking is a way to hack your own hardware and increase their speed. Overclocking is quite technical too. If you are interested in this step, I highly recommend you to learn from Overclock Your CPU. The author teaches how you can increase processors from 1.9GHz to 3.5Ghz.

Other websites:

• Computer Fundamentals
• web design toronto
• Motorola Surfboard
• nikon digital cameras

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How To Increase Speed Of PC In 5 Minutes

If you want your PC to work faster right now, here’re 5 simple steps you can do to increase the performance of your PC. By applying these steps, your computer can start running faster right now:

Step 1: Remove visual effects

This is a step where you could remove all the fancy effects that make your windows look nice. These effects include fading, shadows and other animations. This step is similar to Windows XP, Vista and 7. The steps are:

Go to your Desktop
Right click "My Computer"
Left click "Properties"
Click on the "Advanced" tab
Under "Performance", click on "Settings"
Under the "Visual Effects" tab, click on "Adjust for best performance"
Click "Apply" and you’re done.


Now, you lose the fancy visual effects but your computer is able to run much faster. By removing all these effects, you will see a significant increase in speed.

Step 2: Use disk cleaner

Disk Cleaner is a free tool provided with Microsoft Windows. It is able to help you clear up to 2GB to 3 GB on your hard disk and speed it up.

"What does deleting temporary files have to do with speed up your computer?" you may ask.

Imagine you have a very messy room full of stuffs, do you think finding something that you want takes time. That is the same to every computer as well. When your computer helps you to store temporary files, they are basically stored in an unorganized way and mixed with important stuffs.

By throwing 10% of the garbage in your messy room, you can find the things you want much faster. That is the same for your computer as well. These are the steps to clean up your PC:

Click on the "Start Menu"
Select "All Programs"
Select "Accessories"
Select "System Tools"
Click on "Disk Cleanup"
Choose your drive that you want to clean (Hard Disk, normally C Drive)

Once you click on "Disk cleanup", the program will start calculating how much space you could free from cleaning some old stuffs. After few minutes of calculating, you will be able to see a list of stuffs you can delete. Check those that are unimportant and delete.

Step 3: Change display settings 

This is very similar to visual effects. Instead of using fancy and colorful backgrounds that waste lots of time and PC power to load, remove them to the basic will speed up your computer. The steps are:

Right click your "Desktop"
Left click "Properties"
Under "Themes" tab, click on the drop down menu and choose "Windows Classic"
Under "Desktop" tab, choose "None" for background.
Under "Appearance" tab, click on the drop down menu below "Windows and buttons".  Choose Windows Classic Style.
Under "Appearance" tab again, click on "Effects…" button, try to uncheck all of them and click "Ok".
Under "Settings" tab, click on the drop down menu below "Color Quality" and choose "16 Bit".
Finally, click on "Apply" and you’re done.

Step 4: Clear hidden Windows errors 

Around 90% of SLOW computers are cause by hidden Windows error. That’s one of the main reasons why your computer starts to slow down after using it for months. Unfortunately, cleaning this error manually is simply too technical. To clean these errors effectively, you can use the help with a program automatically called PC Speed Doctor.

Step 5: Overclocking

Overclocking is a nasty way of improving the performance of your hardware. I don’t recommend you this step if you are using a new PC. This technique is able to boost the performance of your processor and force your computer to run faster. On the other hand, it will generate more heat. Overclocking is quite technical as well. I highly recommend you to learn from an ebook called Overclock Your CPU. The author is able to increase the performance of a processor from 1.9GHz to 3.5Ghz and has helped many people to do so.

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A history of the Internet

This is a vocabulary week - please make sure to get your vocab definitions completed by tomorrow night for Week 7!

Today we are going to watch the video below on the history of the Internet.

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NASA Summer of Innovation Mini Grant Program

From the website:

The NASA Summer of Innovation (SoI) program is designed to support student interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) by strengthening the capacity of organizations or schools that inspire and engage female, minority or high poverty middle school students in STEM content. The SoI focuses on organizations that provide student experiences during the summer and through extended learning efforts designed to keep students involved in NASA-themed STEM activities during the academic year.

Applications are due on june 29th

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Summer of Computer Science

The class of 2013 has graduated, which means summer vacation has finally started. I got hit with the flu this past week which has made the last week extra hectic.

Finally

Posts may be a bit sporadic this summer. I wont step foot in Virginia until mid July, and then only for three days:

• June 17 - 21  GA Tech --> APCS Principles Big Ideas
• A week in Atlanta talking computer science and making things with play-doh,I know you are jealous
• June 24 - July 12 Working on this: http://mooc.amplify.com/ 
• Its a MOOC for AP Computer Science - more on this later - pretty amazing
• July 13 - 16  CSTA National Conference
• Are you going?  You should be, just sayin
• July 16 - 20  APCS Principles Pilot Meeting/AP Annual Conference
• Cant wait to meet all the new APCS Principles Piloters - over 40 of us now!
• July - August - Back to this: http://mooc.amplify.com/ 
• And throughout I am helping with: VASS APCS Online Summer Training - spots are still available if you are interested. The amazing Stacey Armstrong is the lead on the training so your dont want to miss out.

Hope to see you at one of these - if you are there make sure to say hello. 

I  follow computer science stuff on Twitter - so drop me a line and let me know how your summer is going. We have so many things happening as a community right now, it is really exciting to see all the hard work so many people have put in through the years building a k-12 computer science presence really start to take off. Heres hoping big changes are coming - because every kid in the United States should have the opportunity to take a computer science class.

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Vocabulary Last of the symbol keys

WIKI

HTTP

EMOTICON

After talking about each of those vocabulary words briefly we will continue with learning the symbol keys.  The good news is that today is the last day of learning the symbol keys - yaaayy!!

Today we will learn the = (R4), the _ (left shift + R4), and the * (left shift + R2).  After today we only have the keypad left to learn.  However, it takes a lot less time than learning either the letters, numbers, or symbols.

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Power of a Challenge

One of the hardest things about teaching, especially computer science, is the wide range of abilities. You know the drill. Most of the class is plugging away at practice problems and you are hopping from desk to desk answering questions.

Then there is the kid. The one that finishes everything early, and perfectly, and is bored now thank you very much.

First off I feel very strongly that it is not OK to keep them busy with clerical work, or more busy work, or helping other students. This are the students most likely to go into computer science without our encouragement, and they need to be engaged and challenged. That said, it is OK for them to have to help other kids sometimes, and they obviously need to work collaboratively. But they are not mini teachers.

I have learned a few techniques that do work with these kids. The first is The Challenge.

I usually present it when I am telling the whole class what the days practice exercises are going to be. Tehn as an aside I mention that at teh bottom there is the challenge problem, and it is worth bonus points, f you get that far. No pressure.

For example - in my intro class today we learned the ELSE statement. they had about 15 problems practicing IF-ELSE structures, then at the bottom was the challenge:

Input three numbers - print them in order from smallest to largest.

Once done have me check it off for extra credit! You must use IF-statements to solve this puzzle.

This is called SORTING. It is one of the major problems computer scientists must solve. Think about iTunes, or the Amazon website - what kinds of things do they sort?

Now, I know that at least three kids skipped the 15 boring problems and went right to the challenge. One even finished it. At least seven kids tried it. It doesnt matter that they didnt all get it right - they were all super engaged in a problem that required them to put together what we just learned in a new way. They coded for over 20 minutes, did sketches, talked together - they worked on a solution. Which moves them one step closer to being computer scientists.

(oh, and the thing about having to use IF-THENS is for the freshman that has figured out that he can just push everything into a drop-down list in VB and have it sorted...sneaky)

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Benefits of Texting

Spotted this on Pinterest over the weekend. Ill be using it for the prompt for our second to last discussion board topic in my computer science classes.



From: OnlineCollegeCourses.com

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Celebrate the International Day of teh Girl with

Some Great Computer Science Resources

I just stumbled across the Tech Girls Website, and as they point out Oct 11 is the International Day of the girl.

They have a great list of resources - very complete.

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Know The Mobile Number of Any Sim Card

Know The Mobile Number of Any Sim Card

I am providing the trick to know   mobile number of any sim card. This is not exactly a trick

 but a method  of changing your mobile  number to Tata Docomo  but More importantly you

 will be able to know   your  Number .So Let us Try it.

You can use this trick to know  your Mobile Number as well as the Number of any Sim Card. 

Just follow the  below  given steps :

·        

•            Dial a Toll Free Number- 18002660000
• ·          You will hear the sound of computer
• ·         Choose the language of your choice
• ·         Press 3
• ·         Then 2
• ·         At last Press 3

·         That’s it and it will tell you your number just Note it and enjoy

It is successfully tested in following operators:

·         Airtel

·         Tata Docomo

·         BSNL

·         UNINOR

·         RELIANCE

·         AIRCEL

·         VODAFONE

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Samsung launches the fastest memory of smartphone

Internal memories for smartphones has remained in after in lately . Samsung investigated the problem and managed to pull the market an internal memory , designed for mobile devices , can achieve speed record .



And if for SSDs, for example ,speed record is ~500 MB/s for an internal memory all is reduced to only 140 MB/s , as can Samsung eMMC Pro Class 1500 at reading . At write can about 50 MB/s.
Production has already begun in capacity of 16GB, 32GB and 64GB . The production process is in 20 nm .

http://blog-de-filme-online.blogspot.ro/

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Its the end of the year as we know it and I feel fine

Fourteen days left...not that anyone here is counting.
The end of the year is always bittersweet. Summer - positive. Goodbyes - negative.
I teach many of my computer science kids for all four years they are in high school. They are going on to great things, but I still miss them.

So this isnt exactly computer science, but it is definitely teaching. And I could use a dose of inspirational.
In the past month I have tried to explain the whole Dave - Eggers/education thing to at least five people. Heres a summary:

• Ted Talk - while I am not a writing teacher, per se, this is exactly what I am trying to create in the lab. I watch this several times a year, always good for inspiration.
•  Teachers Have It Easy: The Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of Americas Teachers - I have not (yet) read this. Seriously folks, it is the end of the school year. If I make it to the end of the day without getting caught in a food fight I am doing really good. It is on my summer catch up list, promise.
• The documentary - Heres an NPR story about the documentary AMERICAN TEACHER. As a computer science teacher one of my grumbles is, well, other teachers grumbles. When they complain about lack of planning time I try to remain calm - most other subjects have age-appropriate books with worksheets and practice problems. Over my 15 years of teaching computer science I have probably written five or six textbooks. Notes, worksheets, projects, the whole thing. These things are in short supply for computer science teachers.
  
  One of the main points of his work here is the amount of money spent on textbooks, $8 billion. Now I do not mind developing materials for my classes, curriculum work is actually part of what I enjoy most about teaching. It is just sad that out of that huge total the computer science teaching community is so under supplied.

So here it is - a little reminder of why we do what we do. Something to get you over the hump until summer. Just curious, where do you find inspiration?

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Nokia closes and factory of Finland

Nokia closes in August and factory of Finland ,as part of the measures designed to reduce company  costs with 1,6 billion euros to in 2013. Nokia manufactures phone at Salo , it is last factory of Finland . Latest mobile phone made in Finland exit from production line on 25.07.2012


About 1000 of people remain unemployed at Salo,a town with 55.0000 of people . Production of phone will be about only in Asia , as do majoritatea competitors .
Moving will allow a flexible production , depending on market demand , but and can of to deliver quickly terminals .
A year ago , Nokia close factory in Romania . And in 2012 did layoffs large enough at factory in Hungary .
http://blog-de-filme-online.blogspot.ro

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End of 1st Quarter

As we have talked about all week, today is the last day of the Quarter.  Make it a good one!!

We will review for the quiz at the beginning of class, and then when I let you know you can go to Classmarker and take the quiz.

Once you have completed the quiz, if you have any missing assignments you are to work on whatever is missing.  If you do not have any missing assignments and you are "behind" with the speed test tournament, then Im going to have you compete today to try and catch up so that we have everyone in the same spot.  This means many of you will not be competing in the tournament today - I just want to get everyone in the same place since we had several people last week that were absent when we did this.

If you have everything done then you are welcome to go to the practice websites after the vocab quiz.

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Im the Robin Hood of the APCS Free Response Section

In the AP class we are transitioning from new content towards test prep. While we do AP style problems all year I have just really started talking about strategy for the AP exam itself. On the Free Response questions our theme is Stealing Points.

Grabbing points on the free response --> Heres what I march my kids through:

• Is it a method? Look for return type - does it return an int? 

                         int x = 0;

                         return x;

• while were looking at the return, does it return a boolean? You should probably have one case that returns a true, and one a false. Just a thought
• Does it tell you to return a -1 under certain situations?

                         int x = -1;

                         return x;

• does the problem use an array? Well, we usually use a for loop with those - write one. Use .length
• ArrayList? for-each loop, unless you are removing things
• does the problem ask a question? We use ifs for those. You probably want to access the array/ArrayList there too.

You get the idea - were just looking through our programming toolkit and looking for patterns in the problem.

Now obviously this is a terrible way to solve a problem.  This technique is our worst case scenario. Youve read the problem and have. no. clue. of what to write. It happens to the best kids, especially on a timed test under a lot of pressure.  

Take a second to look over the grading rubrics and think about this technique. We did part 1a in class the other day. In theory you could get over half the points on this question and not have any idea of how to solve it.

Is this teaching to the test? Sure. But what I find is when you remove a kids blind panic and just get them putting some code on paper they often have that light-bulb moment that shows how to solve the problem. And really, writing code on paper is a bit silly, so a game plan is bound to help.

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Computer Memory is an Important Part of the Computer

Computer memory is an important part of the computer because it allows it to store vital information that you will need. Whether the information is in the form of data, pictures or sounds, a computer with a lot of memory can store it. There are basic types of computer memory and you will need to know a little bit about each to ensure your computer is running effectively.

Random access memory or RAM is the same thing as your computer memory. RAM is the main memory center, so essentially, it is the most important. The reason RAM is so crucial is that it is used to store your files and programs and it affects many other computer aspects as well.

DDR computer memory can be bought to increase the amount of memory you have, but first you will want to learn a little more about your computer. Understanding how it works will help you work better with your computer.

The more RAM computer memory your computer has, the faster it will work for you. If you find that youre computer has been very slow lately, you might want to look into buying some DDR for it. If you arent sure what to buy or how to install it, its best to let a professional do it this time around. You will find that all electronic stores that sell RAM will offer optional installation services for a small fee. If you choose this option, it would be a great idea to ask them exactly what they did so you can do it yourself if the need ever arises again.
But, if you know a little something already about computer memory, why not install your DDR program yourself? It will save you some time and money and your computer will be back to working at optimal speed in no time. Either route you choose, dont neglect the health of your computer. If it starts working differently than it ever has, get it checked out or troubleshoot the problem yourself. This will ensure that it stays working great for years to come.

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Week of vocab list 7 Internet 3 FA8

This is another vocab list week - this week is list #7, which is Internet #3.  As usual, if you have definitions that you are responsible for they need to be posted on the Wiki spaces page by Tuesday night.

Today we are going to start working on FA8.  This has several components to it.  First, youll be typing a summary of your favorite movie in Word.  The formatting end of it will require you to learn to use the word count feature (very easy to do) in Microsoft Word, and you also will be double spacing your text.

After completing the summary you will post your summary on your blog, and in addition to posting it on your blog you will also be inserting an image on your blog that is related to your movie.  This will also be covered today in class so that you can complete that part of the formatting activity.  This will be due at the end of class on Tuesday.


Activity 8.pdf

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Apply for the next phase of the CS Principles Pilot

Apply Here

From CSPrinciples.org:

The College Board’s AP Program and the CS Principles (CSP) project team invite you to complete an institutional survey as part of recruitment efforts for the next phase of course and exam development. The information you provide will be reviewed by a search committee to help with the final selection of 50 institutions (roughly 40 high schools; 10 colleges/universities). This cohort of pilot schools will continue piloting the course under the auspices of the College Board for the next three years. That is, we expect selected pilot schools to begin piloting the course next academic school year (2013-14) and continue piloting the course until the end of academic school year 2015-16. The AP CS Principles course is scheduled to launch in the fall of 2016, with the first AP exam administration in May 2017.
 
To complete the survey go to: Complete the AP CS Principles Pilot Institutional Survey, you must also upload a syllabus as part of your application.

The deadline to complete the survey and upload the syllabus is Wednesday, April 17.

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