1. What is a string?
2. How would you figure out how many characters a particular string has in it?
3. How would you attach two strings together and display them as one?
4. In what context might string slicing be useful (think carefully of software you’ve used)?
5. What is a method?
6. How are methods different from functions?
7. Read about different string methods in the official Python documentation.  Note that parameters in brackets are optional.  For example, when you call the method str.replace(old, new[, count]), you must specify the string to replace (old), what to replace it with (new), and you can optionally specify a number of the old string to replace.  For example:
   "banana".replace("a", "o") will give you back "bonono" and "banana".replace("a", "o", 2) will give you back "bonona"
   Find the three methods you think would be the most useful and describe them in detail.  How would they be useful?
8. Try to complete as many of the exercises in the Stings Chapter (on the computer).  You can get additional information on built-in functions here.

Done?  Check out lists!

You are welcome to work in groups of up to three with approval, I reserve the right to veto groups.

Your deliverables are:

• Project Proposal description due Tuesday, 5/15 (5 points)
• Project update due 5/24 (5 points)
• Project Presentation/Poster for June 7th review with Amazon.com Developers (10 points)
• In class productivity – attendance and keeping focussed on project during class, just like in a real work place (15 points, about 1 earned per day)
• Working software due 6/12 for seniors and 6/19 for underclassmen (25 points)

Expectations

You are to create a complete program to complete a task of your choice.  I want you to pick something that you are excited about so am giving you a lot of freedom.  I will be evaluating you on the following aspects:

• Completeness
• Ambition
• In-class productivity

Ideas

Games

Examples from another AP class.

Classic 2-D games and board games are surprisingly simple to implement and very satisfying.  The basic ideas can also be adapted to different themes of your choice (Connect 4 AJ Heads, for example).  Think Pacman, Tic-Tac-Toe, Checkers, Frogger, Space Invaders, Asteroids (project description, starter code), Lunar Lander, Pong, Connect 4, Tetris, Minesweeper, Duck Hunt… these are also good for exploring artificial intelligence ideas.

You can use what we learned when doing Graphics with Java Applets.  Here is some easy to understand documentation that you can skim.  Here is a pretty good tutorial for a pong game that you can use to get started.

You may want to consider using a game library like Pulpcore that handles things like collision detection, fancy animation and more complex physics.  This tutorial is close to working on the school computers; I can help you get it running quickly.  Slick is another promising library.

Data Crunching

Here are some great data sets that would be easy and interesting to use in a project — periodic table of elements, full books, demographic data, etc.  You could create a program somewhat like what we did with Baby Names to allow the user to interact with the data given and see interesting trends.

Here is a collection of great project ideas, many of which are related to the data sets above and include hints on how to get started.  In particular, check out digital signal processing, rogue, 8-puzzle (how to solve a 15-puzzle automatically), calculating Kevin Bacon numbers, finding shortest paths between cities, baseball elimination, Markovian candidate (determining who said a particular quote), word search game.

FacePamphlet, a Facebook clone.  This is good for someone who wants to learn a little about user interfaces but who doesn’t want to design something from scratch.  Here is starter code.  I would expect you to go beyond what is there — making the interface cleaner, adding things that can be done with profiles, etc.

Project Title & Team:
A descriptive name for your project along with a list of any team members (please teams of 1-3 students)

Description:
Write a general description of the project you have in mind for this class.  Make it at least a solid paragraphs or equivalent outline but no more than a page. List any specific features you would like to include in your project. Keep in mind there are a few more details to answer too…

Target User/Customer & Purpose:
Who is the user or “customer” of the resulting project, who is the product for?  What value would it provide them, what problem does it solve?  Write a short paragraph or list of kinds of user and how it would benefit them. You will need to keep your users in mind as you develop and make sure you meet their needs in the end product.

Major Classes
What major classes are you going to have to design and write? (Here is a good example of a class breakdown for a game of Tic-Tac-Toe.  In fact, your project could be to implement these classes and stick a graphical interface on top.  You may want to use Creately to draw UML diagrams.  At this point, you don’t have to dive into too much detail but you should at least have a rough sense of what the pieces are — “Star is a class that has x, y, z coordinates and brightness.  Constellation is a class that contains a list of stars.”)

Project Plan
What internal group due dates will you set for yourself? Keep in mind the deadlines for the project (eg “Bob will write Star class by Wednesday” “Joe will get basic graphics running by Wednesday” “Bob and Joe will have a text-only version working by Thursday” “Start poster by 6/2″)

Potential Difficulties & testing
What do you anticipate the two hardest parts will be and why? And what is your plan for testing your product (make sure to include that in our Project plan)

Technologies:
What do you propose to implement the project in?  List out the Language, tools to aid in its development, and hardware required.  You can suggest options, if you think there are possibilities. Again keep in mind the final project deadlines.

Resources
What can I do to make your life easier?

Save the file in our shared S: drive “APCS” Writeable area in your “Period 2/6 Classwork” folder.  The name of the MS Word file should be <Your Name> – <Short Title of Project>, ie.  “Alan Turing – Code Breaker.docx”  (If you have an alternative document file format, check with me first to make sure we all can easily read it.)  Make sure to include your name as the author of the document.

Assignment Details: You will be creating a web site with at least 3 pages to promote an idea or group you believe in.  For example, you could choose to create a website for the Garfield football team or the debate club.  Alternately, you may create one promoting mountain biking or recycling.  What’s important is that you apply what you have learned about HTML and CSS and work on creating a nice design.  To start, you will fill out a Design Sheet that needs to be reviewed & approved by Mr. Bergquist before you start main work.

How to turn in: The main page or your website must be named “index.html” and placed in your individually named folder of our shared folder: GAR_StudentData(S:)\embergqusit\Writeable\ExploringCS\Period 1 Classwork\ by 3pm on Friday, May 11^th.  Late work will be docked points.

Your Website will be evaluated on these criteria:  (Total: 30 Project Points)

Design & Topic:  (8 Points)
(__/3) – design work done before implementation –design sheet completed before you started major work
(__/2) – clear topic – well defined and covered
(__/3) – rich information about topic – plenty of good details

HTML Design:  (15 Points)
(__/5) – at least three HTML pages with clear, different focus
(__/3) – obvious and consistent (same) way to navigate between pages
(__/1) – at least two images
(__/2) – HTML is correct (all tags are closed, all tags are valid, etc)
(__/1) – single folder contains all website components (CSS, images, pages, etc)
(__/3) – good use of class time (sustained effort, no off-task)

Styling: (7 Points)
(__/4) – CSS applied to at least 5 different elements or classes in an external style sheet
(__/2) – thoughtful consideration of inspiration sites, color choice, design elements
(__/1) – CSS is correct (all curly braces closed, all rules are valid)

Resources:
- Tutorials from 3WSchools on:
HTML: http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_intro.asp
CSS: http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp
- Adding an External CSS file page: http://www.garfieldcs.com/2011/11/starting-with-css/
- Color Selection Webpage: http://www.allprofitallfree.com/color-wheel2.html
- Design Websites for Inspiration: http://www.garfieldcs.com/2010/10/designing-web-pages/
- Tables in HTML: http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_tables.asp
- Menu Builder Tool: http://www.cssmenumaker.com/

The Center for Game Science at the UW is looking for high school students to participate in a summer internship.

They would like a few students to come to their Center during the summer and test their games. Students will learn about the software and game development process, game design, working in a team, how to test games, report and reproduce bugs, how to run user studies and think-alouds, how to manage online communities, and potentially gain some technical knowledge about ActionScript and Flash.

This internship is unpaid, but should be a great opportunity since the students will be working hand in hand with the team at the Center.

They are seeking students who are passionate about games, since one of their main tasks will be to test their games (currently in development at different stages) and give them feedback. No technical knowledge is required; what is required is a passion for games and computer science, a willingness to learn while having fun, reliability and a good attitude.

Interested students should email Beatrice Marx and let her know of their interest.

Recursion Tracing Practice-It’s:

• One
• Two
• Three
• Four
• Five

Don’t let this happen to you!

(Much thanks from Mr. Davidson at Roosevelt for this gem.)

(__/3) – Prompts user for at least 3 pieces of information (name, age, favorite color…)
(__/3) – Uses all 3 pieces of information in output
(__/1) – Uses functions to increase readability
(__/1) – Uses parameters to increase flexibility
(__/1) – All functions defined before code that is run
(__/3) – Uses at least two conditionals
(__/1) – Comment with name at top
(__/2) – Creativity shown

(__/15) – Total

It will be great practice for the AP exam and we need to defend our Garfield HS winning reputation! Full details are here: PSCSTA Programming Contest.

Registration is now open and costs $30 per team (1 — 3 people). Form your team and sign up here: PSCSTA Spring Contest Registration!  (You MUST register and pay BEFORE April 22. Absolutely no late submissions will be allowed.)  Let me know when you have formed a team to get you a permission slip.

When you register, select the “My advisor will be bringing payment” option and just give me your cash. I’ll collect the funds for all of the teams (by Monday, 23rd April) and forward the payment to the PS CSTA – They are required in advance.

Assignment:
Browse through the stack of Popular Science, Popular Mechanics and Wired Magazines in our classroom and find an article that is of interest to you that involves computer science in some way.   Make sure that the article is at least a couple pages or has additional online information to complete your paper.  You can also research if there are any updates online regarding the subject.  Then write a short paper that summarizes the article showing how it uses computer science and what you found most interesting.

Write a paper (Word document) on the article that includes:

• A good summary of the article
• Highlight what you found to be interesting in the article
• Clearly show how computer science is being applied
• Find any programming concepts from our class that are being used

 Your Paper is required to:

• Be a Word document, saved in our class folder
• At least 1 page (1-inch margins, double spaced, 12 point font), no more than 3 pages, please.
• Have your name and class period at the top of the paper.
• Include the name and date of the Magazine, title of the article and its author.  Also include any online related articles you find.
• And NO two students in the same class can use the same article – there are plenty of interesting articles in those magazines.

PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE THE MAGAZINES FROM OUR CLASS ROOM, THEY ARE BEING USED BY STUDENTS IN OTHER PERIODS.  Thank you.