SOFT6007 COM1/ITS1/DCOM1 Class 15

There was no class 15

SOFT6007 COM1 Friday 0900 class canceled

There will be no web dev class on Friday morning. Cinderella, you shall go to the ball!

Ní beidh a leithéid ann arís

Today is a sad day. Today any public servant of our republic who has enough pension entitlements to make it practical for them to leave, will leave. In schools, hospitals, government offices, and colleges all around the country people are saying their goodbyes. I imagine there pubs will be busy tonight.

The departure of so many people all at the same time will be a bit traumatic for some institutions, and the effects may even be noticed by the customers of those public services. But I expect that their departure will affect not just the public services themselves, but will impact of the very nature of public service.

The republic, since its foundation, has been served well by its public servants. They were dedicated, impartial, and well respected. Of late there has been a lot of public servant bashing, and the mutual regard the public and public servants once had or each other has been eroded. Today's exodus will see not just a quantitative change in the number of public servants. There will be a qualitative change in the whole culture of public service.

Good luck to those going. Ní beidh a leithéid ann arís.

SOFT6007 Class 14 ITS1 Lab

We looked at using CSS to change the appearance of the timetables we coded in previous classes.

All students present eventually got it working.

SOFT6008 Class 14

Students worked on coding the various exercises.

I gave out a handout on Checksums

For numbers over 10, mod 9 gives the same result as adding the digits together. That's easier to implement.

SOFT6007 DCOM1/ITS1 Friday class canceled

I have to attend a panel visit for a new course on Friday morning so the 1100 class won't go ahead. Students will be expected to take the class online. A recording of the 0900 COM1 will be made available.

YouTube video on Teaching Naked

I spent all day today working on a YouTube video about Teaching Naked. I did the script months ago, and the audio a few weeks ago. I was hoping to get someone with some illustration skills to draw slides for me, but decided to just get it done and dusted.

I consider it to be in Beta just yet. Will publish it after I get some feedback.

SOFT6007 ITS1/DCOM1 Class 13

We looked at Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

Slides

SOFT6008 Well done!

I'm pretty impressed with the quality of the work being done in the labs. Most students seem to be taking it seriously and getting on with it.

But don't forget that if you get stuck, it's important to ask for help.

SOFT6008 Class 13

We started to look at check digits. The phonenumbers example illustrates where we are going with this stuff and how it's coded.

Must students were still working on other things though.

Cookies are tricky to deal with, but very impressive once you get them working.

SOFT6007 COM1 Class 13

We looked at Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

SOFT6007 Class 11 DCOM1 Lab

Students worked on the various exercises. Most concentrated on getting the image maps working.

Good day's work. Well done

SOFT6007 ITS1/DCOM1 Class 12

How many colors in the rainbow?

SOFT6007 COM1 Class 12

How many colours in the rainbow? Bit of a head-wreck. And I didn't even get to explain why Santa's suit is red!

SOFT6008 Class 12

We looked at cookies.

I was very tired and so was everyone else. I think we will start to use more lab time as lectures rather than expect our brains to work properly on Thursday at 1700.

SOFT6007 COM1 Class 11 Lab A

Students worked on coding the Iberia and USA Cities image maps. This is going slower than I had anticipated.

SOFT6007 COM1 Class 11 Lab B

Students worked on coding the Iberia and USA Cities image maps. This is going slower than I had anticipated.

SOFT6008 Cookies & Privacy

The use of cookies to track users' behaviour causes a lot of concern.

These radio programmes discuss some of the issues
http://pd.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/atc/2010/10/20101005_atc_05.mp3?dl=1
http://pd.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/atc/2011/02/20110214_atc_04.mp3?dl=1

SOFT6007 Podcast

I have set up a podcast for COM1 and ITS1/DOM1. Students should be able to download notes and lectures using iTunes. Once it's set up all new classes and notes will download automatically. Students who are lucky enough to have iPhone4s or iPads should be able to sych those decides using iTunes and review the classes and notes on their devices.

Poor people like me who have only iPhone3s will have to do some converting.

This podcats will be updated only every one or two weeks because it is very time consuming. Google+ will have the classes first. So if you missed something check there first.

To subscribe in iTunes go Advanced > Subscrive to Podcast... and paste in the URL below.

COM1 Podcast:  http://mcom.cit.ie/staff/computing/cmanning/soft6007-2012/soft6007-com1.xml

ITS1/DCOM1 POdcast: http://mcom.cit.ie/staff/computing/cmanning/soft6007-2012/soft6007-its1.xml

SOFT6008 Cookies

Soon we will take a look at writing code for cookies. You can get a head start with this online class.

If that doesn't work above, try this: http://youtu.be/4AAtAULSUXU

SOFT6007 Class 11 Lab ITS1

Students worked on coding the image maps we had worked on on paper.

A few students got a bit distracted and didn't get the job finished. We'll be moving on soon, so try to get those sorted.

SOFT6008 Class 11

I got distracted helping a student with a problem elsewhere and forgot to come to class. When I arrived at 1050 I was impressed to find everyone there working away. But there wasn't enough time for me to help everyone with their code.

If anyone needs me to look at come code find a stop and send me an e-mail or SMS. You can check my calendar to see if I'm free.

SOFT6007 ITS1/DCOM1 Class 10

We did an image map exercise in class.

USA Cities grid

SOFT6008 Class 10

I was a bit distracted for the first hour of the lab, trying to organize to put all the notes online.

Students worked on the various examples and exercises.

Students who don't have the three games completed by end end of today are behind schedule.

Students how have them completed should begin re-coding them using the DOM. The dice game is the easiest one to start with. It might be an idea to review the rollover example we did. That has a lot of code in common.

I expected students to be able to make DOM versions of the games, but very few were making progress so I gave an example using a coin toss.

SOFT6007 Continuous Assessment

We will have an in-class exam on Monday 05 March.

It will contribute 20% towards your final grade.

SOFT7007 COM1 Class 10

We did another image map exercise in class. Students who missed the last class and didn't catch up online were a bit lost.

USA Cities grid

SOFT6007 DCOM1 Class 08 Lab

I arrived late, by which time everyone had left. Or maybe they never showed up in the first place.

I waited 10 min just in case anyone was later than I, and then went away too.

SOFT6007 ITS1/DCOM1 Class 09

We looked at definition lists, em tags, and discussed logical vs. physical markup. Then we saw how to code an image map. I gave an exercise in class for the last 15 mins

SOFT6007 COM1 Class 09

We looked at definition lists, logical markup vs. physical, and image maps. We did an image map exercise in the last 10 mins of class. Students should finish this in their own time.

SOFT6008 Exercise

This is how you make a button in a webpage to call some JavaScript

<button type="button" onclick="doSomething()">Go</button>

With the addition of this bit of code you now know enough to re-code the dice, cards, and slot machine games so they can be played by clicking a button instead of reloading the page. See if you can give it a go.

SOFT6008 Class 09

We looked at function and parseInt and a cautionary tale about JavaScript's loose types

I asked students to write a minimum function and an  average function that returns an integer.

[all done at 1751]

SOFT6007 Class 08 Lab A

I gave back the exam scripts and results form the exam earlier in the week. That was a reality check for students and for me.

Students worked away on the various exercises we had been doing. Most did tables of timetables. A few students struggled because they missed some classes.

Some were a bit frustrated that I didn't help them more. But the flip-side of having recordings the classes online is that students have to take responsibility themselves for catching up. I'm not going to fill in the blanks for them.

SOFT6007 COM1 Class 08 Lab B

I gave back the exam scripts and results form the exam earlier in the week. That was a reality check for students and for me.

Students worked away on the various exercises we had been doing. Most did the timetable.

I didn't give students my undivided attention. I was trying to organize putting the notes online.

SOFT6008 Functions

In the next class we will look at functions. I put an example with the following function in your dropbox.

function maximus (a,b,c)
{
if ( (a>=b) && (a>=c))
 {
 result = a;
 }
else if (b>=c)
 {
 result = b;
 }
else
 {
 result = c;
 }
return result

}

The function runs once with literal values, and once with user input values. But it doesn't behave like you'd expect. See if you can figure out what's going on.

SOFT6007 ITS1 Class 08

Students worked away coding pages. Some students are still trying to catch up

SOFT6008 Class 08

In today's class we didn't look at anything new. Students used the time to catch up on the exercises. I wanted to pause a little today to give people a chance get on top of things. Some students have yet to get with the program. I don't think the rest of us can wait for them much longer.

Students who had everything done checked that the random numbers weren't skewed. They modified their code to use floor instead of round.

In the next class we will look at functions

"Teaching Naked" video

During the week I recorded the audio for a short video I am making on "Teaching Naked". I had tried to record it at home at the weekend but the house was to noisy.

When I  started recording in my office I couldn't believe just how much noise there was. I couldn't, as you might think, hear the DJ Society doing it's thing 20m away, but I could hear all sorts of ambient noise. My desk is constantly vibrating, but I don't feel or hear it. My computer hums gently. As soon as I turned on the mic I could hear all these hidden sounds.

Audicity, like a lot of audio editing programs, has a fantastic noise reduction feature. You select a sample of "silence" and it analyses the noise. You can then subtract noise with those characteristics from the recording. It only works for structured noise, like a fan, or a hum. It won't work for people passing the the hall for example, or slamming doors. It if so impressive though I suspect I could record something on a plane and it would be fine.

A buddy of mine in Portugal is going to illustrate the video for me, if he has time. If not I'll have to do it myself.

SOFT6007 DCOM1/ITS1 Class 07

We had an in-class exam. But the results won't count towards the final grade. It was just for a reality check.

SOFT6008 Class 07

Students worked away on the various exercises.

Some students need to take a look at the New Orleans example again and really understand it before attempting the various exercises involving random images. Don't forget the discussion we had about randomness. Some students have unwittingly written code that has stacked the dice or deck. Those kinds of things could have gotten you shot in the wild west, if they'd had JavaScript :-)

There is a lot of interesting variety in the code being written to complete the euro change exercise. It's really worth thinking about the logic before writing the code. I've see a lot of code that is more complex than it needs to be. There is no need for nested loops. And if you think about it, what's the maximum number of 50c coins you will display. The solutions involving mod and integer division are clever, but brave.

Beware of intelligent quotes when copying and pasting. They have different ASCII values from regular double quotes and will break your code.

SOFT6007 DCOM1 no move on the cards

I looked into moving our Friday afternoon class to Tuesday evening, but there are no labs available at that time.

SOFT6007 COM1 Class 07

We had an in-class exam. But it was just for students to find out how they are doing. The results will not form part of the final grade.

SOFT6008 Plans

On Monday we will not cover any new material. Students have plenty of exercises to do and plenty code to to write.

SOFT6007

On Monday we will have an in-class exam on everything we're done so far. But there won't be any marks going for it.

SOFT6001 Class 05 DCOM1 Lab

Students made several pages and link them together. The pages included the nested list exercise and a page with an image. Most students also coded their timetables using a table

SOFT6007 DCOM1/ITS1 Class 06

We looked at tables and used colspan and rowspan

SOFT6007 COM1 Class 06

We looked at tables and used colspan and rowspan

Hogeschool van Amsterdam

I have some brochures from Hogeschool van Amsterdam for anyone interested in going there on Erasmus. Classes are taught in English.

SOFT6008 Class 06

We transacted our first bit of business with the DOM in order to do a rollover.

Connected Blog to Google+

I connected my blog and my Google+ account today. Now I can write a blog post as usual and share it with the relevant people in Google+. That's handy because I was more or less putting the same information in both. I want to keep both on the go at the same time. I want to build the audience for one, but keep the audience for the old. I'll be curious to see which students prefer In G+ students see only what's relevant to them. On the blog they can see everything, unless they click on the appropriate label.

SOFT6007 Targets

By the end of this week students should have a website with a few pages linked to each other, including one page with the nested list example, and one page with an image.

If that's not happening for you, you need to let me know so we can get you sorted.

SOFT6007 COM1 Class 05 Lab A

Students coded the nested list exercise and made some pages link to each other.

Some students used to class to catch up on things they had missed. It's important to get the fundamentals sorted before moving on.

SOFT6007 COM1 Class 05 Lab B

Students coded the nested list exercise and made some pages link to each other.

Some students used to class to catch up on things they had missed. It's important to get the fundamentals sorted before moving on.

SOFT6007 ITS1 Class 05 Lab

We looked at how to link between pages.

Students coded example from previous classes.

A number of students used the time to catch up on missed classes. Students should catch up this week.

SOFT6008 Class 05

We looked at alerts and promts and then loops.

I set the euro change maker exercise for students. The logic of that can be tricky and there are a few ways to do it.

iTunesU

I was all set today to start uploading my classes to iTunes you. Two years ago I setup of a podcast server. I had imagined that the latest version of the software would be a huge improvement on the previous one, but it's still very clunky. I held off publishing classes so far this semester in anticipation of submitting them to the automated server. But if the pieces don't fall into place soon I must have to manually type the RSS feed myself. That's pointless donkey work.

If Apple plans to sell an iPad to every student and wants lecturers' content to be the draw it is going to have to take seriously the server side part of the equation. Using the server product it is hard to believe it's from the same company that makes iPods. The list of things I would fix if I was in charge is too long for me to start on.

On a positive note, Google+ is working out well for be so far. The ease with which I can publish a video is amazing (take note Apple). There hasn't been too much interaction with students on G+ yet, at least not with me. They may be interacting with each other, but I don't think so. I think the social element of education technology is often ignored. That's why I think something like G+ or FaceBook is the way to go.

SOFT6007 DCOM1/ITS1 Class 04

We looked at HTML entities and did another nested list exercise

SOFT6008 Class 04 Lab

Students started coding the snap, dice, and slot exercises.

http://mcom.cit.ie/staff/computing/cmanning/soft6008/samplecode/exercise-dice.html
http://mcom.cit.ie/staff/computing/cmanning/soft6008/samplecode/exercise-snap.html
http://mcom.cit.ie/staff/computing/cmanning/soft6008/samplecode/exercise-slots.html


Tricky enough exercises. I noticed a lot of code first and think later problems during the lab.

Don't forget the discussion we had about why the randomness in the New Orleans example is slightly off.

Is it me or is the random number generator a bit fishy?

SOFT6007 COM1 Class 04

We looked at HTML entities, recapped lists, and students did a nested list exercise in groups of three.

SOFT6007 Class 02 Lab DCOM

I was late to class because I couldn't find my wallet.

Students used the videos on Google+ to catch up on the class they missed on Monday.

Students made webpages of their own in notepad that included an image and a nested list.

Good work. Well done!

SOFT6007 ITS/DCOM Class 03

Today we lOoked at image tags and lists. Students did an exercise in class on lists.

SOFT6007 COM1 Class 03

Today we lOoked at image tags and lists. Students did an exercise in class on lists.

SOFT6008 Class 03

We had more fun with random images and building up image tags. I gave an example of a simple game of chance with prized and I showed off some examples that I want students to write code for.

SOFT6007 COM1 Class 02 Lab A

We talked about HTML tags and students made their own web pages. In future labs will have a lot less talking.

Good work today. Well done!

SOFT6007 COM1 Class 02 Lab B

I spoke about the web and html for the first hour and students made web pages of their own in the second hour.

Lots of enthusiasm in evidence in the room today! Well done!

SOFT6007 DCOM/ITS Class 02 Lab ITS

exmples.

details later

SOFT6008 Class 02

We looked at some example. will update this later