Thursday, February 23, 2012

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

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

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.

Monday, February 20, 2012

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

Friday, February 17, 2012

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.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

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.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

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