Wednesday, October 10, 2012

SOFT6007 Class 15 ITM

[Crazy numbering system, I know]

Students cotinued to code their table with CSS classes.

Some students left early to get their heads ready for an maths exam at 1800. I'm fine with that as long as this week's work gets done.

SOFT6007 Class 13 ITM




We looked at classes in CSS. I asked students to colour code their timetables.

COMP6023 Blog Feedback

I spent a good deal of time reading all the blog posts today and I sent each student individual feedback. I'm a small bit concerned that some students may not be fully clear on what what is expected of them. Hopefully the feedback will correct the situation and ensure they do will in this component of the assessment.

A number of issues arose more than once.

Some students didn't do what was asked of them in Week 02.

Many students are struggling with the requirement to use standard English and to get the spelling and grammar correct. We all do. As if to make the point, even the e-mails I sent to some students had mistakes. However there is technology available to help with grammar and spelling and students should use this if they are having difficulty. We are not talking about the difference between who and whom either. Some students are struggling with the basics. Getting the English right is an integral part of this assessment. It's also an essential skill that students should get to grips with.

Students can earn more marks by doing more than merely reporting on what we did in class. Very few students have done so thus far.

Some students didn't really do anything for Week 03. I don't know if this was an oversight or a lack of understand about what is required. I'll be happy to elaborate or clarify if needed.


COMP6023 Class 15

We started our look at Intellectual Property and had an interesting discussion on Copyright.

slides: ip.pdf

Information on the DMCA printer cartridge case I mentioned is available at Wikipedia.

SOFT6008 Class 15 WEB

Students continued working on their code.

It's going a bit slower than I had expected

SOFT6008 Checksum Shopping List

Here's a list of checksum exercises that students should work though:


Euro Banknotes
Credit Card
EAN
PPS Number
Spanish DNI
ISBN-10



Some test cases

IE-PPSN

These numbers are valid in theory
5313197L
1234567T
1234567t
0000000W
0000071w

ES-DNI

These are valid numbers
03457393-X
03457393X
03457393x
03405999-K
70240341-C
70259948-P
70259948p

If these test cases give you trouble read the small print on the ParseInt box!.

I have noticed that in real life Spaniards tend to insert separators between groups of digits to make the DNI number easier to read and it is common to put a dash before the letter (as above). To accommodate this your code should strip out all useless characters from the input before looking at it more closely.

Ensure that your code insists on the correct length
007-X is not valid. But 00000000-X is.

Euro Banknotes

Just take some from your wallet. There are fewer than 26 countries that issue Euro banknotes some some letters never appear at the start of a serial number. Accounting for this would require some very inelegant code. We can't have inelegant code!

Be sure to check some serial numbers that have a zero immediately after the letter. If that gives you trouble ParseInt may be to blame.

SOFT6008 Adding up digits

Adding up all the digits in a number, and then adding those digits up again, until you are left with one, turns out to be the same as doing a MOD 9. Except for 18.

Computationally that's must simpler than extracting and adding digits.

SOFT6008 Class 14 WEB

I gave out a handout of checksums. I asked students to start coding some check digit algorithms for user input validation.Euro banknotes are probably the easiest to start with.

SOFT6007 Class 12 ITM

We looked at classes in CSS. I asked students to colour code their timetables

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

SOFT6007 Class 16 DWEB

I asked studens to finish off their timetables with colour coded classes.

A number of students are still trying to catch up. We might not be able to wait much longer. This needs to be done and dusted this week.

SOFT6007 Class 15 WEB

I wasn't in for this class

SOFT6007 Class 14 WEB ITM



I talked about prediction markets and the experiment I want students and the experiment I want students to participate in.

It has nothing to do with this module however.

Monday, October 8, 2012

COMP6023 Tuesday's Lab

There will be no COMP6023 Web Publishing class this Tuesday (9 Oct)

SOFT6007 Class 13 DWEB






We looked at classes. I asked student to colour code their timetables

SOFT6008 Class 15 COM

Students continued coding. Some struggled. It's important to build up programs slowly and text as you go. Writing loads of code and then trying to figure out where the problems are takes much longer in the long run.

SOFT6008 Class 14 COM

I gave out a handout on Checksums and asked students to work though them to see how they work. I asked students to start coding some of the. The Euro banknote check digit is probably the easiest one to start with.

SOFT6008 Class 13 WEB COM





We looked at using the DOM to take input from a form, and then modify the contents of the page based on the input


Example: http://mcom.cit.ie/staff/computing/cmanning/soft6008-2012/code/phonenumbers.html




Thursday, October 4, 2012

Well made video


SOFT6008 Class 12 WEB COM







We looked at the use of check digits for user input validation.

There's a handout can has a few more from other countries and tips for coding. There's a typo in the handout. myS.indexOf ("o",5) evaluates to 15, not 10 as stated.


More Euro banknote trivia from Wikipedia


SOFT6007 Class 11 ITM





I rushed things a bit because we had fallen behind the other group what with one thing and another.

we looked at how CSS works and I asked students to style the timetable page they built in previous classes.


Examples: Page 7  and CSS