Our AP Comp Sci class was billed, as it always has been, as covering the AB topics as well. I don't know what exactly the A subset consists of; maybe it would've been more managable for the time we had.
It sounds like at your school, the students (sophomores especially), students have more preperation. The one intro class at my school was only one semester long under the old system, and remained so this year (ie, it was expanded). Other than that class (Java Programming, formerly C++ Programming), you've only got VB and HTML, which don't count.
The first year of AP Comp Sci being in Java was also the first year my high school used block scheduling. For those who don't know, block scheduling is having four one-credit classes per semester instead of seven half-credit classes. This was extremely bad for the students in the class, including myself. The class was one of the few, if not the only AP class that was not expanded to a full year of 90 minutes per day. AP Calculus was extended, and it now covers the BC topics as well. AP Chemistry was actually two periods under the old (~50 minute per day) system, so block scheduling actually shortened it (2/8 of the year instead of 2/7).
AP Comp Sci was only offered second semester so that our instructional time would be closer to the AP test date. However, this made it so we had, as a fraction of the course, much less instructional time before the test. We didn't even cover all the topics in our very basic book before the date of the test. Now we have over a full month of school left, but it's too late to help us increase our scores. We were expected to learn the topics not covered during class over Spring Break (the week before the test), which is totally unrealistic due to people being out of town, and generally not feeling like learning topics on our vacation that should've covered weeks ago.
We spent the whole first month of the class reviewing topics from the intro course ("Java Programming"). This is with 90 minutes per day. Not enough time was spent doing activities that were related to the exam. We had maybe three days to spend in class reviewing; all but one was before break. Even then, it was only in small groups, never as a whole class. We had time for two quizzes over the course of the class: one of which was only on the review material from the intro course, and the other was on sorting algorithms.
All my classmates' experiences could've been increased greatly if the class had been a whole year long. The whole time felt rushed. We weren't even able to get the case study working on our fucked up school computers until a week or two before break. We only had time to do the first two chapters of the case study in class, and most people didn't get through the whole second chapter. If the class had been a whole year long, we would've been able to safely spend the first month on review, which some of the kids definitely needed. We would've been able to cover at least the whole book. We would've had time to learn more interesting things and the class would've been more relaxed.
The most painful thing about the class was kids not understanding what an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException means. As if the name isn't verbose enough, you get the line number and attempted index as well. Solving everyone's trivial little problems takes time; there was only one teacher and over 25 students. While kids were waiting for help, they couldn't do much other than just that. I, being a bit more advanced (some classmates claimed that I "wrote Java"), tried to help out where I could, but it wasn't enough, which leads to my next point.
The only blame I can place squarely on the teacher is that she wasn't good at predicting at how long it'd take the class to complete assignments. Over half the assignments had their due dates pushed back, sometimes as much as three days. This lost time adds up over the course of the semester.
I'm ranting like this because I think its fucked up that they screwed around with the schedule and only gave AP Comp Sci one semester, while all of the other APs got a full year. Comp Sci isn't any easier: most of the grades of the people in my class are similar to most peoples' AP Chem and AP Calc grades. If you want to shorten an AP class, shorten AP Statistics, that class is a cakewalk.
If your high school ever goes to block scheduling and decides to make AP Comp Sci one semester only, take this message and shove it in the face of whoever is pushing for the transition.
You can get a program called scponly (works with sftp too) and set that as your guest user's shell. It makes it so they can use sftp, but not log on with plain ssh and get a console. It works great for me.
I've tried downloading tarballs (gz and bz2 compressed) from four of the mirrors, and each time I try to uncompress/untar it, I get errors about invalid compressed data, file formats, etc. Has anyone else had this kind of problem?
Re:"With all the SCO news lately..."
on
SCO Nigerian Spam
·
· Score: 1
Just disable the Caldera topic from the homepage then.
Surely Slashdot (karma whoring, karma whoring) has shown that a self-moderating system can tolerate huge amounts of noise and still turn up valuable content.
What valuable content?
Wow, your summary of your previous comment was just as long:P.
Back on topic, I've seen a lot of people mentioning Google as a place to look for help. A not-so-well-known fact about Google is that there is a way to target your searches at Microsoft-related sites at http://www.google.com/microsoft.html. I've found this is actually a better method of searching Microsoft's site than Microsoft's own search feature.
There's also a Linux-related search feature on Google at http://www.google.com/linux
The girls at my high school play calculator games nearly as much as the boys. This is because the calculator games are easy to get and easy to play: many of them use only the arrow keys and the 2ND button. They're simple and cute.
Now I'm not trying to say that girls are incapable of playing complex games--I know a few that play SC and WC way better than I do--but with calculator games, the attraction for girls is their user-friendly nature.
One of the annoying things for me about OOo is that when a misspelled word is underlined automatically, when you right-click to see the suggestions it takes upwards of a minute for the context menu to come up.
Is there a way to speed this up, or is it the kind of thing that would be fixed in the new version?
They have something like this called xmove. You can Google for it. I'll admit I never got it working, but that was back when I used PS2 Linux with its really old X server. YMMV.
In the Terms and Conditions for my ISP, they specifically prohibit customers from running any kind of server. I don't know if this kind of thing is common among ISPs or if it's just us.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you ever tried screen?
Our AP Comp Sci class was billed, as it always has been, as covering the AB topics as well. I don't know what exactly the A subset consists of; maybe it would've been more managable for the time we had.
It sounds like at your school, the students (sophomores especially), students have more preperation. The one intro class at my school was only one semester long under the old system, and remained so this year (ie, it was expanded). Other than that class (Java Programming, formerly C++ Programming), you've only got VB and HTML, which don't count.
The first year of AP Comp Sci being in Java was also the first year my high school used block scheduling. For those who don't know, block scheduling is having four one-credit classes per semester instead of seven half-credit classes. This was extremely bad for the students in the class, including myself. The class was one of the few, if not the only AP class that was not expanded to a full year of 90 minutes per day. AP Calculus was extended, and it now covers the BC topics as well. AP Chemistry was actually two periods under the old (~50 minute per day) system, so block scheduling actually shortened it (2/8 of the year instead of 2/7).
AP Comp Sci was only offered second semester so that our instructional time would be closer to the AP test date. However, this made it so we had, as a fraction of the course, much less instructional time before the test. We didn't even cover all the topics in our very basic book before the date of the test. Now we have over a full month of school left, but it's too late to help us increase our scores. We were expected to learn the topics not covered during class over Spring Break (the week before the test), which is totally unrealistic due to people being out of town, and generally not feeling like learning topics on our vacation that should've covered weeks ago.
We spent the whole first month of the class reviewing topics from the intro course ("Java Programming"). This is with 90 minutes per day. Not enough time was spent doing activities that were related to the exam. We had maybe three days to spend in class reviewing; all but one was before break. Even then, it was only in small groups, never as a whole class. We had time for two quizzes over the course of the class: one of which was only on the review material from the intro course, and the other was on sorting algorithms.
All my classmates' experiences could've been increased greatly if the class had been a whole year long. The whole time felt rushed. We weren't even able to get the case study working on our fucked up school computers until a week or two before break. We only had time to do the first two chapters of the case study in class, and most people didn't get through the whole second chapter. If the class had been a whole year long, we would've been able to safely spend the first month on review, which some of the kids definitely needed. We would've been able to cover at least the whole book. We would've had time to learn more interesting things and the class would've been more relaxed.
The most painful thing about the class was kids not understanding what an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException means. As if the name isn't verbose enough, you get the line number and attempted index as well. Solving everyone's trivial little problems takes time; there was only one teacher and over 25 students. While kids were waiting for help, they couldn't do much other than just that. I, being a bit more advanced (some classmates claimed that I "wrote Java"), tried to help out where I could, but it wasn't enough, which leads to my next point.
The only blame I can place squarely on the teacher is that she wasn't good at predicting at how long it'd take the class to complete assignments. Over half the assignments had their due dates pushed back, sometimes as much as three days. This lost time adds up over the course of the semester.
I'm ranting like this because I think its fucked up that they screwed around with the schedule and only gave AP Comp Sci one semester, while all of the other APs got a full year. Comp Sci isn't any easier: most of the grades of the people in my class are similar to most peoples' AP Chem and AP Calc grades. If you want to shorten an AP class, shorten AP Statistics, that class is a cakewalk.
If your high school ever goes to block scheduling and decides to make AP Comp Sci one semester only, take this message and shove it in the face of whoever is pushing for the transition.
You can get a program called scponly (works with sftp too) and set that as your guest user's shell. It makes it so they can use sftp, but not log on with plain ssh and get a console. It works great for me.
I've tried downloading tarballs (gz and bz2 compressed) from four of the mirrors, and each time I try to uncompress/untar it, I get errors about invalid compressed data, file formats, etc. Has anyone else had this kind of problem?
Just disable the Caldera topic from the homepage then.
Surely Slashdot (karma whoring, karma whoring) has shown that a self-moderating system can tolerate huge amounts of noise and still turn up valuable content. What valuable content?
Acronym Finder. It works better than you'd think. And it can give you multiple meanings, not just the one most popular one.
Wow, your summary of your previous comment was just as long :P.
Back on topic, I've seen a lot of people mentioning Google as a place to look for help. A not-so-well-known fact about Google is that there is a way to target your searches at Microsoft-related sites at http://www.google.com/microsoft.html. I've found this is actually a better method of searching Microsoft's site than Microsoft's own search feature. There's also a Linux-related search feature on Google at http://www.google.com/linux
The girls at my high school play calculator games nearly as much as the boys. This is because the calculator games are easy to get and easy to play: many of them use only the arrow keys and the 2ND button. They're simple and cute.
Now I'm not trying to say that girls are incapable of playing complex games--I know a few that play SC and WC way better than I do--but with calculator games, the attraction for girls is their user-friendly nature.
One of the annoying things for me about OOo is that when a misspelled word is underlined automatically, when you right-click to see the suggestions it takes upwards of a minute for the context menu to come up.
Is there a way to speed this up, or is it the kind of thing that would be fixed in the new version?
Who are these informed fundamentalist Christians of which you speak?
They have something like this called xmove. You can Google for it. I'll admit I never got it working, but that was back when I used PS2 Linux with its really old X server. YMMV.
In the Terms and Conditions for my ISP, they specifically prohibit customers from running any kind of server. I don't know if this kind of thing is common among ISPs or if it's just us.
Give http://www.onepc.net/index.php?view=docs&doc_id=75 . a try.