Susan Canaga

A request of IT and computer science professionals.......

High school teachers are looking for an industry perspective on what programming languages should be taught in high school....

Some teachers feel that Visual Basic is not useful in industry. Others find that jumping into C# and Java is too much for a student that has no exposure to programming. Another discussion is that some do not agree with the AP Board's decision to switch from C++ to Java. They feel C++ is important because of the demand in industry. I'm also reading that .NET skills are becoming increasingly important.

What thoughts do you have on this?

Which software will be chosen for the cereal box? Recall that I had two development teams spread over two periods. One period had five team members, and the other had two team members. The project scenario involved the teams vying to create the “Hunt for the Wombat” game that would be selected for the Big SemiColon cereal box. Here's how the final “marketing” presentations went:

Team One (5 members). Created a game with a lot of functionality. Caves and tunnels were created with hazards, keystrokes were handled, and trivia functionality was included. Although there was broad functionality, the program has a lot of bugs.

Team Two (2 members). Decided to limit their functionality and get targeted classes working well. Their cave creation and graphics display are in good shape, but that's as far as it goes.

Project Summary - Student Perspective

What went well?

• Learned the rigors of software development
• Saw firsthand the importance of good planning
• Learned form and graphics processing
• Took advantage of the strengths of other team members for overall results
• Sharing algorithms with other teams during code swap fostered new ideas

What did not go so well?

• Ran out of time
• Took awhile to get into it; didn't know where to start
• Over complicated some of the algorithms
• Didn't understand forms or how to display them
• Security issues over the school network with Visual J# 2005

What strategies could be used for a better outcome?

• Read all the course content
• Review each class after it was completed rather than waiting until the end
• All team members work on the game control class
• Get a crash course on forms and form handling
• Start earlier (some students had other AP exams that delayed this project kick off)

The Hunt for the Wombat continues! The project was received with a bit of disbelief that there was actually some work of substance to be done after the AP tests. But we grabbed our darts and power cells, and seven students began working in two teams on this project.

One period has five students on the team, and a snag came when over the half the team was going on an English field trip. When I signed their permissions forms, I reminded them to let the dev lead know about their “personal leave request” and asked how it would be scheduled into the project plan. There were some interesting raised eyebrows.

The other period has a two person team, and they made an argument that because there were only two of them, they should not be expected to get as much done. I asked, “Do you think it will be easy for the other team to combine all their parts?” Raised eyebrows again.

So we're off on the Wombat's trail. What hazards have we encountered so far?

• No design. The teams jumped to coding...class documentation is pretty much viewed as busy work to satisfy the teacher.
• Lack of time Reading. The course content, code archive and samples provide many tips to help the students figure out the technical and design challenges...but wanting to get to the action, these were initially underused. I pointed these resources out to the Dev Leads and encouraged them to promote them with their teams.
• Refreshing (our) Memory. In reading the Cave Connections text file, students had to refresh their memory on string manipulation and multi-dimensional array processing.

Our victories...

• Creating Test Beds. Students quickly appreciated the value of getting small sections of code working and programming “stubs.“
• Displaying Graphics and Forms. After reading the course content and code archive, students were successful in displaying graphics and forms...which was a major motivator. If it looks good...it must be good!?
• Building the Cave. Designing and processing the cave was another major milestone since it is pretty much the foundation of the system. Again, once students realized the value of the course resources, this went fairly quickly.

Later this week, the teams will swap code and documentation for the code review. I am interested to see how they evaluate each other and for them to see different algorithm designs for the same problem.

Susan

Last week I launched the “Hunt for the Wombat” project that Microsoft is providing as a download from www.mainfunction.com. Not only are the students working in teams to program a graphic game, they are learning about the bigger picture of the software development process.

I ran a pilot of this project last year, and I assumed the role of the Project Manager. I had teams of 4-5 students, and they selected their Development Lead. If a student asked me a question, I told them to talk to their Lead first. I opted to have weekly status meetings with the Leads and left it up to them as to whether they wanted written or verbal status from their developers. A classic moment occurred when I heard one of the developers cry out...”I'd get a lot more done if I wasn't in meetings all the time!”

It was also quite a revelation for them to learn the value of design and standards when they tried to integrate all their programs together. During the final presentation, I saw a working version of the program that was no where near completion just a day earlier. I asked the students how they got it all to work in the final hour. “John took it home and rewrote the whole thing himself.” (Name changed to protect the not so innocent.)

I'm looking forward to seeing how the project turns out this year....I'll keep you posted.

Susan

Always look for opportunities to practice and coach troubleshooting. One came for me the other day with the classroom stapler...

A bright student in a hurry urgently asks me, “Mrs. Canaga, Mrs. Canaga...the stapler won't work!”

As thoughts rolled through my head (like...what has someone done to the stapler now?), I stopped and asked, “Well, have you tried to troubleshoot the problem?“

With an extemely annoyed look on his face, the student replied, “Troubleshoot the stapler?”

Mrs. Canaga: “Sure...what is the problem you are having?“

Student: “It won't staple my paper.”

Mrs. Canaga: “Did it work recently?”

The student now realizes he's been caught in a teachable moment and reluctantly responds, “I think so... maybe it needs more staples?”

Mrs. Canaga: “Did you check?”

Student: “How do I do that?”

Mrs. Canaga: “I don't know...have you examined the stapler?”

Student looks over the stapler, “Well it looks like there might be two ways.” After a bit of trial and error, he opens the stapler and finds it empty. A quick reload, and he's back to work with a stapled paper in hand and troubleshooting on his mind. He might have been mumbling something about me too, but hey...that's the art of troubleshooting!

My “specialty” is the software development process and project management. I was a programmer, analyst and manager for 15 years, before I found my passion for education. This is my 8th year with the Issaquah School District in Washington state, and I teach a variety of high school technology courses that include hardware and operating systems, web authoring, programming and AP Computer Science.

As I developed the curriculum for the programming classes, I was drawn to online resources that taught Visual Basic, C# and ASP.NET. I embraced Visual Studio.NET, and my students successfully pass APCS tests with their J# knowledge. One thing led to another, and last year I was asked to help develop online course material to teach the software development process.

This resource will be available to you soon. In future posts, I will describe its features and my beta experience last spring. Designed to be a project to work on after the AP test, students work in project teams to develop a game over the course of about six weeks. During this time, they learn and practice the four Ds--Discovery, Design, Development and Deployment.

In the navigation panel on the left, you will see links to the Computer Science Blogs of my colleagues. I learn something from them every day....