So, the DP exams now lie about a month back, with the exam results coming out in less than two weeks. Reflecting back, I think the IB is a good program to take, although it is not perfect.

Computer science was definitely an interesting subject and I enjoyed having the freedom of designing and creating a program of my own (for a client obviously). I think the subject is not all that hard as long as one stays somewhat disciplined with the dossier and is actually interested in the subject.

Anyway, I'd like to wish good luck to the classes of 2013 to get through their final year successfully and all future classes. Perhaps our wiki can be of some help in the future as well. (Feel free to update and add to it).

I will now enjoy the long summer break after school and hope all other 2012 graduates will as well.
In this sense,
enjoy!

- Jocbe

After some time of leaving the blog untouched, here we are again (or at least I am). I am currently in the middle of programming the final assignment for Comp Sci and now take a few minutes, between internet research, frantic typing of code, internet downtimes and forum discussions, write some words here.

So I was able to send a prototype of my program to my client a while ago, so he could have a look at it. He seemed satisfied with the features, which were built in already and I think I am on the right track. I'll have to dive back into the code a few more times, until I have an acceptable final result. I think I will go back to that right now, in fact.

In that sense - enjoy your day, may the force be with you.
Jocbe

 - etc -

I Wanna Rock!

I gotta work! (Work)
I gotta work! (Work)
I gotta work! (Work)
I gotta work! (Work)

Turn it down you say,
Well all I got to say to you is time again I say, "No!"
No! No, No, No, No, No!
Tell me not to play
Well, all I got to say to you when you tell me not to play,
I say, "No!"
No! No, No, No, No, No!
So, if you ask me why I like the way I work it
There's only one thing I can say to you

I gotta work! (Work)
I gotta work! (Work)
I gotta work! (Work)
I gotta work! (Work)

There's a feelin' that
I get from nothin' else and there ain't nothin' in the world
That makes me go!
Go! Go, go, go, go, go!
Turn the power up
I've waited for so long so I could hear my favorite song so,
Let's go!
No! No, no, no, no, no!
When it's like this I feel the pressure shootin' through me
There's nothin' else that I would rather do

I gotta work! (Work)
I gotta work! (Work)
I gotta work! (Work)
I gotta work! (Work)

Work (Work)
Work (Work)

I gotta work! (Work)

Work (Work)
Work (Work)

I gotta work! (Work)

Work (Work)
Work (Work)

I gotta work! (Work)

Work (Work)
Work (Work)
I gotta work!

I gotta work! (Work)
I gotta work! (Work)
I need to work! (Work)
I gotta work! (Work)
I gotta work! (Work)

Work (Work)
Work (Work)

I gotta work! (Work)

Work (Work)
Work (Work)

I gotta work! (Work)

Work (Work)
Work (Work)

All hail Twisted Sister

Time is Slipping

I am lately slightly worried about getting used to android specifications. I am slightly worried because it took a while to get used to Java and I am not sure whether or not I will be able to get used to the differences fast enough. I am happy however that i found a manual on-line that should help me learning how to use Java in android.

This Friday the first stage B deadline is due.Lets hope I can get there on time.

Great album for studying

Programming away

The dossier is moving on - rather slowly at the moment. I am trying to figure out how to solve individual aspects of the program I'll create. It is amazing at which seemingly simple problem I'm stuck for days now. In those programming languages I have used so far, it was absolutely no problem to create a multi-column list with ease. In Java I find myself faced with some major issues; the standard components (such as JList) don't seem to support multi-columns that easily. Anyhow, I found the "OpenSwing Framework", which supposedly allows for multi-column lists to be created. I'll see.

So far - Jocbe

Stage A - complete

So we're up to stage B of our dossier now; stage A was completed last week (well, more or less). We'll try to finish the wiki soon as well. There isn't that much left, we will just have to see where we fit it in besides programming.

Well, we are on the home stretch now - about eight months to go until school's over. Seems like a lot of time, but we can feel it already and time will go by faster than expected. Good luck to all the 2012 graduates! (Good luck to all others too, of course!)

So far - I think I'll go back to programming now.
Jocbe

As time goes by

Since the school year has begun we have worked quite a bit on the wiki. We managed to nearly complete section 7.1.X which consists of ten pages. After this we only have to work on four further pages to complete our quest of having edited the entire wiki (we are very thurrow). We have also spent a lot of time working on the dossier. I hope that I can keep up with the design of my game, but we'll see if it works out.

just one more time

Happy New Year!

So, a new school year has begun; the final one actually. This year we'll be concentrating on our dossiers (as Daniel hinted towards already), which means we'll not have as much time to update the wiki anymore. We'll try to add the missing sections, maybe some info on the dossier & Java, though.

Well, I got into GUI programming in Java a little now, which promises to be interesting. It is (obviously) a lot more challenging without a visual layout editor but the IB apparently preferr students to use BlueJ, which means no visual editor. I guess it does help to understand the concepts behind Java GUIs better, though.

Well, let's see what the new school year brings.

Stay happy!
Jocbe

We're Back Baby

It seems that over the last few Months when we were on vacation we had tons of visitors, I still don't know why, but never the less. I stated my Dossier (we will add a section to this in the Wiki) i interviewed my mom to see what she would like. I want to make a game of some sort, preferably for smart phones, I researched that Java works on android phones.

It's Blogger Time

We did not perform any updates to the wiki in the last month. this is because we spent all of out time programming and learning Java (when we weren't out on vacation) over the past month i have grown fond of programming. it is fun and creative once you understand what to tell the computer to do. Once you get a hang of Java it is not that hard (sometimes).


We will come back to to editing the Wiki, trust me on that. but for now with the exams around the corner and the fact that we need to learn enough Java to write a program for our dossier we need to put the wiki aside for now.

Wiki editing pause

As some of you might have noticed, we haven't updated the wiki much lately. We had holidays for a week, an educational field trip over one week and next week exams start, which means there won't be many updates until after the exams either. But don't worry, we'll continue maintaining the wiki at least up to summer 2012. However, most of the things, which aren't complete so far, probably won't be until after the summer holidays this year.

Otherwise we have noted a significant increase in visits to our wiki this year. We thank you all for your support, hope you find our wiki useful and are keen to keep on improving it in the future.

So far,
Jocbe

Wiki maintenance

Today I finally figured out what was up with our sidebar. Apparently wikispaces updated their sidebar from a plain page-list widget to a proper navigation widget. You can now sort the pages - according to tags. So I went through all the pages, added another tag for which unit they belonged to and added those pages, grouped, to the sidebar. To bad wikispaces doesn't offer many batch operations. Well, when I was all finished, I noticed, wikispaces had converted all capital letters of the heading for topic 3 to lower-case letters. It took quite a bit of time and tricking of the system to convert them into upper-case letters again, because tags in wikispaces don't actually support capital letters.

Anyway, as a side note: I found out, there is a setting now, that non-members of our wiki can comment on pages in the discussion tab. I am pretty sure that option wasn't there before (given that one doesn't open the wiki completely, off course).
So, feel free to comment, ask, suggest improvements, etc :)!

ECIS-IT Conference

Greeting Programs,

Last week I was in Frankfurt at the ECIS-IT Conference presenting about using this blog and our class wiki http://dis-dpcs.wikispaces.com/ in the CompSci classroom to other Tech Integration Specialists and CompSci DP teachers. I really enjoyed the positive feedback from those that attended the presentation. Most of the attendees liked how the information in the wiki was student generated and researched. Additionally, they liked the Java section, with all the resources needed for students to learn Java. During the presentation we discussed ways to use Moodle along with the wiki and the blog. The last ten minutes or so were spent sharing experiences using all three web 2.0 tools in the CompSci classroom. Lastly, we discussed the rumors that IBO may let instructors use other programming options instead of only Java. Many of the attendees would welcome the change.

I think my skills as a presenter have improved since the AGIS conference back in February in Hanover! Best of all, all the tech stuff worked for the Frankfurt presentation!

Anthony

Ideas for programming

I want (if i go into programming) to become  game designer. It is possible to write programs in java for mobile phones (most prominently Android). I would have to be well versed with OOP in order to make an app that would be good for a phone. Also it would have to somehow incorporate the ability to use the touchscreen well.

etc.

Java + dossier

I made some advances in Java in the last couple of weeks and I'm getting closer & closer to the interesting parts such as object orientated programming. I didn't really like the idea of learning Java at the beginning - it is comparibly slow (vs. C, for ex.) but on the other hand it is very widely spread. So if you are able to program Java, you can program extensions, add-ons, programs and apps for browsers, mobile phones, all different OSes, etc. I think it will be worth it in the end.

Hm for the dossier next year... I think the first step would be to find a client. Usually the client will tell you what he/she needs. From previous experiences some ideas of projects could be a bibliography creator or a tax computation program. It will most probably be an office program in the end, since my Java skills will probably not be enough for a game, for instance and Java wouldn't be the best option for more complex games either. Well, we'll see.