A former student of Mr. Wachs and Mr. Rogowy completed a term project game as seen in this post and you can see the game she developed here (Update: here is a link to a video about her team’s development process). Congratulations Marissa, you always made amazing final projects for me in Computer Science and now you are kicking off your gaming career with a bang!
The quote above “how does code work?” came from one of my new Computer Science students in my introductory Computer Science 20S course. I have certainly encountered this type of question before, but this time it made me stop and think. When I thought about my answer, I thought “how deep” should my answer be? At one level I could just respond with “by telling the computer do the stuff you tell it to do”, or maybe go deeper with “code is a language of instructions that it translated into logic steps that a machine can interpret”, or “high level programming languages like Java and C# are compiled into bytecode or machine code which can be interpreted or executed by the operating system and then the fetch-decode-execute machine instruction cycle of the CPU by both the ALU and CU working together busses data from primary and secondary memory to user interfaces”. But maybe that is too much? The level of response for a question depends on several factors that mostly depend on the person asking and their preparedness to receive and answer. Factors like: do they have the context, vocabulary and understanding for this level of answer? do they have the time for a longer response? do they have the patience for a longer response? do they even want a longer response? As the person answering, I have to make a judgment call (often incorrectly) the level of response to give. Maybe that’s why some students say my name shouldn’t be “Mr. Wachs” but “Mr. Talks” because I often give a longer answer to a simple questions (teaches them not to ask next time). Food for thought, and here is an image I found on the original topic:
As students work through the middle of this school year, we have had field trips (like the RRC one in the post below this one), and school presentations from University of Manitoba, University of Winnipeg, and Red River College Polytech (RRC). As well, a student directed my to a cool website that uses a visual to see step by step guides and paths to learn different tools or technologies in software and game development. You can see a screen shot and a link to that website here:
In addition, I have been developing a series of flowcharts for the courses at our school for the administration. They provide a visual way to see the various courses and how they lead to post-secondary futures for the students. You can find a video of that presentation, the presentation (PowerPoint) itself, and the school’s registration page which has more individualized links to specific programs.
Check out this video from our most recent field trip on November 24, 2023…
P.S. It is sure nice to have field trips again after the pandemic!
To the class of 2022-2023. I am proud to present this compilation video below which showcases all the final projects for all my Computer Science classes for this school year. This includes my Computer Science 20S (grade 9/10) students, Computer Science 30S (grade 10/11) students, Computer Science 40S (grade 11/12) students, and Computer Science 42SIB (grade 12 I.B.) students. the video is quite long as I had over 134 projects for this school year for my Sturgeon Heights students.
Well, a lot of programmers first program was the traditional “Hello World” program – and now it is time for me to say “Good-bye World” to this semester’s Computer Science courses. As we enter the last few weeks and days of this semester I wanted to make a few last announcements important to course details:
As we approach the end, I am getting a lot more content in my hand in box as all courses (CS20S, CS30S, and CS40S) along with other courses I teach (including multiple sections) are all handing in work at the end of the semester. As a result, I am a lot more busy with getting grades updated and do not have as much time to give individual help as I once did. I want to help, but with the time remaining it is a factor and you might have to make some decisions about scaling back on things like the final project. I would rather you hand in something rather than not handing something in because it is not “perfect”. Remember, this course and the final project are just learning opportunities and I am very flexible with my marking. I am not a “all or nothing” marker and especially with this challenging year, I will make exceptions when marking your work. So, if you still have questions or if you need to hand anything else in (if you missed anything?) you can certainly do so up to the week before the final week of classes. I have made announcements on these issues over the last few weeks and you can read more specific posts from the past on related issues like:
Finally, thank you all for taking my course. I hope you enjoyed the experience and learned more about the subject of Computer Science in this course. I hope it gave you some insight into technology and appreciation for problem solving in general. I know learning an academic course like Computer Science can be challenging so I commend you. You should be very proud of yourself. I have been honored to work with you all this semester to introduce, continue, or complete your experiences learning the subject of Computer Science. Whether you ever take a Computer Science course ever again, or if you continue on to study this further in your life, I will always consider myself your teacher and you can always contact me for help or advice. Just because this course ends doesn’t mean your learning ends and I would continue to be honored to be a part of that. My alumni page of my website still has lots of room for more testimonials from you in your fantastic, successful futures!
– Mr. Wachs
Mr. Wachs' Classes... 