revised blog

We started Jeroo this week. I actually like it a lot. It’s not very hard to figure out so far and the labs we did were easy to understand. I also hope it’s similar to Alice, because Alice is pretty user-friendly and I liked the creative freedom that came with it. I'm glad that it's easy for me right now, because hopefully that means it will also be easy in the future. It would be helpful to understand all the programs leading up to Java so that Java itself will be easier. I don’t want to not understand these programs and then get to Java and REALLY not understand programming… that would be bad.

About Scratch and Alice:

I didn't really like Scratch, but I recognize that it made Alice a lot easier. It was a hard program for me to work with, and I think it may have not been necessary to go so far in depth with it. It was sometimes difficult to remember where each little piece I needed was located. Only some types of code were compatible to run within each other, and I was always confused as to which types those were. I did appreciate that the program was visual, however. This made it easier to visualize what was happening because of the code and to see exactly what it was doing.

Even though we learned how to do many things in Scratch by the time we were finished with it, in Alice, we didn't use all of the skills that Scratch taught us (like extremely complicated loops, lists, etc.), so I think we could've spent less time with it. As for Alice, I liked it a lot more than Scratch because it was easier to see what I was doing since we used actual objects and people, and the more complicated labs weren't nearly as complicated as the Scratch ones were. The layout of the methods and other aspects of code was easy to see and use because they were all broken down into tabs and little menus. This way, everything was categorized and easy to find. I never had too much trouble with Alice; the only difficult parts were figuring out how to loops certain things and sometimes it was difficult to get the Boolean comparisons just right in the methods.

Overall, I liked Alice a lot more than Scratch. The layout of Scratch seemed bulky (does that make sense? I think so…) and sometimes frustrating to navigate because everything was in a different place and there were so many menus. Alice, on the other hand, was conveniently organized and it wasn’t too hard to create methods to make different objects and characters do certain things. I think Alice is more user-friendly and better than Scratch for teaching programming. I recognize that Scratch is necessary to teach basic programming and what methods are and all that, but I don’t think that all of the labs we did were necessary. Once we got to Alice, I really understand how to use loops with methods, and I think I could have learned that just from Alice instead of with Scratch first.

week of november 21st

(I'm pretty sure I remember writing this last week, so I think I may have clicked on the wrong button because it never posted...)
We've continued with the Jeroo labs. They're getting harder and more frustrating, but Laryssa and I help each other get through them. Sean and Daniel help us too. I'm glad that I'm still able to solve them without too much trouble... I'm also glad that we're almost done with the Jeroo labs. Jeroo makes sense to me, but I'm getting a little sick of it now.

This stuff is funny. I love The Onion:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/the-week-in-review,18550/

week of november 8th

Jeroo got a little harder this week. The labs are taking me a little longer to finish and I've had to ask for more help. I don't mind much, though, because everything is a learning experience, I think. I still like Jeroo because it makes sense to me, I just need help figuring it out sometimes.

This cat is cute:



sorry for the brevity; the cold makes me tired.

week of November 1st

We've been using Jeroo now, and I like it a lot more than Scratch or Alice. Sometimes the codes can get kind of confusing, but I usually figure it out or get someone to help me. I fear that I may not feel this way once we get into more complicated labs and methods.... we'll see.


This is from one of my blogs:



I think it's ironic because usually raccoons aren't seen as cute, but rather as menaces.

blog post

this is something from FAIL blog... it's a sign made by the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas.

I hope they never come to LASA.

week of October 25th

We started Jeroo this week. I actually like it a lot. It 's not very hard to figure out so far and the labs we did were easy to understand. I'm glad that it's easy for me right now, because hopefully that means it will also be easy in the future.
About Scratch and Alice:
I didn't really like Scratch, but I recognize that it made Alice a lot easier. It was a hard program for me to work with, and I think it may have not been necessary to go so far in depth with it. In Alice, we didn't use all of the skills that Scratch taught us (like extremely complicated loops, lists, etc.), so I think we could've spent less time with Scratch. As for Alice, I liked it a lot more than Scratch because it was easier to see what I was doing, and the more complicated labs weren't nearly as complicated as the Scratch ones were. I think Alice is more user-friendly and better than Scratch for teaching programming.

done!

I'm glad we finished Alice last week. It was overall an entertaining program to use, but I get sick of things pretty quickly, especially when they have to do with a subject that does not by any means come naturally to me. I'm looking forward to starting programs that have more to do with actual programming, because I'm interested to see what it will be like. I did well on the Alice quizzes, which is good because it means I understood the concepts and hopefully I'll be good at the programs to follow.


http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/caption-this-picture16.jpeg?w=500&h=375

I found this on one of my blogs. AWESOME action shot! Have I mentioned I love cats?

week of October 11th

Alice is getting a little easier. I still have to ask for help a lot of the time, but I'm getting better at figuring things out on my own and understanding exactly what I'm doing. Hopefully this means that I won't be awful at actual programming later... we'll see.

I found this picture on one of the sites I follow... it's pretty much the cutest thing I've ever seen.


http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/af579df0-c318-479c-bfad-a98e893916b9.jpg

week of October 4th

We did more stuff with Alice this week. I got through the variables labs pretty quickly, but the few after that caused me a little more frustration. They involved making several new variables, methods, etc, which was kind of confusing, especially when I didn't know where to begin.


I found this post by The Onion:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/hank-mcgrady,18214/
I think it's funny because I'm in high school, and stuff like that still happens even though we're "mature young adults".

October 3rd, 2010

We started working on Alice last week. I like it because there is a lot of room for design and different actions with the characters and settings. It can also be frustrating like Scratch was, but it's a lot more visually interesting, which makes it more tolerable.

As for something interesting from one of my blogs...

http://icanhascheezburger.com/2010/09/28/funny-pictures-ministry-of-silly-walks/

this cat is cute and funny. I love cats, I have four. They're awesome.

Beatles song of the day: Drive My Car

week of 9/20

This week in compsci went pretty well. I got a 97 on the test, which is very good considering I'd been having some trouble with Scratch lately. I'm glad to be moving on to Alice. I like how it offers much more freedom in terms of what you can create with characters and such. It's nice to be done with Scratch after all the frustration it caused me :P

I was on my Google Reader and I came across this story: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/kuiper-belt-dust/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+wired/index+(Wired:+Index+3+(Top+Stories+2))

It's about how a small hole in the dust surrounding our solar system could tell "aliens" that planets exist around us. Although this seemed slightly frightening to me at first, I began to think about how unlikely it is that any other beings in the universe have figured out space travel. It is also unlikely that any of them could have figured out a way to travel so far as to reach our solar system. So even though this bit of  news may seem amazing and a little disconcerting at the same time, I don't think it is a very big deal.

Beatles song of the day: Love You To (Revolver)

So far in comp sci...

Comp sci so far has been... alright. I often get frustrated with Scratch because I haven't really done any type of programming before, and it's not really my thing. However, I'm able to get through each lab because I get help from a friend or from Mr. Stephens. It's a nice feeling when I finally am able to finish a lab after a long series of painful attempts at trying to get it right. I'm hoping Alice won't be too bad, or at least not worse than Scratch. Otherwise, I may be looking at a whole year of this excruciating trial-and-error process... we'll see what happens.


Beatles song of the day: Mother Nature's Son (White Album)