Shadowfax Cluster Rant 2009-2024 Release 36.03: AP CompSci, 2015-2016 September: Intranet Issues!

Friday, September 25, 2015

AP CompSci, 2015-2016 September: Intranet Issues!

AP CompSci, 2015-2016 September:

Intranet Issues!

Welcome back! I hope you had a great Summer. Let me just give a quick summary of week 1. I will usually post similar updates once or twice each month.

We started with CH1 Simple Main Methods this week. Why? Because I decided to skip HelloWorld. In fact, I flipped the HelloWorld lessons! I want to "hit the ground running" and not spend too much time on the early chapters. This way we'll have more time for more challenging topics!

We had a lot of networking and power issues the first week of school, so we set up a temporary SFTP Server on our intranet. The internet is down, and the intranet in the room was laggy. So, I finally broke down and installed jdk1.8.0_60 on every single PC in the room and stored our work on the local home directory. Clearly, this solution is far from ideal. We usually have a separate SFTP Server the students could access in class and from home. This server is a central location where students can store and execute their programs. Now, if a particular PC goes down, the student can't just move to another Linux Box and login to the server from there. Also, my students are on a public account, so their work is not passwd protected.

Week2 = Faster than a speeding turtle!

I usually start the year with HelloWorld and Chapter 1. This year I skipped HelloWorld to save some class time. Usually Chapter 1 is an intro to programming in a Terminal or Shell, aka Command Line. We usually spend a week or two here.

Week3 = Slow as molasses!
Due to all our networking issues, we're still going to be stuck in Chapter 1! We finished Chapter 1 on basic Hello World styled programs. Then we started Chapter 2 on constructing and using Object Variables using predefined Classes that come with Java.

Week4 = Some progress?
Tech finally figured out how to add our Ethernet Cards' Mac Addresses to the new Cyber Security Server. So we are getting some more connectivity! Soon we'll be able to print our work in class and login from home! We're almost done with Chapter 2 now.

YOUTUBE WEDNESDAYS:

Tom Lehrer's Lobachevsky!