I think some methods that I’ve had from previous teachers would work for this class since it only meets once a week and can almost be considered as an online class or close to it.  I think videos could help in this class and it helps students learn material in an faster way with potentially more in depth explanations. There could also be videos on exercises and how to do them.  I believe this will help students with their homeworks.   Other than that i think this class was very well planned out with the assignments and the online lecture slides.

Every students and teachers long awaited break that they all yearn for.  Who doesn’t like home cooked meals and presents to wake up to on December 25th, or for 7 days straight if your Jewish   Everyone can relax and enjoy their family and friends’ company before they all go their separate ways (work, school, etc.).  It gives students and teachers a much needed break so they can start a new semester rejuvenated and ready to work.

Our group members have been friends for over a year and we work very well together.  I think this is better than having random members in a group because the communication would not be the same.  We communicate freely and if someone is extremely busy with tests or homework that week, we offer to pick up his slack to help them out.  So far we have split up the tasks to who works best with each other and where each person’s strength is.

Haiku

Ants are small creatures

each ant doing their job well

so the queen’s happy

(queen = entire OS ; ant = program)

Limerick

It started out rough

because I had never used Linux, it made homework tough

but thanks to Google and the exercises, i was out of my misery

No thanks to python and it’s mysteries

I was able to finish my homework and other stuff

I personally can’t wait for thanksgiving break even if it is only a week.  That week is a much needed break for students and faculty to relax from college and work.  I think it is great timing because it is right before finals so the students come back to college rejuvenated and ready to finish off the semester.  I think a break for all students is crucial and i believe there is positive outcomes from it also (grades).

using make is a great method for large scale software.  It keeps track of file dependencies and it also keeps track of which file has been altered.  It determines which piece or pieces of a large scale program needs to be recompiled.  It can be used with any programming language which makes it very versatile.  It is not used for just programs, it can also be used with other files or directories.

I think that one of the main things that separates a good student from a great student is one who is motivated  to find out why an answer is what it is; to understand the problem and how to arrive to the solution.  This may be hard for students with time management problems but managing your time is a very essential skill that will also help you in your later life.

I knew the terminal could make navigation and alterations to files easier but never knew how much it could do until i actually started using it.  We were given commands in class and some exercises but the most I’ve used the terminal is on the midterm.  There was so much of copying, moving, finding words in the files we were given for the midterm that i did not realize how cool and powerful the terminal really was until i used it.  I’ve used it for homework’s all the time but I didn’t think much of the terminal until the midterm when I actually did something useful with it in my eyes.  The other times i used it for homework was just typical stuff we would have to do, like running a program and seeing where the errors were, or changing directories.

From all of these weekly quizzes, I have learned more about the commands in the terminal.  These commands are very powerful and can make doing a certain task a piece of cake.  I have not seen some of these commands before but from seeing them in the quizzes and testing them out afterwards, you can see how useful they are.  They are shortcuts that save the user a massive amount of time if known how to use properly.  It is more of a struggle to learn how to use command line but it is a much more powerful tool than using window and it’s GUI’s.

I’ve always heard of python but have never actually used it until this semester.  It seems like a good program to introduce students to because it seems more user friendly then most programs.  As i’m using python, I realize how it could have helped students if this was their introductory program to learn instead of C++.  It is a little bit easier to use then C++ and reading python syntax and code seems more human nature then reading regular code (because of python’s convenient variable names and syntax).