This year computer science has been a very average experience for me. What I mean is that even though there were some fun lessons we did, including the marshmallow project, there have also been times when I have felt like all I was doing was going through the motions and getting a free completion grade for it. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely thought more of the labs because they were a challenge at times, but I felt that they were also dull, and for a class at LASA I was a little disappointed.
I will begin with what I liked most about the class, which for me was the hand on experience I got with computer programs that I hadn’t even known about before. Not only did I learn about what they were and how they worked, but Mr. Stephens’ lessons and help taught me how to create programs to run and experiments to create. My absolute favorite lab was also the most frustrating and it was our fall semester final. The program we had been using at the time was Jeroo. Jeroo is a program built to help people learn some of the language and code of Java, but in an easier, less confusing format. Its parts consisted of two sections of code: a main method and other created methods that could be called by the main method. In Jeroo there are three different objects (jeroos, flowers and nets) and two land types (land and water). A jeroo would be trapped if they fell into a net or the water, but a flower could be tossed into a net to cancel it out. Our final consisted of eight different layouts, all mazes, which required you to write code that would allow one jeroo to “save” another jeroo on the other side of the map and return to the starting point. The twist is that we had to complete as many of the layouts as possible with only a single code, one that would, without changing it, complete the task on each different layout. What I enjoyed about the lab was how challenging it was because each time I was able to complete a new lab, the sense of reward I felt was incredible. That was one of the best academic feelings I had had all year because I would have had no idea how to do any of it without the well thought out plans and lessons Mr. Stephens’ provided us with during the course.
What I didn’t like however was how dull or boring some of the labs could be. I understand that this being the first year for Mr. Stephens we are his educational guinea pigs and that computer science is something that requires strict rules to be followed, but I also felt like things could be improved to make the course more exciting and interactive. For example, if students were given the basics of each program and then given tasks to perform there would be opportunities for more group work. The tasks would not come with step-by-step guidelines and walkthroughs, but instead the students would be given a task to accomplish and it was their job to brainstorm and figure out a way to accomplish the given task. I believe that this would allow more interaction and creative thinking with others instead of simply transcribing code from detailed instructions by themselves.
Like I said before, this year in computer science was relatively average for me because the pros (the thrill of learning something new and accomplishing difficult challenges) and cons (the dull and repeated typing of long code) of the class balanced out. For a course at LASA I would expect something more interactive, so hopefully that can be improved on in the years to come.
-jag13
