PIZZA
So, tonight we finally tasted the infamous ledos pizza – something several students promoted. Most students seemed to enjoy it. However, to me, it was no better than Dominos or Pizza Hut. We’ll see how long this lasts. 🙂 Did I mention that I’m ready to try something else? *If anyone has any suggestions on food delivery to Howard University, please let us know! 🙂
LINUX
My brilliant idea to expose students to linux is not working as planned. Although everyone has the same machine, each is responding differently to our attempts to use App Inventor …and it is causing a bit of frustration on everyone’s part. Nonetheless, I’m proud to say that we are all patient and are fighting through the difficulties. Using Ubuntu Linux affords us the feasibility to use other opensource software (e.g. OpenOffice, GIMP, etc.). However, App Inventor does not work well with OpenJDK – which is installed with OpenOffice. This was the cause of most of our problems. I believe we are down to 3 or 4 machines not responding as expected and I hope to resolve these issues some time this weekend.
APP INVENTOR
Instead of wasting precious class time on troubleshooting, we ventured ahead and continued our exploration of App Inventor, with some students watching their neighbors (those who had App Inventor running). Some students have challenged themselves to attempt to build simple apps this weekend. Whether they are successful or not, we are certainly moving closer to everyone becoming more and more familiar with creating ‘logic’ and instructions to make their app perform as desired.
Next steps involve completing designs, requirements documents, and a bit of pseudo-code – something many students don’t see the point of or hadn’t seen the point in past exercises. I’m hoping all blind eyes will open as we embark on these next steps and their apps unfold.
I’m anxious to see them all myself!
PS – Many students have also challenged themselves to begin to explore the Lego Mindstorm components in App Inventor and will be ready to test first drafts of apps next week. I can’t wait….
🙂