November 29, 2010

     Today we had a free period and a supply teacher.  We have to start stubstrings by previewing the substrings page.  We are also encouraged to start the substring assignments.

Your Student,
Ziyi Shao

November 26, 2010

     Today we got to see some epic turing programs written by Mr. Arkin himself.  He said that we had to do something similar for our culminating activities.  We had another work period and I managed to understand arrays and repetition assignment 12 mod as well as assignment 13.


Your Student,
Ziyi Shao 

November 25, 2010

    Today, we discussed about whether or not dropping out of French after grade. 9 was a smart idea or not.  I saw another side of Mr. Arkin.  Afterwards ,we discussed about why we might not be understanding this class.  Mr. Arkin had a list of three skills successfull programmers should learn and possess.  Read precisely, break steps up, and visualize how the program works.  We discussed different ideas with the repetition assignment 8 as well as the modification of repetition assignment 12.  I still didn't quite understand arrays before but now i think i can efficiantly incorporate it into my work.  We got like 15 minutes at the end of class to work on/catch up on our assignments.  We have to prepare for our test next week. 

Your Student,
Ziyi Shao

November 24, 2010

    Today is Mr. Arkin's birthday.  So happy birthday Mr. Arkin, I hope you have a great one if you read this.  Today we had our official introduction to arrays and learned about the keywords array and of.  For homework we have to do a modification of repetition assignment 12 incorporating arrays into the assignment.  We have to catchup for a test next week.


Your Student,
Ziyi Shao

November 23, 2010

     Today, we got our marks back for the printer comparison project.  Then we had a lecture about what we are doing wrong and how to fix it.  Apparently some people put special character entities for simple things such as numbers and periods and commas.  I was a slight victim of that because i put special character entities for entities that were already on the keyboard such as the dollar sign and the colon.  I learned that Mr.Arkin only expects us to use special character entities for things such as "curvy" apostrophes.  Also, I lost one level because one of my links to the HTML validation pages didn't work.  I have now learned to always check my page before i submit it for marking.  As Mr. Arkin likes to say, "shooting the arrow and not seeing if it missed the target" or something along the lines.  The rest of our class was a work period in which most of us used to change our printer comparison assignments to met the standards of the processing guidelines.  For homework we have to do assignment 12 which is a bit tricky and review the processing guidelines because Mr. Arkin was so disappointed because our work did not meet the standards.

Your Student,
Ziyi Shao

November 22, 2010

    Today we had a free work period and made substantial progress on the repetition assignments.  For homework we had to do up to assignment 11 which i finished in class already.

Your Student,
Ziyi Shao

November 18, 2010

     Todays homework is going to ruin my long awaited long weekend by giving us this new project due on monday.  

Your Student,
Ziyi Shao

November 17, 2010

    HOLY COW!!!! Today's homework is so annoying! First of all, how the heck are you supposed to figure out the square root of a number without a calculator, memorization of all of the square roots or through trial and error?!?!?!? Furthermore, how are we supposed to incorporate "mod" into this program?!?!

     During class, we deskchecked our partner's program for repetition assignment 6.

Your Student,
Ziyi Shao

November 16, 2010

     Today we had a homework check. I did not print out my homework. I guess i should start writing down my assignments from now on.  We also had to fill out a feedback questionnaire about ics class.  Anyways, we basically had a work period and for homework, we have to complete repetition assignments.

Your Student,
Ziyi Shao

November 15, 2010

      Today we got our midterm marks back.  It was so nervewrecking.  During class, we had a work period in which we made substantial progress towards our repetition assignments.  We also got to listen to music during the work period because last friday was basically a lecture day.

Your Student,
Ziyi Shao

November 12, 2010

    Today we had our official introduction lesson to repetition and learned about the keywords exit, look and when.  We copied down some interesting programs in class and for homework, we have to modify one of the model answers.  We also have to do repetition assignment 1 and two and a modification of question 2. 


Your Student,
Ziyi Shao

November 11, 2010

    Today was Remembrance Day. We had assemblies according to the grade group.  Apparently we are grade 10s in Mr. Arkin's class.  Anyways, we got our programming test back and i got a 79%.  Normally i would be upset over this mark like the true over-achieving Asian I am, but considering the fact that most people got 60% or lower makes me appreciate my mark more.  I understand why i got a 79% because we reviewed the test in class and came up with model answers for the questions.  We also reviewed this accumulators and counters arithmetic mean simple program we wrote yesterday.  For homework we have to get our parents to sign the test. 


Your Student,
Ziyi Shao

November 9, 2010

            Today we had a longer than usual Q&A session to review and prepare for the programming unit we're going to have tomorrow.  We also had a brief introduction about counters and accumulators that I am still not one hundred percent clear on.  For homework, we have to study for the test tomorrow obviously.  I hope my hard work would pay off and get a good mark on it.  Wish me luck, I will probably need it. 

Your Student,

Ziyi Shao

November 8, 2010

     Today we completed our posters with the code analysis and presented it.  Afterwards, we displayed it proudly out in the hallway.  We are also doing the same thing to our partner's code ( in my case Ror's code) for selection number 7.  For homework i have to study for our programming unit test we're going to have on Wednesday.  


Your Student,
Ziyi Shao  

November 5, 2010

    Today... WE DON'T HAVE HOMEWORK.  ( except for this which is more like a journal really... )
We continued on identifying all the functions in assignment six.  We also are going to do something because of something that cannot be leaked onto the internet.  We're holding it on Monday and i have to bring food.

Your Student,
Ziyi Shao

November 4, 2010

     Today we did desk checking on one of Mr. Arkin's "model answers" for assignment 6 on selection that had spelling errors in it.  We also had to identify all of the functions in that assignment.  For homework we had to desk check three of our selection assignments. 


Your Student, 
Ziyi Shao

November 3, 2010

    Today was bring your kids to work day and i spent 10 hours with my dad watching him work.  This means that i along with most of the grade 9 population did not attend school.

Your Student,
Ziyi Shao

November 2, 2010

    Today is a very special day.  One hundred and ninety five years ago,  George Boole ( the creator of the boolean expressions that is the foundation of modern technology) was born.  We celebrated his birthday in class today as well as studied case statements that are very much similar to if statements.  We also were introduced to new keywords such as case, label, and of and a little bit of loop statements to prevent negative balances.

Your Student, 
Ziyi Shao

November 1, 2010

     Today, we went over question 9 together.  I never realized that i was so incorrect with my answer.  For homework we have to preview selection (II).  We also have to change our wikispaces account settings so that every time someone changes or makes a new discussion page, we get an email.

Your Student,

Ziyi Shao