Your assignment directoryEach of you has an account on pascal, and that account has a home directory (which should be world readable). Make yourself a subdirectory NetA2008 in that directory, and within that subdirectory you can place HTML files that show what you are doing. In particular there will be files "Week01.html" and so on showing each week what you have done as further detailed later on. There will also be files "Assignment01.html" and so on. Each of these files should be as plain an HTML file as you can create. I am not only not impressed by "spinning wheels" and things like that I am hostile toward them, for our purposes. I will have prototype HTML files in my own directory and you are totally welcome to use those as templates for what you do. Take a look at http://mscs.mu.edu/~doug/NetA2008 for these files. The text is not so flattering to the instructor, so you had better edit the files if you decide to copy them to use as templates.
Suggestions for the work
Capsule each weekEach week, within say 10 days from the Wednesday on which the last lecture for the week is given, you should post a (usually short) web page called "Week N" for that week summarizing what you did that week and what you think you learned that week. You can also note any problems you encountered. It is totally OK to struggle and have trouble and your instructor will never "think you are stupid" or "a poor student" for this: but if you never try your instructor may begin to think you are lazy, perhaps. You are not expected to know "what to do" in advance, and this instructor will never tell you. You are expected to (perhaps slowly) figure out what to do, and to actually accomplish this on frequent occasions. Examples as appropriateWhen a topic comes up for which it seems you need to actually create your own example you will be asked to do so. Your instructor will have given you such an example, or the basics of one, so you can modify that to begin with. You are welcome to construct your own on any related topic that is of interest to you, but you are also totally welcome to begin with one that has been given to you. Talking with friends and other students is allowed and encouraged, but attribution to them of any actual content is mandatory. We all learn from one another but we also learn to give credit where credit is due. Blatant copying without acknowledgement is totally prohibited, and will be penalized if it occurs. My assumption is that all of you realize these are things you are likely to need some day, and thus you actually need to learn how to do them for yourself and will take the time and effort to do so. FrustrationComputer science as much as any field seems designed mainly to create frustration, and one of the most important characteristics need in those who wish to work in the field is "ability to cope with frustration". It is always "just a tiny detail" such as a missing comma, or a misunderstood direction in a manual, that created your problem, and you always feel "after the fact" that you were stupid and the problem was really simple. So just relax and get used to it, and do not let it discourage, but also do not let it defeat you. Learn some steps perhaps that will help avoid the particular kind of mistake in the future. TemplatesThis instructor is a great believer in "never writing the same thing twice" in the sense that once you have gotten something that works modify it for future work and do not start the thing all over again. There are just too many ways already to get the computer upset over your syntax, and do not even bother trying to fill your memory with tiny details of this. Get it right once, and in subsequent reuse you will be close to correct already, and can more readily isolate the errors, which should be new. |
What to do
Using showcodeTo prepare your assignments you might consider the tool showcode . that I use for preparing examples GradingNominally, there are actually 10 assignments and a final. These will "count" approximately 60% for assignments and 40% for final. I have never been known for using any highly formal procedure for attaching numbers to assignments or final and following a rigid procedure for deducing grades from those, and am unlikely to start now. I will try to use my best professional judgment, taking into account where you seem to have started and where you seem to have ended up in the course, how much energy and effort you seem to have put into learning things (and of course how smart you are to begin with:--). I am very much more interested in whether you learned that how much you knew when you started, or in endorsing your brilliance, so am a big believer in "A for effort". Try to focus your work on learning to understand what the protocols are and why they exist, along with how you can use them. |