Object-Oriented Teaching
For Spring semester 2016 I am teaching a course on “Object-Oriented” Programming at Westmont College. It’s been a long time since I’ve taught a lower-division Computer Science course, but I’m really looking forward to introducing students to Java and object-oriented thinking. So far the group are really newbies to programming (except for one). This is the largest group of students we’ve had in a cohort in a while: we had to move across campus to find accommodations.
Innovations with Drones
Some things that I’m trying to do in this course to innovate it up are to introduce drone scheduling into the mix. I’ve got four drones that I’d like to put to use to that end. I’d like to have the students do a competition in which they program a drone delivery service for people. Something like Amazon drone delivery meets Google Self-Driving cars meets Uber. Of course it won’t carry real people, but it could be a good thought exercise beyond a traditional elevatore example.
Good textbook
I’m pleasantly surprised with our book “Big Data, Early Objects“. It is structured better than most of the books that I have picked up recently to learn other more experimental languages. Lots of really good examples and practice exercises. It’s obviously been iteratively improved on several occasions.
The course webpage can be found here: http://djp3.westmont.edu/classes/2016_01_CS030/structure.html
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