Afterward (Afterword)

It has already been a couple of weeks into second semester. So many things have happened since my last blog post.

Exams were finally over, and then came exam review day. My mark was... not entirely satisfying. However, I can say that my final mark was higher than my mid-terms, and I got perfect on my culminating activity.

You know, the material in this course wasn't difficult. The experience, I can honestly say, was. I decided to finally write the afterword today, because I have made the ultimate decision: take ICS as my elective in Grade 10. Why? Is it because of my rebellious nature? One would think that it goes again my entire perspective on ICS. But thinking back at all the things I learned, my final choices of my one and only elective were: Computer Science and Anthropology, Sociology, & Psychology. I know a lot of the course material of the latter choice from reading online eBooks and articles. So, I figured, why not choose something beneficial for my future since I want to go into business?

This is it. The last and final blog post. I will continue to blog on a somewhat-regular basis with another blog linked to this account. Watch out for that! Maybe you will hear about my experiences in ICS next year! :)

Day Thirteen: The Finale (2011-01-21)

Have you ever watched soap operas? Probably. You know how usually the finale gets the most excitement? Well, this is it. The last day of Computer Science class.

Today we had a class party and filled out an end-of-course survey. The first question asked, "Describe this course in one word." I wrote down, "Overwhelming." And it truly was. I won't dare say I hate it, but I won't lie and say I had an absolute wonderful time taking this course. I definitely found that some aspects of the course were difficult. However, did I ever learn new things! What's more is that they were things I would be able to apply into the real world-- especially the web design unit. Creating Turing programs helped me better my problem solving skills. Lastly, I really learned to improve my learning skills, starting with not procrastinating.

Did you notice? This is the first ever blog post that I didn't start the writing with "Today"! Some phenomenon, no? I am joking. That is all that really happened today. I will post an Afterword shortly to explain the goals I want to achieve regarding the course, blogging, and this school year in general. It will probably be after exams. Wish me luck!

Day Twelve: On the Twelve Day of Christmas... (2011-01-20)

Today, which actually means yesterday, was the last day to work on the culminating project. For three hours, it was January 21, 2011. I never expected for the editing of the culminating activity to be that consuming.

But we are finally finished! If you want to see what Pearl, Zarin, Tasfia, and Shreya has been working on these past three weeks, look at our Wikispaces file postings! If you ever want to learn about Selection in the Turing language, you know where to go!

Our final assignment included:

1. PDF version of 64-paged Turing manual
2. Advertisement of manual
3. Answer keys of exercises in Turing files (CD)
4. Statement of copyrights (CD)
5. Instructions for utilizing the CD version of manual (CD)
6. Watermarked "Not-for-sale" PDF version of Turing manual (CD)

Horrah! Horrah! We are done! We are done! I look forward to the party in class tomorrow..err.. after lunch. :) That is, after I get myself some sleep. Goodbye!

Day Eleven: The Penultimate Day (2011-01-19)

Today was the second last day to work on our culminating projects. So I have officially been getting less than 6 hours of sleep each night for the past week. I really look forward to the end of exams.

We are practically done. That is, if we are not complete perfectionists! A lot of final editing needs to be completed. The final set of exercises and its respective answer keys is the last thing on our list. Horrah!

Also, I just realized that my blogs are getting shorter everyday. So here is something to add on. I was quite happy that we didn't have volleyball practices this week, seeing as it is right before exams and the end of culminating. I figured out this morning from the team manager, Henry, that I missed practice yesterday evening. And the practices go on tomorrow and on Thursday...! Anyways, for the love of volleyball, I will be happy to attend the practices this week! After all, the computer science culminating activity for my group is almost complete! :)

Day Ten: Exam 111 (101) (2011-01-18)

Today, Mr. Arkin told us the structure of the final examination. Ahh! It will be out of 111 marks! Well, I suppose it is not that bad. I am just afraid of what to expect. The good thing is that, according to Mr. Arkin, all the material we need to know is posted on touque.ca

We continued to progress on our Turing manual. It is going along really nicely! I project that in a few more days, we should be finished. I really look forward to our final product!

Day Nine: Proofreading, Proofreading (2011-01-17)

Today we received the laminated versions of our mosaic projects. Well, because there was delay on the delivery of the legal copies, I will receive mine tomorrow. I am actually kind of nervous, as the version I see on my monitor at home is different from what will be printed.

Anyways, here is the update on my culminating activity. Pearl finished editing up to page 10 out of 40+ pages of the manual now. I will finish the rest tomorrow night.  

We have to redo the editor window pictures instead of them named as unnamed.

That is about it. I am starting to become extremely sleep deprived, as I have only been getting 5 hours of sleep every night for the past few days.

Day Eight: When I Get Lazy... (2011-01-14)

If you are wondering about the title. I am joking. I am just a bit stressed with all the culminating activities arising. However, we, the group, has been very keen about completing the manual. The bad news is that it looks like there is going to be a lot of work needed before we can move our attention to anything else.

Shreya finished the screenshot requests, but it looks like I have to redo them. That is alright, as it wouldn't take too long. In addition, The Test Two is finally completed.

Another copy of our manual is up on dropbox. It looks like the manual is changing on a daily basis. We have to be careful, though. This is because we must take the most recent copy of the manual to edit. If not, all the work the previous person did is clobbered.

So without futher ado, there are the outstanding tasks for our manual:
1. Everything is finished except answer keys, glossary, index, references, and exercises.
2. Finish components in number one by Friday
3. Formatting of manual by Sunday, Owner: Tasfia
3. Proofread everything by Wed, Owner: Lisa and Pearl

Day Seven: Together At Last (2011-01-12)

Today was quite a productive day. Things are finally coming together. We have the edited If Statements lesson and posted up a Dropbox link; Zarin has finished the rough draft of the Case Statements lesson and has also posted up a Dropbox link.

The Glossary is coming along quite nicely as well. The definitions just need to be "spiced up" a little, and I think we're fine. Thank you, Shreya!

I will finish the Introduction by tomorrow, and I just submitted the test one. Test two will be completed shortly.

I also created a Screenshot Requests page, similar to our Flow Chart request page.

Ahh! There are only 8 days until the deadline!

Day Six: So It Continues (2011-01-11)

Today we, once again, got more class time. Progress continues in our group. I trust that by tomorrow or Thursday, we should be finishing the last 10% of our assignment. The plan is to finish this in advance so we can focus on exams and the aesthetics and final touches of the manual.

Day Five: Cinq Ados Qui Travaillent Fort (2011-01-10)

Today, We got more class time. Compared to day one, my culminating project group progressed at an incredible speed! We submitted our proposal and finished: the complete lesson for if statements, the cover, a teaser, a table of contents, introduction, About the Authors, Author's message, and part of the lesson for case statements.

In addition, we have a new member: Shreya. Since we are almost done, we will take care of all the trivial aspects of the manual. Well, I wouldn't say trivial, but she would work on the glossary with Pearl and hopefully the CD if we decide to make one.

Day Three & Four: Double Absence (2011-01-07)

I forgot to write a blog yesterday, so without further ado, here it goes:

Yesterday, I missed class, because I wasn't feeling well. I slept at 3:45am that night in addition to the volleyball game and night class. So, it was kind of expected. The good thing was that I had some time to revise my mosaic project. According to the daily log and my classmates, I missed a lesson on how to convert a file into PDF. Fortunately, my dad taught me how to do that a while ago when I was in Grade 5 and created a magazine, called Megazine, with a friend. So, I didn't have a problem with that. The only other thing I missed was class time to work on the group project.

Today, we had more class time to work on the project. Well, that was only according to my peers and the daily log. I missed class yet another time, because I had to attend a tournament in at Woburn CI. We lost in the semi-finals. If we didn't, we would've placed second place taking into account that the school in first place was an entire team of club players.

Before I left for the tournament, though. I sent the dropbox link to Naeem and Mr. Arkin. According to Naeem, I have to resend the link this time the message cannot contain any other text than the link.

I can finally take a breather this weekend and progress in the group culminating project. Horrah!

Day Three: Exhaustion (2011-01-05)

Today we had our final work period for the Mosaic Project. Proposals are starting to be posted, and work is progressing towards the group culminating project. The group agreed that we will be hitting the project hard after the deadline for the Mosaic project. Everyone is working hard.

I can't honestly say the same. I had a volleyball game at Earl Haig today after school. Then, I took the bus to Finch station and another to my night class. I didn't get home until 9:45pm. I am extremely exhausted right now. So, after I finish this post, I will finish up my writing. I am at 1750 words. AHH! It will be extremely painful to shorten afterwards. Then, I will work on the HTML/CSS. I already have a CSS file for my printer assignment, and a design in mind. Breath, breath Lisa.

Oh, right! I forgot to post a link to the Wikispace for my culminating project. As I mentioned previously, it is private, but you can request a membership to see the kind of work and discussion we have. www.vpcamanual.wikispaces.com.

That is all, goodbye, Blogger!

Day Two: A Wonderful Prospect (2011-01-04)

Today we received feedback from Mr. Arkin in regards to our Mosaic Project topics. Well, it was more approval and disapproval than feedback. According to Mr. Arkin, I had to provide clarification to my topic. At the end, I changed my topic to: The Evolution of Natural-Language Translators. This was in place of "Machine Translators." Apparently Machine Translators translate among programming and computing languages. This is quite strange, because according to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_translation, Machine Translation is computer-aided translation.Well, it is not very crucial what the title of my article is as long as the information is valid.

We also had our introduction to our major culminating projects. I was initially in a group with Pearl and Zarin. Then, because Tasfia missed class that day, she spoke to me after school, and she is officially a member of our group. Since none of the group members had Skype, and only Pearl and I had MSN, there was a conflict in how we can discuss our plans. So, I thought of the idea of using Wikispaces. Pearl helped me create a private wikispace (it is a 30-day trial), and I updated the Wikispace with a schedule. The first task on the list is drafting the proposal for Mr. Arkin. Ownership was assigned, and our first draft was on the way!

I have a good feeling about the group culminating project! That is, after I complete my mosaic project...

Day One: A Mosaic of Work (2011-01-03)

School is back! As much as I enjoyed my winter break, we have to face reality. Sigh. So, right off the bat, we were assigned part one of our culminating project. It is the Mosaic Project. We have to research a certain topic and write an article on it. The article will be presented in the form of a web page. We then will have to convert it into a PDF file and give money to Mr. Arkin for him to print it at Staples. When all the projects are printed, they will be displayed in the hallway. Because there are different sizes of paper, they will create a very cool "mosaic" effect. Quite an innovative project, I would say.

I was quite surprised when I heard about the due date, but I suppose I just have to live with it. The project is due on Wed. Tomorrow, we will learn about the second part of our culminating activity. According to Mr. Arkin, it will require a lot more work.

I am beginning to fear culminating activities. Soon after, there will be exams. Yikes!

In class I picked the topic, Natural-Language Translators. When I got home, I did some more research and revised the title a bit. It is now: The Evolution of Machine Translators

I will continue my research right now. Some facts are quite fascinating, may I say. Goodbye!