The goals for this first class are to introduce course participants to one another and to the course.Introductions
It is important for participants to know each other since they will work together throughout the course. This includes working on project teams during the second part of the course. But it also includes students' helping each other with problems whenever they arise. To promote this concept of cooperative learning, the course includes several on-line tools that can help you pose and find answers to questions, "talk" with fellow students through the Internet, and search for information within course materials. Look on the bottom of the course homepage for a list of these tools and links you can follow the get to them.To start the process, introduce yourselves to one another. Below is a list of topics you might cover about yourself that could be helpful to other participants.
- Students
- Name
- Major
- Programming experience
- Web experience
- Anything else of interest
- Teaching Assistant(s)
- Instructor
Course Materials
The best way to become acquainted with the course is to review the introductory materials and the course schedule. A list of links to the most relevant pages is included below.An important concept to pay particular attention to is that this is a course on the Web - not just the course subject matter, programming within the contexts of the World Wide Web and the Internet, but the course, itself. Most of the content will be presented through a Web browser, both during class but also while you are studying or programming elsewhere. Your work for the course will be presented through a personal "homepage" you create for your course-related work that, in turn, links to pages for each assignment and project. This will enable your instructor and class assistant(s) to review your work easily, and it will allow your fellow students to see alternative solutions. As you no doubt know, learning to program involves not just writing your own code but also studying the code of others.
- Course homepage
- Welcome
- Abstract
- Description
- Schedule
- Class web example
- Supplementary Books
- Schwartz, R. L.. (1993). Learning Perl. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly & Associates.
- Arnold, K.; & Gosling, J. (1996). The Java Programming Language. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
- Arnold, K.; Yellin, F.; & the Java Team (1996). The The Java Application Programming Interface, Volume 1: Core Packages. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
- Arnold, K.; Yellin, F.; & the Java Team (1996). The Java Application Programming Interface, Volume 2: Window Toolkit and Applets. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Honor Code
While it is desirable that students work together during this course, it is also important that each student be responsible for his or her own work. To help you draw the line between appropriate and inappropriate cooperation, consider the suggestions listed below. The final say-so for sharing work lies, of course, with your instructor. I strongly urge that during this first class, students, instructor and course asistant(s) discuss this issue so that appropriate and inappropriate practices can be identified. However, at anytime during the course, if a question of appropriate use comes up, discuss it with the instructor.
- Use class members as resources.
- Work in teams.
- Work presented as yours must be done primarily by you, and its intellectual content must primarily be yours; discuss any exceptions or uncertainties with the instructor.
- Don't present work you don't understand.
- Conventional rules apply for exams.
- Consult your institutions statement of its honor code policy. Following is an example honor code policy: UNC Honor Code System
Examples of Web Programming
Below is a list of pages you can visit to get an idea of the different kinds of applications that have been developed with the intent of delivering information and/or services through the WWW. Some are programs accessed through a Web server's Common Gateway Interface ( CGI)., which will be considered early in this course, whereas others are Java programs that are delivered through the Internet but run on the user's local workstation; Java will be covered in the second part of the course.
- CGI
- Altavista (search)
- NetWorth
- Echo CGI variables
- Java
- Sort demo
- Graph layout
- ColorJive!
- Weather visualizer
Assignments for Next Class
- Create a directory and homepage for your work in this course. (See the example student coursepage.)
- Find and read on-line documentation for HTTP.