Homework 1: A CS151 Web Site

Assigned: Tuesday, 3 September 2002
Due: 9:00 a.m., Wednesday, 11 September 2002
No extensions!

Summary: In this assignment, you will build a small Web site dedicated to some aspect of introductory computer science.

Purposes: To give you more experience in writing useful HTML. To give you incentive to explore more deeply some aspect of the course or of computer science.

Collaboration: You should works in groups of two or three. You may not work alone. You may not work in groups of four. You may discuss your site and the assignment with anyone you wish. You may obtain help from anyone you wish, but you should clearly document that help (perhaps with an extra citations page).

Assignment

Create a Web site (a collection of your own pages) with at least six pages (including a Home Page or Front Door for the site but not including the citations/acknowledgements pages for the site) dedicated to some topic relating to introductory computer science. I realize that you don't know much about introductory CS right now, but this is a chance for you to explore a little bit.

You can explore almost any aspect of the course we've started to cover or that you think will be interesting. For example, you might create a site that

• collects, compares, and contrasts definitions of computer science.
• presents basic facts about Scheme and functional programming. If you do such a site, you'll be challanged to try to read definitions of things you don't understand, using terms you don't understand (but can try to learn about).
• provides some information about the four key programming paradigms (imperative, functional, object-oriented, and declarative).
• explains what can go wrong when you try to give some instructions for a simple task (perhaps with some of the morals that I gave you). You might even simulate our in-class exercise.
• compares introductory computer science curricula at a variety of colleges. If you do such a site, you'll have the opportunity to try to figure out what different places choose to do.
• explores the relationship between physical and logical markup. (Yes, I know that it's not a significant part of the class, but it's something we've covered so far.)
• explores workshop-style teaching. (Or perhaps teaching methods in general.)
• presents accessibility issues for computer programs (or Web pages).

As part of this assignment, you should consider how putting your information in a Web site is different than putting your information in a paper. How do you structure information differently? Similarly? (I suppose you could even dedicate your site to that issue.)

Checking Your Work

All of your pages should be correct HTML (which you can check at http://validator.w3.org).

All of your writing should be grammatically correct.

All of your pages should be generally accessible, which you can check by trying to access them from someone else's account in MathLAN and also somewhere else on campus.

Any ideas you take from elsewhere should be properly cited. Any help you receive from someone else should be properly cited. (A link to the appropriate place on a citations or acknowledgements page is one nice way to do such citations.)

Turning It In

Email me the URL of your site's Front Door. Each group of two or three should send me one URL. It is likely that I will include links to your site somewhere in the course web, so it will be accessible everywhere. (We can also see how long it takes to get indexed by search engines. :-)