CSC322.01 2016S, Class 01: An Introduction to the Course ======================================================== Please grab an index card and the academic honesty policy. (If you grabbed the academic honesty policy when you were in 321, you need not grab it now.) _Overview_ * Preliminaries. * Admin. * Upcoming Work. * Extra Credit. * Questions. * Course Preview. * Quick Course Overview. * The Projects. * Introductions. * Strengths Finder * Team Activities * Team building. * R&ecaute;umeé reviews. * Course Preview Continues * More Syllabus Stuff. * Wrapup. Preliminaries ------------- ### Admin * Welcome back to campus. * New department academic honesty policy available at . ### Upcoming Work * Discuss your project with your team. * Prepare questions for your community partners. ### Good Things to Do #### Academic * CS Table *Tuesdays*! Upcoming topic: Facebook's Walled Indian Internet * CS Extras *Thursdays*! Today's topic: Summer research. Next week's topic: \LaTeX. #### Peer * Women's BBall vs. Ripon Saturday at 3pm. ### Questions Quick Course Overview --------------------- * Building a medium/large project; continuous * With a real client (but not mission critical) * Mentored by an alumnus/a The Projects ------------ *Current, past, and simulated students will come and talk about their projects.* * What is the project? * Who is the client? * In what stage is the project? (Just beginning, nearing completion, somewhere in between.) * Why should someone want to work on this project? * _Questions from the class._ Board Bank * Greater Powesheik Community Foundation works with multiple nonprofits that have governing boards. They need members for the boards. * Current mechanism doesn't let people know about all the opportunities available and doesn't let boards know about possible members. Plus it's on paper. * So we're building the matchmaker for people and boards. * Client is GPCF; Nicole Brua-Behrens is an awesome person to work with. * Should be ready to roll out this semester. * It's meaningful and important. * You get to read beautiful legacy code and see the project being rolled out. * Current foci for the semester: Better filtering of search results; Make it look professional; Squash those buggies (and there are a lot) * No continuing members. But we have four former contributors available for advice. Grant Application Management Project (GAMP; it doesn't have charts) * Building a Web application for GPCF to manage grant applications. * Currently handled manually (email, Google docs, ad hoc solutions). * The Web is a better solution; lets us manage applications more easily. * Partner: Greater Powesheik Community Foundation; work with Nicole, who is really nice. * Current state: Near completion. Functional aspects are there. It even looks better. But there's room for growth, particularly for administrative stuff. Usability studies may also be necessary. * Likely to be adapted to other purposes this semester. * Similar reasons to work on this (yay legacy code), plus the chance to adapt code to a new purpose. * It supports important things, such as educational opportunities and food banks. * The commercial version that GPCF won't buy is $40K. * No continuing members. But we have former contributors available for advice. Community Resource Portal * A new project from last semester. * There is a huge PDF of community resources (housing, job search, expectant mothers). Goal of making the information available more easily, particularly if your primary internet access is through a mobile phone. * Web site exists and scales for different device sizes. * It's such an awesome project that AOAs choose to work on it in their spare time. * Hope to put the resource in the hands of MICA soon so that it can be much more of a live document. * Clever links to outside resources, such as Google docs. * Close to MVP (Minimum Viable Product) * Needs to move to Heroku and to the client. * Needs to have better search, such as closeness search. * Wants a calendar feature too. * Agh! Creeping featurism. * Every county has something like Mid-Iowa Community Action, so there's a good chance that this could be used statewide. * Partner: Mid-Iowa Community Action. * You don't have to worry about the design! But you do have to crush bugs and add features. Still a new project. And likely to have a huge impact. Also open ended; can grow indefinitely. * WBC will be continuing on the project, and AOA is our mentor. Text Message Notification System * Partner(s): MICA and Project Head Start (pre-K) * Need: An efficient way to notify parents of students of important issues (e.g., school closings) both as a group and individually. * Text message notification system; assign students to classrooms, etc. * Important privacy issues: Teachers should not see classrooms other than their own; Admins can only see certain classrooms. * Close to MVP (minimum viable product). Needs some real testing and bug fixing this semester. Partners want to try it soon. * New features: Partners also want scheduled notification and email notification. * Why? Interesting to work with external things, like email and text messages. Security is a big challenge. Awesome group members. * Two continuing members. * Sending messages with a Gem. Introductions ------------- *We will be working together for the semester. We should know a little bit about each other.* * What do you like to be called * Preferred Gender Pronoun * Where are you from? * When you have spare time, how do you like to spend that spare time? * What will you bring to the class? Bring * TD: UX/Front end * NS: UX/Front end * MH: UX/Front end * EE: UX/Front end; knows Active Records * RHB: Back end; Strategic * SS: Likes to design things; Willing to work on anything; Proactive * EM: Learns well * WBC: Interpersonal skills * LG: Depth of experience * RG: Planning and Learning ; Willingness to do the grunt work * KC: UX/Front end * CMV: Organizational skills * AOA: Lots of experience working on Web applications in multiple contexts. * AS: Interpersonal skills * DC: Organizational and interpersonal skills * DW: Knows multiple programming languages; collaborates well; likes Data Science * DM: Interpersonal workhorse * DK: Math and an Analytical Mindset * AD: Leadership; willing to Speak out; Web site design * RJ: Detail orientation, good for tracking down and squashing bugs. Likes coding. * AM: Hodgepode of technologies. Knows systems/servcie integration. * AS: Has been through this before. Has learned from failure. * B?: Strategizing and interpersonal. Projects, Revisited ------------------- *Once you have finished hearing about the projects, spend five minutes thinking about the projects and provide me with a ranked list.* * Board Bank (DC, MH, NS, AS, SS) * Grant Application Management Program (BL, AS, EM, DK, RJ) * Resource Portal (RG, DM, AD, TD, DW, BC) * Text Notification System for Head Start (AM, CMV, KC, LG, EE, RHJB) Strengths Finder ---------------- * Fortunately, somone else runs this section of today's class. More Important Issues --------------------- *You may think this course is about building software, but ...* * Working with people who aren't computer scientists * Working in a team * Testing, testing, testing More Syllabus Stuff ------------------- * Expected workload. * 3 hours per week in class. * 3 hours per week outside of class. * Time for coding, reflect, meet with community partners. * Grading * Rubrics for presentations (weekly). * Final portfolio. * Schedule (and its structure). * This week: Setup * Next week: First meeting with community partners * Following week: Alumni mentors (minus one). Plan to be in class from noon until 5:30 p.m. * Two week sprints * Week one: Define tasks formally (using RSpec or Cucumber) * Week two (and parts of week one): Accomplish tasks, Demos in class * Wrapup and presentations * Turn in portfolio during finals week. Team Building ------------- * Introduce yourself quickly to your team members. * Read each other's R&ecaute;umeé's. Discuss what they tell you about the other members of your team. R&ecaute;umeé reviews ---------------------------- Reread the r&ecaute;umeés of the folks in your group, keeping the following questions in mind. * What story does the r&ecaute;umeé tell? (If you had to summarize the person in two sentences based on this r&ecaute;umeé, what would you say?) * What is something in this r&ecaute;umeé that you might adapt for your own r&ecaute;umeé? * What makes this r&ecaute;umeé stand out from the others you read? * What are two things you would improve in this r&ecaute;umeé? I will wander through groups. I will also provide my own critiques in next week's class. Wrapup ------ * Whatever is left