CS 100
Fall, 2008 straight
Information & syllabus
Office: 218 Claxton. Phone: 974-5067. Office Hours: TR 1-2pm, etc
Email: straight@utk.edu web: http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~
Main CS 100 web page: http://www.cs.utk.edu/~cs100
Exams: Sept 18, Oct 23,
and Nov 25. During alternatives period the exam time will be used
for a make-up for anyone who needs it.
Grading: A: 93-100+. A-: 90-92. B+: 87-89. B: 83-86. B-: 80-82. C+: 77-79.
C: 73-76. C-: 70-72.
D+ : 67-69. D: 63-66. D-: 60-62. F: below 60.
Labs: Claxton 104. These are PCs running Windows XP. Labs start the week of
August 25th.
Your web pages: these
will be on both: http://web.utk.edu/~YourNETID
http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~
Registering for webspace at the http://web.utk.edu site: see my web page:
http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~
Blackboard: all UTK students
get Blackboard accounts. You’ll use these for the submission
of labs and homework, etc, and the lab and homework assignments are
there.
Resources: Dr Heather
Booth has some lecture notes on Blackboard from when she taught this
course. I have lots of stuff at my website at the top of this
page, and there is also some material at the main CS 100 site.
In addition, http://www.wikipedia.org is an excellent and usually factual
resource.
Grading: Exams:
15% each. Labs: 30%. Homework: 10% Other:
15%--this includes attendance at labs, and I will occasionally take
attendance in class, and it also includes other intangibles.
Overall: I created this
course in Spring, 1996, and it has gone through many changes since then.
We make no assumption about background here. We’ll teach you
about basic architecture, some programming with graphics using Python,
networking, some spreadsheets, etc. This is not intended as a
programming class, but you’ll learn enough about the basics to get
a grasp of how software works.
In the labs, you’ll be doing what is called “pair programming”. For most of the labs, you’ll be matched with another student (or occasionally 2 other students) and the two (or 3) of you will submit a joint lab. The idea is that letting the two of you help each other and bounce ideas around will be less frustrating. This is quite widely done in industry, and what we have found in CS 100 for Fall, 2007, and Spring 2008 is that the number of hands being raised to ask the GTAs (or me) for help was reduced by about 60%.
VITAL: when you submit
joint labs, the names of all the people must be on it—failure to do
so will result in everyone (not just the missing person) losing 10 points
on that lab.
Texts: there are no required
texts. There should be Teach Yourself HTML in 10 Minutes at the
bookstore (or at Amazon) for about $17. The same publisher
has Teach Yourself HTML and CSS in 24 Hours (about $25). Not in
the UT bookstore, but easily available through Amazon, etc. These
are reasonable if you want to learn more about web design. And
they’re cheap—one text at the UT Bookstore runs $280.
Rough outline/syllabus:
Introduction
Basic computer architecture
Data representation
Operating systems and networks
The Internet and HTML
The Python programming language.
Algorithms
Additional site for web design: http://www.w3schools.com