The first week of AIC is over. What have they learned? The first day we reviewed HTML forms. On Wednesday, they learned the syntax for PHP. On Friday, they learned how to process forms using the PHP superglobals. Back in my day, we didn’t have superglobals. We just had regular globals. No really. It’s true. PHP would just automagically create variables; we were way too trusting back when I was their age. I also went over JavaScript on Friday, but they didn’t do any exercises with it.

In general, the thing I was most worried about was pacing. This is a new class, so I wasn’t sure how much material would be appropriate. In general, I feel as if the exercises are taking longer than I thought they would (well, for most students). I think most of my overestimation came from expecting them to be better programmers. I’ve been programming almost non-stop. While I’ve forgotten a lot (entire languages and libraries), I never forgot about programming itself. My students, on the other hand, my have taken Java summer, or two summers, ago and then never used it. Next year, Dev and I decided that the first HW assignment should include some programming review. We already had HTML review for the first assignment.

Maybe tomorrow (ach, not tomorrow, way too busy… class prep, lunch, class, then house night), I will post some of the assignments we’ve done.

Still, the overall structure we have for learning the material is still in place. At least that pacing has gone okay.

So, wow, they’ve learned two programming languages already.

I remain excited. The students are fun. Some of their assignments cracked me up. I brought Resistance for break (and somehow managed to lose track of one of my other spies, oops… I’m usually so good at that game). No great stories from that, but one student seemed to be a natural spy.

The first project has now been assigned and I can’t wait to see what they do with that.

Next week is jQuery and form validation.