Mini-Labs
The mini labs done by each person are valuable to other members of team; they are all part of testing. The goal of FRQ mini-labs is to help you explore, learn to code, and establish the abililty to communicate and collaborate with you team members. Additionally, you will showcase and record; specifically sharing work with another table. Finally, you will edit and share highlights of recording through video editing.
Continuous Communication is Key
If there is one important skill you need to quickly pick up at the start of your Project Journey, it is to plan, communicate, code, communicate, commit, communicate, and share! Let me reiterate it until it sinks into your brain: communicate your work as often as needed! The tech industry moves at a fast pace, so if you want to ensure that all your hard work doesn’t go to waste, communication is essential.
So, how can you achieve that? Here are a few steps:
Regularly update your team members on your progress, even if you’re not finished yet. One effective way to do this is by sharing small nuggets of the most interesting pieces or insights about your work with the relevant people, such as your pair programmer, team, cross over team, and teacher. However, ensure that you organize or prepare beforehand.
You can do this through:
- Shareout messages via platforms like Slack, Discord, or Emails.
- Pair meetings.
- Standup meetings.
- Crossover reviews.
- Live reviews with your teacher.
Whenever you come across a noteworthy insight, take the time to prepare your thoughts and share them. The act of preparation and sharing will help you identify gaps, inconsistencies, clarify misunderstandings on key concepts, and more. If these communications go unnoticed, you are not effectively collaborating.
Find the right sharing cadence for you, your team members, and stakeholders. Experiment with different sharing frequencies until you discover the one that works best for everyone. Sharing only at the end or when you think you are done is the wrong approach. Remember, everything in tech is a “Work in Progress.” Iteration is the path through which great ideas progress into reality.
In school, it’s common to work in isolation for extended periods and share only when we believe we are finished. However, sharing also includes committing code frequently. In the tech industry, there is no time for delayed sharing or late commits. Therefore, increase your sharing pace, do it frequently, and commit your work often!
FRQ Hacks
During the year we need to learn the four types of FRQs.
- Pick a question of type 01 from one of the years posted on the former EXAM page. Solve the problem, including missing pieces in a Jupyter Notebook.
- Make this a quality blog. My suggestion each member of team do a different type of FRQ, to make reviews and grading more valuable.
- Browse through multiple questions, find questions that mayhave future PBL interest for you or team.
- FRQ No. 1: Methods and Control Structures
- FRQ No. 2: Classes
- FRQ No. 3: Array/ArrayList
- FRQ No. 4: 2D Array
Regarding Array/ArrayList/2D Arrays
It is really import that each student learn to iterate through Arrays, ArrayLists, and 2D arrays. On these FRQs, make sure you do some extra work to highlight these concepts, if they are not present in the FRQ.
- Change or add data to arrays, easier for ArrayList. How would you do it for others?
- Displaying Array/ArrayList by columns, as well as by rows horizontally
- Display content backwards
Live Grading Presentation.
On Live grading reviews each team will present to another Table/Team while the Teacher observes. Each team will have 10 minutes to go over their FRQs; or a little over 2 minutes per FRQ.
- Create a Team Review and Review Ticket for all 4 FRQs with each Team Member participating in the discussion.
- Record presentations and make a highlight clip 30 seconds to 1 minute on each of the FRQs. There will be a live review to go over final review ticket and clips.
Presentation. Introduce ‘FRQ lesson’ and introduce how you plan to present the Material(s).
- Have parts that each person will go over.
- Consider an activity or illustration other than Code/Code/Coding to learn about each FRQ.
- Outside sources can be used to complement the lesson: College Board, Khan Academy, etc
- It would be interesting if you adapt FRQs, so that they work together. This would show your ability to plan and produce something useful.
Live Review requirements
- If code is not given by College Board you must complete it, your FRQs must run.
- Jupyter Notebooks contain comments and markdown cells that describe work, in this case it should be easy to understand FRQ, purpose, and funciton.
- Show grades and blog(s)/comments used during reviews.
- Java output of cells in Jupyter Notebook is required when posting.