The Wisconsin Idea is “the principle that the university should improve people’s lives beyond the classroom.” To us, this is important because as students at the University of Wisconsin, we had the privilege to take an introductory course to computer programming. However, people in the state, nation, and world do not have the same opportunity as we do. Because of this, we want to share our knowledge beyond the scope of the university with this webpage.
The topics we chose are intended to educate on the basics of Java programming. We wanted to teach people on the fundamentals of computer programming and for this reason we chose three general topics: the difference between hardware and software, an explanation of different data types used in Java, and an overview of some reserved words in Java.
Vito Freese & Mitch Szeflinski
Because our topics were chosen to inform on the basics of computer programming, our target audience will be consisted of people that have no programming experience. We want to spark the interest of computer programming for people who have never tried it before. For this reason, the content will be most beneficial to people in grade school through high school that don’t have the access to a computer programming course.
For each of the three topics listed above, we’ve created interactive exercises to help people understand the content.
Hardware vs. Software
We have provided a link to a description of the differences between hardware and software. We also have a link to the interactive quiz to test your knowledge on the difference between hardware and software. See if you can get a higher score than your friends!
Data Types
We have provided a link to a description of the different data types in Java. We also have a link to the crossword puzzle to test your knowledge on the data types.
Reserved Words
We have provided a link to a description of the reserved words in Java. We also have a link to a word search to test your knowledge on the reserved words. See if you can complete the word search without referring back to the description that we have provided!
If we had more time and resources, we would go more in depth into computer programming. Topics such as the main method, basic methods, and the definition of a class are some of the topics we would explore next.
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/nutsandbolts/datatypes.html, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_computer_hardware, Java For Everyone by Cay Horstmann, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Java_keywords, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software
| CS302 | The Wisconsin Idea Project | Fall 2012 Instructor: Deppeler |
|---|