The upper-level classmen in Brother Neal’s Computer Science course have been working all semester to learn introductory computer programming concepts. Once the students in the Computer Science course mastered topics such as if-else statements and graphics drawing commands, they progressed on to more advanced topics like loops and animations. One other very useful concept that these students are learning is to program graphical user interface objects, which includes text boxes, radio buttons and check boxes. Students in Computer Science I focus on writing code in the Visual Basic .NET programming language. Hopefully after completing the semester-long course, our Computer Science students have learned enough of one programming language that they would be able to apply their knowledge to any future languages that they would study and are prepared to tackle similar coursework in a college-level course.
At the start of the spring semester, these same students have elected to either continue on into the Computer Science I Honors course or move into either the department’s Computer Applications II course or the Game Programming Foundation I elective for senior students. The Computer Science I Honors course goes into advanced programming concepts and focuses a on tasks related to creating and manipulating lists. This very powerful skill leads students into working with two-dimensional arrays as well as reading and writing to files. Students who move into the Computer Applications II elective learn about web page creation with HTML, CSS and Javascript. Seniors who chose to take the Game Programming Foundation I elective focus on the game development career pathway and use an application called Game Maker in their course work.
Along with the courses previously mentioned, the Computer Science Department also offers students the opportunity to take Computer Applications I, Digital Media, and Computer Science II Honors. To learn more about each of these courses, please visit our Computer Science Department’s webpage: https://www.brothermartin.com/academics/computer-science/.
