2nd Semester OPP & Projects

So as Juniors in the Open Program Passions class (OPP), we have a certain criteria or quota of assignments we have to meet as students by the end of the 2nd semester. The idea of 2nd semester OPP is going to mimic the 2nd semester in OP:  it's going to be completely open. That is, students will have the block of time to work on whatever they please, keeping in mind, however, the criteria of assignments they must complete by the end of the semester in OPP. 

The word 'assignments' has a super connotative vibe, and I really wish there was a better word I could use in its place. The reason being, the quota of  'assignments' given to us to complete are serious preparations we'll need anyhow. A portfolio of things like college applications, resumes, scholarships, essays for scholarships, and other well prepared documents to ready us for life to come. 

Along with that, we'll also have to choose a much larger, overarching project to complete over the entire course of 2nd semester (sound familiar?). The diversity between these projects is quite incredible! We have students who are job shadowing, interning, publishing educational videos, creating classes; all of which are super diverse and incredibly interesting. 

What I have chosen (to attempt) to do, however, is create OP/OPP's website. It's going to be a landing zone for everything open: information about the program, student pages for OP and OPP members, their blogs/achievements this year or past years, and any other information pertaining to the program and it's status and accomplishments. I have taken Kaden Humphrey and Dylan Geesey sort of under my wing for this project. I plan on teaching them the basics of HTML, CSS, and maybe a little JavaScript in order to help me build the pages for the site. I believe they both plan on doing their own personal sites as well. 

Speaking of personal sites, I finally launched mine last night chancemerrill.com ! It's not a whole lot of anything as of now, but I have a lot of cool future plans for it! If you have any questions or advice/suggestions on OP's site please let me know and comment on this post or contact me at chancemerrill@chancemerrill.com

OPP & OP 2015/2016

So I want to take a minute to talk about Open and what's been happening (you might want to check out Ellen Reckamp's blog if you're really interested). Ellen's project last year was the constructing of phase 2 of OP, an Open Program class for juniors: Open Program Passions (OPP). 

OPP is a class (taught by Ms. Rad to previous OP students as well as juniors that were not previously in OP) that's based around the idea of finding your passion, what you like to do in life, what you might want to do in the future, planning for that future, exploring opportunities, and, in a broad sense, exploring your future. I know how cliche and lame that sounds to some, including myself initially, but in reality it's been one of the most interesting classes and probably the most informational and applicable class I've ever attended. Along with that, the mass advantage of opportunities the class and Ms. Rad have to offer are invaluable. If you seek knowledge, experience, understanding -- anything that you need/want to achieve a certain goal or explore a field of interest -- Ms. Rad will undoubtedly do anything in her power to make it happen. Anything. If you want to invite a doctor into class to talk. Done. If you want to visit a college on zoology. She'd personally call the college and get information. If you want to job shadow a successful businessman. She'd contact a successful business. The resources are unlimited, and that puts us all in a very active state of learning and passion for knowledge.

There is a OP class for sophomores this year as well (again taught by Mr. Glim and Ms. Rad)! The class grew in size from last year and the students are really beginning to enjoy it. Rosie and I had the privilege to sit in on some of the initial classes and observe the new OP students fail at certain tasks and get upset about grades as we had done initially in Open. It was kind of eye-opening to see how far we've come since we were in that same position a year ago. I'm excited to see their progress grow and develop from a position outside of their class. 

What I am most ecstatic about, however, is the project ideas that will soon come out of these intelligent minds! I believe, as of now, most already have a general idea of what they want to execute, which is super cool! I've heard a general sense of what some students wish to do, yet these ideas are incredibly susceptible to drastic changes or complete abandonment. A great portion of the Sophomore's 2nd semester projects ideas are community based -- which isn't a bad thing -- however, I will admit I am disappointed that none of the project ideas thus far (remember, these ideas are incredibly susceptible to drastic changes or complete abandonment) produce a physical (or virtual) result or are profitable (entrepreneur-like). I'm aware that the 2nd semester project originally (and still is) focused around the idea of being "community" based, but in my opinion it would be really cool to see a result that hasn't been seen before. Again, this is just my opinion, and, again, absolutely none of their ideas are set in stone.

It's going to be really interesting to watch the sophomores in the program this year, and I really look forward to collaborative projects and thoughts that we will inevitably emerge this year!

Start of a New School Year

Wow, it has been ages since I've wrote anything! Well, I want update y'all on what's been good. School's going great; I love my schedule this year. Finally got a Comp-Sci class here at OHS. It's an online option and a "pilot" program to OHS (I believe 6-8 students are currently enrolled). I've heard rumors of an on-campus option here at OHS that's going to be (maybe?) available in a few years. Anyways, the online class is great! I can honestly say I've learned a boat-load. And the things that I've acquired from my "informal training" from Mr. Larsen have just finally clicked into an entire world of application.
Mr. Larsen and I have continued to meet throughout a portion of the summer, and continue to meet weekly now that school has initiated. We're still drastically improving the calculator (totally ripped out the cluttered entry boxes, created a menu for addons including a simple mass and percent composition calculator, and much more!) and continuing to brainstorm ideas and still plan to develop an application for Android devices. It's pretty great.
In addition to that, I decided to purchase my own domain and toy around with web development a bit.
Mr. Larsen is really an extraordinary man of many talents. Just recently, like it was the most nonchalant information to ever reach the composition of words, he told me he owned his own company and developed web pages professionally. Owned his own company. So, naturally, obviously, I purchased my own domain and bought a book on PHP. My playground of a domain is just that -- a playground, a place where I can dump all my ideas and start practicing PHP, HTML, Perl, and other server-side languages. Eventually, I think it would be cool to have a desktop version of the calculator (as well as an APK?) on the site for public download.

English & Math

I would just like to take some time to discus English and Math within the Open Program. It was our primary duty at the start of the second semester in Open to gather knowledge as a whole and venture through Algebra II and English II at our own pace to obtain standards as proof of mastery. The standards are the very same Common Core standards that the rest of the students outside of the Open Program must acquire conclusively at the end of their classes. It is at our own will and our own way we must complete these standards to pass our classes.
Every student chooses to learn in his or her own manner. For math, I find it easiest working from the pretests and taking the much larger math concepts and breaking them down into smaller, understandable ones. I usually work in a small group (most likely consisting of Alex and Kaden) and when we run into questions we result to Mr. Davidson. We gain most of our standards through the chapter texts like most students choose to do.
For english, things are not as black and white as they are in math. In english, we have a portfolio of writing that we must keep that proves to your teachers that we can write over the course of time and improve as a writer. Along with this portfolio, we also must meet all the English II standards. The cool part is, we can meet these standards by writing (essentially) over whatever we wish.
Both english and math have been exceptionally better than previously; the new style of learning has been quite exciting! As always, if anyone has any questions over absolutely anything, don't hesitate to ask!

A Peek Into the Code (And What it Looks Like)

So I've had a few questions about the code, and I just would like to clear up some confusion and let everyone know kind of what this looks like. The code I'm working with now looks something like this:

Note that the "code" portion is on the right-hand side of the screen, as the PythonShell is on the left. Also note that this is not nearly the code in it's entirety (this is actually quite a small portion as the entire program, as of now, it has about 700 lines of code) and is, in actuality, much larger. The code, when executed, runs the GUI (graphical user interface) which is depicted in my previous blog and is the program. On the left-hand side, you have the Shell, which is where errors are displayed and things can be printed. If something were to be broken, the shell would shoot you an error and I'd have to debug it and make it run; if something doesn't work the code cannot execute and an error will be displayed. Neither the shell nor the code will be visible when a user would be actually using the calculator.

I don't want to venture too much into explaining how the code works due to the fact that it gets really intricate really fast. I did, however, want to show people exactly what I'm doing when I say I am "coding" or "programming." This is pretty much it. Just typing the code on the right side and running it, fixing and tweaking as I go. As always, if you have any questions concerning anything please ask!

The Idea: Adding Compounds Verticaly Could Be The Selling Point

So this is what I have thus far concerning a working calculator.

And if you were to execute a problem:

Now, this example is fairly simple. You get your answers in the right side of the window. You get your answers in three units as well as what the limiting reactant is. Above, you may notice the button to switch between types of problems, and when the contrary is selected a new group of boxes (the boxes which make up a compound for a second product) appear to the right of the last group. This is what the program has looked like in my head for the past year now, and it's super exciting to see it working and running; the pieces starting to fall together! However, whilst proceeding through the writing of the math for the 2 reactant/2 product problems, Mr. Larsen and I realized something:  we need to go bigger. At this moment in time we saw a much bigger picture...a picture that looked something like this: 

  

 A calculator that can add up to 5 reactants and produce up to 5 products. Instead of adding compounds horizontally, we will now be adding them up vertically. The sky's the limit with this. Things to come are input boxes on the sides of each compound to enter the amounts of each compound as well as a drop-down selection for what unit the user's amount is in. I'll also be adding a giant arrow between the reactants and products for effect. One major downfall of doing the calculator like this is that math. The math application towards the solving of the problem only gets more intricate as one starts adding more products and/or reactants and odd combinations could plause issues in the near future. However, this is way too exciting to just get scared off by a few mountains I'll have to climb! I'm excited to see how these new ideas fall into place once the math starts coming together more and more! Again, if anyone has any questions please feel free to ask!

Onward to the next type of problem!

Onward to the next type of problem!

The next step in the calculator is creating an option so that the user can switch between which type of calculation he/she wishes to solve. As I've mentioned before, stoichiometry contains a wide range of very diverse problems that change depending on the situation of the problem, which poses difficulty when trying to create a stable calculator. I've decided to only create two options for problems as far as this year is concerned:  two-reaction one-product (which has already been completed), and two-reaction two-product (which still needs to be created), as well as a button to be able to switch easily between the two types of problems. The button works similar to when you choose your gender when you create a new email. As one circle is selected, the other circle becomes unselected. Each circle will be labeled corresponding to the type of problem it represents. As you click on, and choose which problem you have, the GUI of the calculator changes so that you can solve that type of problem. If you were, let's say, to switch from the two-reaction one-product problem type to the two-reaction two-product problem type, the only thing the user would see visually would be added input boxes for another compound on the right side of the equation (another product). 

Currently, I am finishing up the button's code within the program, and will soon proceed to write the entire arithmetic for the two-product calculations. Again, if you have any questions over anything I'm doing, may it be general or meticulously specific, please don't hesitate to ask; I will try to post the video of the calculator in action by the end of the week.