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Zen Computer Science - Period 3 - Tuesday - Week 4

Flynn waited for everyone to file in.

"Since last week was a bit... off." he grimaced. "Let's spend this week having a bit more hands-on."
Sitting on his desk, he motioned to an "inbox". "If anyone did complete their homework, you can drop it off here."
Looking around, he continued. "But if you didn't, then there was obviously a problem."

"I do understand that some of you just aren't too majorly familiar with computers or computers of this time."
He stood up. "Therefore, today, we're just going to play with the computers." He grinned that patented Flynn grin of his.

"For those who aren't as fluent, I've assigned my TA, Mac to help out. But I know that a couple of others of you...
and yes, I'm looking at you Ami-chan and you Willow..." he winked. "Are also very computer literate."

"You'll find that your machines have access to any game or program known to run on personal computers."
He sat down in his chair, trying not to circle his desk.

"I want you to pick something, and then write an essay on what you like, dislike and how you feel it could be improved.
This doesn't have to be a technical schematic, just put into it what you feel.. whether it be 'better pictures' or 'more blood'...
then think logically and tell me how it could be added/subtracted in... not in terms of codes or numbers... more like what you
would remove or add in to make it better. "

"For instance, say you were playing with a medical database. I'm sure Henry would appreciate something like that..." he looked over
towards the young man. "But the interface was lacking something that would make it easier to search for a certain pathogen, or disease."

"So then tell me that you'd put a new search function in for that certain pathogen, or a way to make the database more open to better search queries.
This doesn't require any knowledge of coding at all, and yes, you can draw pictures if you have to."

"Now. Have fun."

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Henry Jekyll

Cindy Mackenzie.

Nova

Naomi Wildman

Ami Mizuno

V. Cally

Marty Blank

Rikku

Barbara Gordon

Willow Rosenberg

If it's done.

Henry turned in a folder with a simple design for a periodic table of elements program. It really didn't do much- you clicked on an element and got a page with its stats and weights. To compensate for the simplicity, Henry had written out each page. All one hundred and eighteen (he included Uuo).

Mac handed in a neat folder of design work, all tagged into sections and labelled with post-its. She might have had a little too much fun with all those. The program is made to aid the analysis of genetic data, and there's quite a lot of math in there.

Tucked in a plastic folder inside is a disc with the program itself on.

Ami hands in a design document and a paper prototype of software dealing with patient intake at a hospital. Many pages are dedicated to security and confidentiality of records. There are workflows and usability case studies with Dan Norman style persona profiles attached.

Cally's project became much simpler than it originally intended.

In fact, it turned into a program that spat out different fortune cookie fortunes depending on three inputted factors (Date, astrological sign, and whether or not you like the color green).

Naomi's folder was a rather detailed design of the USS Voyager. The information included the last known crew compliment, the major areas of the starship (bridge, sickbay, engineering etc.) and some of the crewmembers quarters. There was also weapons and computer related statistics presented as part of the information.

Marty turns in a ~~handwavy program~~ that is pretty darn nifty.

Rikku handed in a two-page paper that explained how she would set up a database to sort her items into an inventory and cross-reference the possible results from mixing them.

Willow handed in CDs that contained her programs for word processing and for a magic database. She worried that maybe she hadn't done enough work.

Raise your hand if it's not done, or you need help.

Nova was busy trying to fully realize his idea for a computer program. It had something to do with making toast. He wasn't sure if a computer could actually make toast, but it would be interesting if one could. Where he had gotten the idea for a program that made toast anyway, he didn't really know himself ~~inspired by RL computer science class~~. He continued to think silently, though he seemed distressed at his lack of progress.

Play your games or work your programs here.

Feeling a little more heartened after the lecture, Henry started to work with the computer. He'd had a chance to try one out in his Popular Culture class, and he was pleased to find that he wasn't having too much trouble.
Henry pulled up a program called "Excel," and toyed around with some graphs.

Mac is just in the process of getting one of her Sims abducted by aliens.

She'll happily put that on pause if anyone needs to ask her anything, though.

... or hey, if you just want to help her ruin virtual lives, that's fine too.

Nova doesn't really know what to do with the computer on his own. He looks around to see what everyone else is doing instead.

AMi looked over at Nova. "Hey. Need help?"

Nova blushed, not thinking anyone was paying attention to him while he was watching everyone else.

He nodded to Ami. "Where...should I start?"

Ami paused her game and walked over. "Well, it is already on so you are set there. It is full of games, what sort of games do you like to play?"

Nova frowned at the computer screen.

"I....don't know any..."

At least, he didn't know any computer games.

"Well lets see what we have here" Ami looked over the icons. "Looks like you have cards, tic-tac-toe, car racing, chess, sports simulations, life simulations, checkers and go, and... a whole lot of other stuff. Do you like any non-computer games? There is probably a version..." as long as he wasn't from some strange universe where they had weird games...

The games sounded familiar even if he had never played any of them. He was sure he had seen people playing their hand-helds and board games like go and chess. Not playing any himself, he didn't really have a preference.

"Can you choose one?"

"Oh, ok, sure." Ami double clicked on tic-tac-toe. On the theory that it was crazy-easy. "Here, this is tic-tac-toe, except with giraffes and elephants instead of exes and ohs." She pointed to the screen. "The computer goes first, see it put an elephant here. You just need to click where you want the giraffe to go."

Ami opens up a chess program and starts playing against the computer. Eventually she determines that though the click-to-select and click-to-position interface is nice what this program needs is some drag-and-drop.

The only real difficulty that Naomi had was adjusting to the simplicity of 21st century computers. Once she had figured that out she was playing a game of freecell.

Rikku cracked her knuckles. So this was a computer, huh? Okay.

Looked pretty self-explanatory. Just a machina with an input keyboard and a display console. The letters were in a weird order, and the moving pointer took some getting used to, but everything made sense. The little icons were all marked, and there was even the word "Start" in big letters in the corner. That helped.

Five minutes later, Rikku was giddily opening programs, closing them, minimizing and maximizing windows, and occasionally giggling and clapping her hands.

Willow pulled up the Demons, Demons, Demons website and started making notes about how she'd improve it, both in terms of overall layout and in terms of the coding.

Though you should ask Flynn first. ;)

Of course, it's OOC!

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Zen Computer Science - Period 3 - Tuesday - Week 4

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Ask Flynn! (or Mac, or Ami-chan, or Willow)

OOC