Lab 1

Last modified: October 10 2010 07:14:14 PM

Syllabus Electronic Confirmation Form

Read syllabus and confirm that you have read the syllabus and understand the course policies by filling out the electronic confirmation form, located here (no longer available).

Special note: Failure to fill out this form by the deadline of 11:59:59pm on Monday, September 13th will render you ineligible to take the second practical exam. Recall that failure to take the second practical will assign you an automatic grade of F in the course. Please be sure to fill out and submit this form.

 

Before Coming to Lab

If you were registered for the class before the start of the semester (August 30th), your account should be all set. If you changed your registration during the first two weeks (added or changed), we are asking that you visit the following link (http://www.sens.buffalo.edu/accounts/) at least one day (i.e. 24 hours) prior to your first recitation session. All you need to do at this page is enter your UBIT name and click the Request Account button. On the following page, the answer you are looking for is that you are taking a course in the school of engineering and need an account. The process usually processes your account overnight, but sometimes can take up to 24 hours, so please try to visit this page as soon as possible before your recitation. If you were registered or followed this procedure and still do not have an account this first week, you should be sure to give your name to the TAs.

You can double-check that you have an account BEFORE your recitation by going to Bell 101 and trying to log in. Your login is the same as your UBIT login that works all over campus. If you can log in there, you can log in at 340 Bell.

 

In Lab - Login

Make sure you can log onto the computers in Bell 340. After you log in, make sure you know how to log out. Make sure that you do not leave your computer logged in while you are not using it.

If you can log in, continue on to the following.

 

Open Greenfoot

Click on the UB Linux Penguin at the bottom of the screen. Select UB Applications and allow the menu on the right to expand. From that menu, select "Application Development" and from the right menu that appears, select Greenfoot.

You will see the splash screen and then Greenfoot will start up.

The procedure for starting Greenfoot is the same in both Bell 340 and Bell 101. If you have installed the program on your own machine, there will be a shortcut to it somewhere that you simply need to select to start the program.

 

Copy a scenario into your account

Before we copy anything into your account, we should set up a space for you to store your CSE 113 work. Open the file explorer for your home directory (icon on the desktop called So-and-so's home, where so-and-so is your UBIT name) and select to create a new folder in your account (either using right-click or select File->Create Folder) from the menus at the top. Name this folder CSE 113. You will put all of your work for CSE 113 in this folder.

Greenfoot operates using scenarios. Scenarios give us a base to work with when programming in Greenfoot. Throughout the semester, you will need to make sure that a copy of the scenario is in your own personal account before you begin working on the lab assignment. We will have you copy over the first scenario now. Open up the file explorer for the entire system by clicking on the icon on the desktop named Computer. Click on the Filesystem icon. Navigate to /eng/class/notes/cse113.

In this directory, you will see a directory named book-scenarios, and inside that will be directories for all the chapters of the book. Find the directory for chapter01 and inside there you will find a directory named leaves-and-wombats, which contains all the files for leaves and wombats scenario from chapter 1. Select this directory and elect to "copy" it. Now, open the file explorer for your home directory and inside the directory you just created for CSE 113, "paste" the leaves and wombats scenario directory.

We will be working with this scenario to get practice moving, zipping, and submitting files.

If you are working from home, you can get the leaves-and-wombats scenario from here.

 

Zip up a scenario

Before you submit an assignment, you will need to zip up the contents of the scenario directory. Let's practice zipping at this time.

In the file explorer, right click and select to archive the directory containing the leaves-and-wombats scenario by selecting "Create Archive" from the right-click menu. Leave the name of the Archive to be the same as the name of the directory. To the right of the name is a drop-down for what type of archive you would like to create. You should choose .zip from the drop down of possible archive choices.

After you have completed the zipping procedure, you should see the zip file in your directory as well as the scenario directory itself.

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Submitting the Assignment

You will submit the zipped up version of the leaves and wombats scenario. As you may have guessed, this lab is designed to get you familiar with the lab environment and how to do the basic tasks you will be required to do to finish assignments for the rest of the semester.

For directions on submitting, please see here.

Please recall that you must achieve a grade of at least 50% on each of the labs to be allowed to take the second practical exam. This means, that your labs are technically all due by the last day of class (December 10th). However, if you want to stay current with the course, I would recommend having this assignment completed by the end of your first recitation section.

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Working outside of Bell 340

If you would like to continue this work outside of Bell 340, there are a few options available to you. You can work in Bell 101, which is an engineering public computing site. Information about the differences you may encounter when in Bell 101 are located here.

If you want to work on your own machine, totally independent of the lab environment, you will need several things. This page will explain where to look for information about downloading the files and programs you need to work on your home machine.

It is most advisable for you to create a folder (directory) on your machine where you can put the files needed for your assignments. This way, all work for this course will be in the same place when you go to look for it.

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Grading Information

Please make sure to look at your grading information on Web-CAT. See the grading information page for more details about how to interpret Web-CAT grade reports.

This assignment was graded as follows:

(1/3 of points) Leaf.java file submitted correctly

(1/3 points) Wombat.java file submitted correctly

(1/3 points) WombatWorld.java file submitted correctly

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Lab authored by Adrienne Decker