Category: Computer Science

Contact Me

This page is no longer being maintained as I am no longer at BDSS. The material below is for archival purposes only.

If you wish to contact me, please visit my new site here.

Where Can You Find Me?

Beamsville District Secondary School, 3rd wing (back of the school), 2nd floor. The address is:

4317 Central Avenue
Beamsville, ON
L0R 1B0

Semester 1

Pd 1 – BTT1O/1K ICT In Business
Pd 2 – prep period
Pd 3 – TEJ3E/3M/4M Computer Engineering Technology
Pd 4 – TGJ2O/2K/3M/4M Communications Technology

All classes are in room 3-209.

Semester 2

Pd ? – ICS3C/3U/4C/4U Computer Science
Pd ? – prep period
Pd ? – TEJ2O Computer Technology
Pd ? – SHSM Admin

All classes are in room 3-209.

Contacting Me

  1. You can email me directly at pbeens@gmail.com or peter.beens@dsbn.org, or
  2. Fill in this form and I’ll get back to you!
 

Archiving Your Google Data

I always encourage students to use the personal Google account for school work so they still “own” the data after they leave high school.

But what if they haven’t, and they’re above to move on to a postsecondary school or the workplace?

There are basically two options:

  1. Move your data to your personal account
  2. Download your data

To move your data to a new account, just visit https://takeout.google.com/transfer and enter the relevant information. Just be sure you have enough disk quota in your personal account or you may run into trouble.

To download your data, visit https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout and select the data you want to download. Note that this can take a long time, depending on how much data you have in your Google account.

 

Website Review Guidelines

Your web page must be educational and include specific, appropriate content related to the provided topic. It must not be a page that only includes links to other websites.

You should not write your review until it has been approved by the instructor as being relevant and unique (i.e. not already chosen by another student). To get the website approved, fill in this form and see your instructor ASAP.  [teacher link]

Submission Form


[Teacher Link]

Review Format

After the website has been approved, write the review using this format:

Title
URL

Intro paragraph — “I chose this website because…” (or similar)

Review paragraphs, for each of the four categories shown below.

Ratings, as shown below.

Use the following rating system for the review, giving the website of 1-5 (in asterisks) for the categories shown:

Educational: *****
Organization: *****
Suitability: *****
Aesthetics: *****

…as well as an Overall rating from 1-5.

To submit your review, you will be given a link to a Google Document where you can write your review.

Example Review

DC Circuits
http://www.physics.uoguelph.ca/tutorials/ohm/Q.ohm.html

I chose this website because it had content that looked like it closely matched what we were learning in class.

Educational: This site has a lot of useful information such as Ohm’s Law and basic schematic diagrams but it doesn’t take the time to make the concepts clear for the reader (important if you’re new to electronics like me). I would have appreciated more applied explanations of the topics before just leaping in like they did.

Organization: A side navigation bar would be greatly beneficial to this website. I found it troublesome to have to go to the bottom of every page to choose my destination. The provided links do the job though (i.e. Back, Next, Return to Main…)

Suitability: This site is fairly suitable for our class as it touches on similar electronics-related topics, however I would not recommend it as a resource simply because there is much clearer, well laid-out information available on other sites on the web.

Aesthetics: This site has a very uninteresting look to it. It makes it easy to read, but does not grab your attention or interest.

Ratings:

Educational: **
Organization: ***
Suitability: ***
Aesthetics: *

Overall: ***

Marking Method

10% will be deducted if there is no title.

Up to 10% will be deducted for each grammar or spelling error that has to be fixed.

Up to 10% will be deducted for each category of the rating system that is not mentioned in the review (which is impossible to do if you follow the guidelines!).

20% will be deducted if there is no rating.

Things Not To Say in Your Review

“This website contains a large amount of information on it.” (Be specific about content.)
“All I can say is Wow. After finding many sites that didn’t do jack for me I found a great site. I found it hard to believe that this site is hosted on a Geocities account.” (A lot of words without saying anything specific about the site.)
“This website is jam packed full of goodies.” (What kind of goodies? Be specific about content.)
“This site is very nice.” (Says nothing about the site.)

Chrome Sign In

For students having trouble signing into Chrome with their DSBN account, enter this address directly into the Chrome address bar and you should be able to sign in properly:

chrome://chrome-signin

Why sign into Chrome?

It will sync your bookmarks and Chrome extensions so wherever you are logged into Chrome (other classes, at home, on your laptop) everything will be sync’d.

Email Assignment

Awkward!
Picture source unknown.

Class Email Protocol

Be sure to include the course code in the subject line as well as some indication of what the subject is. Do not leave the subject line blank. An appropriate subject for this email assignment would be:

TGJ2O Email Assignment

When replying, please include any previous dialog we have already had.

Assignment Overview

Send me an email from your “permanent and professional use” email account (see below). In it, please tell me:

  • why you took this course,
  • what you are hoping to do in this course,
  • whether or not you are pursuing a career related to this course,
  • what background you have in this subject (hobbies, previous courses), and
  • what mark you hope to get.

(It might help to copy-and-paste the questions into your email.)

Note: be sure to read the Class Email Protocol above so you know what is expected in the subject line.

After I receive your email, I will send a quick reply so you are added to my address book.

The email address for you to send to will shared with you in  class.

What is a “Professional and Permanent” Email Account?

A professional use email account is one that you would not be embarrassed to use with your employer or with the public. It must also be an accurate representation of your full name, not a nickname. Also, it must be an email address that is not related to your ISP (Internet Service Provider). Good, permanent email hosts are Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo. My own preference is Gmail because it integrates with tools like Google Drive and Docs, Google Photos, Google Keep, and other products.

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ACSE Conference Reminder

I’m just reminding Computer Studies and Computer Technology teachers about the ACSE conference coming up on Saturday, February, 25th at the Seneca@York campus of Seneca College, Toronto.

We’ve got a great lineup for both subject areas, including sessions on the Raspberry Pi, Vex Robotics, Arduinos, Internet of Things, Hummingbird robotics, computer security, Python, Database & Data Science, software testing, Swift, and more.

Registration is just $90 (or $45 for student teachers and retirees), but only until February 17 (this Friday), after which it goes up to $110/$55.

Some of you have asked if you can bring students along, and we think that’s an excellent idea! Just register them using the lower rate of $45 (or $55 after the early-bird rate deadline).

For further details (location, parking, schedule, etc.), see http://www.acse.net/conferences/2017.

I hope to see you there!

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Let’s Go Phishing!

In the spirit of yesterday’s Safer Internet Day…

I often get asked which is better — Gmail or Hotmail (or its derivative outlook). The answer for me is so easy: Gmail, and one of the reasons is because it handles phishing attempts so much better than Hotmail.

I only log into my Hotmail account once a month or so, just to keep it alive. This time, there were approximately 20 emails in my inbox. A few were legitimate security alerts created by my Google account, a few were from Microsoft trying to sell me something or other, but the rest (over half) were phishing attempts — bogus emails attempting to get me to click a link where they would prompt me to reveal private details such as account numbers or passwords. Continue reading “Let’s Go Phishing!”

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Clean Dictionary File for CS Classes

For Computer Science teachers that need a “clean” dictionary file, here is one that I have on my GitHub account you can use:

The file was created as a student project by taking a “dirty” dictionary found online and using it to programmatically remove all the inappropriate words from a complete dictionary file, such as this one.