Admin

From Designing Around Place

H179.2730 - Tuesday 6:30-9:00

Instructors: Dennis Crowley & Michael Sharon

Office Hours by appointment:

dens[at]teendrama[dot]com

michael[at]uberthings[dot]com

Course tags: itpdap at delicious and Flickr

Weekly Assignments

There will be weekly programming assignments for nearly every class in the first half of the semester. These assignments are short, simple tasks which reinforce the concepts and techniques that have been taught in class. They are generally basic examples which give you a feel for the technologies or concepts being illustrated, and should be taken as starting points which you can use to generate your own applications.

In addition, we'll also have weekly research assignments based on a specific topic or category (e.g. SMS-based games or GPS-based friend finders). You'll be required to find a project or product that illustrates an interesting example of the topic, and then write up an analysis on the course wiki. No duplicate project write-ups per week, please.

In the instance that two-people are researching the same project in a given week, whoever posts online first gets credit. (read: check the website first and make sure your topic hasn't already been taken!)

Please complete your research assignment each week and be prepared to present them in class. These assignments are due the class following whenever they were assigned and should be posted to the class website before the start of class.

Assignments are required and turning in an assignment late will adversely affect your grade.

Participation & Attendance

Attendance is mandatory and desirable if you'd like to maintain your grades and/or remain in the class. Please inform me via email if you are going to miss a class. Habitually showing up late for class or an excessive number of absences will adversely affect your grade.

Laptop & Mobile Etiquette

Unless we're working on code in class, I will be sticking with the laptops closed rule. Although they may be invaluable for note taking and the Wikipedia is your special friend, the desire to answer emails, ping your friends and google obscure acronyms is far too strong. Since we're all going to be working on mobile phones, please turn your phone to silent before class begins so that we're not constantly interrupted by ring tones.

Grading

Participation and Attendance 30%

Weekly Research Assignments 20%

Midterm 25%

Final 25%