Check this page for updates on upcoming classes, our learning goals, and the lesson modules we'll use to get there.

CIT-111 Java IN-PERSON: Weekly Lesson Guides

Course Schedule and Lesson Guides

Our class is structured by week, and each week has it's own learning guide on this page. We'll break each week's learning into two class sessions and out-of-class practice time.

Please treat each week's guide as gold--it is your path through this course, week-by-week. If you have any questions, please call the technologyrediscovery.net shop at 412.894.3020

Jump down to current week

Week 1: Monday 29 Jan - Saturday 3 Feb

Setting up a Java compiler | Running a simple program | Java basics

Welcome to CIT-111 online! Our journey together is diving into the Java programming language. Please attend to the content in each week's guide carefully, as it will guide your through your learning.

Our goal this week is to setup our work environment which means getting an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) setup on our computers, explore our online code repository called GitHub, and execute some basic Java programs and start tinkering with them.

Learning Objectives

Install and test Netbeans, a Java-oriented development environment that is community created and 100% free
Explain what GitHub is, why it is so clever, and successfully navigate our class repository of online code
Execute a Java application in NetBeans and edit some of its basic components to see how easy it is to create and adjust programs written in Java!

Essential Resources

Netbeans IDE download page will provide you access to the executable files for installing both Java 8 Standard Edition and the application used to develop, test, and run that code. You'll need to install this ASAP.

Oracle's Java tutorials are the preferred online resource for learning the Java language. Many tutorials and courses exist online, but Oracle has provided the most comprehensive and updated set of guides for Java 8.

Weekly Products

A screen shot of your NetBeans IDE installed and working on a computer you will have regular access to over the semester with the output of a simple program that tells about yourself.

curiosity Corner

Java is one of the most widely-used programming languages in the world. Many projects coded in Java are open source and can be viewed, edited, and republished by anybody without paying a dime. You can browse thousands the code of many Java programs on github, here. While you may not yet know how to comprehend the code, soaking up how widely used this language is will propel your learning.

Lesson Sequence

Study our course syllabus and prepare any questions you might have. Pay particular attention to the course grading procedures, which are also described here.
Buy a copy of Oracle's Java: A Beginner's Guide (6th edition is the cheapest) from a source of your choosing. The Amazon.com link is here.
Scan and think about our core Java skill learning flow which we will roughly follow throughout this course.
The first chunk of stuff to do for this course is get your workspace setup, which involves installing a set of programs (all packaged together) that allow you to create, debug, and run programs in Java. This program is called NetBeans and is used by everybody from students who have never programmed before to folks who program hugely complicated systems for mega-organizations, like Oracle. Start by visiting the MetBeans download page and download the program listed under the "Java SE" column. You are welcome to download any of the other versions of the software if you think you'll want more programming power.
Complete EACH step in this NetBeans quick start guide which will ensure that your compiler is working and you'll see how easy it is to create and run Java programs.
After you have the Hello World program running, study Oracle's dissection of this simple program so you can glean a general sense of what each of the lines does. A challenge with Java is that because it can do so many powerful things, doing simple things is a little more complicated than if the system only did simple stuff.
Attempt to answer and study the correct responses to this little quiz created by Oracle about Java basics. The core value of this exercise is to familiarize yourself with some of the technical terms that we need to learn in order to take advantage of the vast documentation about Java available to us for free.
Check back here (this VERY list) Tuesday morning or later and view the videos posted by your instructor that introduce our Java course more throughly and provide you some step-by-step instructions on how to go about learning Java.

Week 2: Monday 5 Feb - Saturday 10 Feb

Tracing a program's flow | variables and operators

Learning Objectives

Essential Resources

Weekly Products

Curiosity Corner

Lesson Sequence

Week 3: Monday 12 Feb - Saturday 17 Feb

Program flow of control with if() and while() controlled blocks

Learning Objectives

Essential Resources

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curiosity Corner

Lesson Sequence

Week 4: Monday 19 Feb - Saturday 24 Feb

Java fundamentals project

Learning Objectives

Essential Resources

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curiosity Corner

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Week 5: Monday 26 Feb - Saturday 3 March

Getting down and dirty with methods: the basic building block of classes

Learning Objectives

Essential Resources

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curiosity Corner

Lesson Sequence

Week 6: Monday 5 March - Saturday 10 Marck

Internalizing Java Class Structure

Learning Objectives

Essential Resources

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curiosity Corner

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Week 7: Monday 12 March - Saturday 17 March

Method-based project

Learning Objectives

Essential Resources

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curiosity Corner

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Week 8: Monday 19 March - Saturday 24 March

Introduction to Object-Oriented Java

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Essential Resources

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curiosity Corner

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Week X: [SPRING BREAK!!!] Monday 26 March - Saturday 31 March

Take the week off and explore!

No required activities this week: only an encouragement to relax by learning something new about computers that you are curious about or interested in.

Week 9: Monday 2 April - Saturday 7 April

Arrays and for() looping

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Essential Resources

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curiosity Corner

Lesson Sequence

Week 10: Monday 9 April - Saturday 14 April

Designing object-oriented code

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curiosity Corner

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Week 11: Monday 16 April - Saturday 21 April

Building and sharing Java Objects

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curiosity Corner

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Week 12: Monday 23 April - Saturday 28 April

Flexible content based on student skill progression

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Essential Resources

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curiosity Corner

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Week 13: Monday 30 April - Saturday 5 May

Final Projects!

To tie a bow around our learning this term, we'll use this week to start the design of our final projects and begin implementing our ideas.

Learning Objectives

Essential Resources

Weekly Products

curiosity Corner

Lesson Sequence

Week 14: ["Finals"] Monday 7 May - Saturday 12 May

Celebrating the Cyborg life!

During finals week, we'll share and digest final projects made by our classmates and create ideas for future development of our computing skills.

Learning Objectives

Essential Resources

Weekly Products

curiosity Corner

Lesson Sequence

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