Prof. Dr. Debora Weber-Wulff: MeSo II

FB 4
Internationale Media and Computing
MeSoII: Media Software II
Sommersemester 2003

Media Software II

General information

This semester we will be looking at topics in the area of multimedia programming in Java.

We will meet every Wednesday in the second and third block. Class begins at 9.45 sharp with an introduction to the exercise, although you may work from home, if you wish. There is no lecture for this course. There will be two exercise sections, section 1 will meet in VG 207 (Schmiedicke) and section 2 will meet in VG 212 (Weber-Wulff). You will be assigned to a section the first week and may not jump between sections.

You will be working with a partner on the exercises. This means that you turn in one report by email every week that reflects the work of both students.

The instructors are Prof. Dr. Debora Weber-Wulff and adjunct teacher Dipl.-Inform. Ilse Schmiedicke (her MeSo2 home page). We may not always be available in person, but we read our email regularly. Do not hesitate to contact us by email if you have any questions.

Exercises and schedule
Link list
Ilse's FAQ which explains how to make JBuilder 8 personal version behave!

We will be going through some of the Sun Tutorials covering the topics for this course. The tutorials can be found online at http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/onlineTraining/. At the end of the semester we will be using some tutorials on PDA programming that are not publically available, but will be made available on the new learning management system that the FHTW has acquired through the Notebook University project.

You will be doing one exercise each week, which consists of working through all or part of a Java Tutorial. It is a good idea to read the exercises before you come to class. In the beginning of the semester we will be doing some easier things in Java just to make sure that you are back in the "Swing" of things. Then we will be getting into some deep topics such as Advanced Imaging, 2D and 3D programming, Network programming with RMI, JDBC, and PDA programming.

The exercises will be done in groups of two. This means that there can be a maximum of one "loner" per section, we do not have groups of three or more. For each exercise the group is to submit a written report about what you did in the lab, including all code that you tried out, and a summary of what you learned, by the start of the next class. You submit the exercise by sending a URL (and not a 4 MB large .pdf file) to your report to your instructor by 8.00 every Wednesday. We will try and publish a list of all reports on the web, so you can see how the others solved the problems.

The exercises are structured so that there is a set of interesting things to investigate. You do not need to do all of the questions posed, but you need to spend at least 4 hours programming. If after 4 hours you still don't have anything working, submit a report explaining what went wrong, and that will be sufficient for you to pass the exercise. If you are already a gung-ho programmer in Java, you can skip the easy questions and show us what experts you are by doing the most difficult questions, or by doing something entirely different that you clear with us before you begin. The difficult questions are marked "For the bored" or "For the very bored". These are not required. There are no right or wrong answers in this course!

What To Turn In, or what does a report look like?

Your completed assignments should include:

The assignment.
Your results, in a legible fashion, which means that your code has sufficient comments.
Any notes that you may have on things that worked or didn't work in lab. We are interested in hearing about your process, what did you do and in what order. It is perfectly all right to report that nothing worked. If your report is okay you will still get enough points on the report to pass the lab.
The names and roles of any collaborators in any parts of the project. This means that you are welcome to have other people help you and to use their code, as long as you give them credit.
Also note the following: How long did this lab take you? Include the time needed to write the report. Did you work with other students? If so, how helpful was it? Did you have problems writing code for this lab? Did you have problems running/using this lab? What did you learn in this lab?

Lab assignments are due the next week by 8.00. They may, of course, be turned in earlier. Each lab will be worth 10 points. A report that covers all of the required exercises and is well written will get 10 points. Poorly written reports that cover all the exercises will tend to have 2 points deducted. If you get nothing to work, but have a well written report, only 3 points will be deducted. Not trying everything and submitting a bad report will, of course, lower your score. Extreme brilliance may be rewarded with extra points. Please have patience with us as graders and refrain from sending emails asking if we have corrected your exercise yet.

Handing in a report later than 8.00 on a Wednesday will deduct 3 points per week begun from your score. 8.01 is later than 8.00, btw. Please be aware that emails are timestamped.

Putting any sentence or code in your report that is not written by you that is not appropriately attributed will get you 0 points. We mean it. If we find you just copying stuff out of the tutorial or some other place on the web, you fail the exercise. If we catch you twice, you fail the course. There is no final exam for this course.

The following grade table will be used to compute your final grade. Note that this is part of your final Diplom grade.

I hope that we will have fun learning how to do industrial-strength, multimedia programming in Java!

For the super experts: If you have already worked through these tutorials and would be bored to tears, please contact me as soon as possible. If we get 3-4 people, we can have you do a special project.