NOTE: The program named Blackboard will not be used for communication with students except in those cases where confidentiality is required, such as the reporting of grades to students.
Broken Links:
Occasionally one or more of the links, which tie these online, documents
together may become accidentally broken. If you discover a broken link, or any
other problem with the online documents, please notify me as soon as possible
so that I can repair the problem.
Attendance:
For students enrolled in the classroom sections, it is possible that you may be
administratively withdrawn from the course if you fail to attend class at least
once during the first two weeks of the semester. (This requirement does
not apply to Open Campus students.) However, you must not depend on me to
withdraw you if you need to be withdrawn. Withdrawal is the responsibility of
the student and is not the responsibility of the instructor.
Communications via Email
If you send email to me, it is imperative that you include your name and the
identification of the class in which you are enrolled (GAME1343) on the Subject
line. I normally have a very large number of students in any given semester. If
I have to search the rolls to identify you, I may not answer your Email.
In addition, because I have received more than 192,000 spam, trash, and virus Email messages during the past 30 days (as of January 10, 2010), I use a very aggressive spam blocking program. If your email message doesn't contain the identification of the class in which you are enrolled (GAME1343) on the Subject line, your message will probably be put in quarantine by the spam blocker and I will probably never see it.
It is also important that you provide a telephone number where I can contact you. I receive many email messages from students with invalid return email addresses. If you include your telephone number and your return email address doesn't work, I may try to contact you by telephone.
Questions via Email:
From time to time you may need to ask questions via email, and I encourage you
to do so. However, please make the question as specific as possible. For
example, "What is OOP?" is not a question that I can easily answer via
email.
If you, like many others, procrastinate and save your questions until the weekend before an exam deadline, don't be surprised if you don't get a response from me until after the exam deadline has passed.
I am usually happy to answer questions about programming concepts at the level of this course. (You should have previously completed COSC 1315 and GAME 1303 so you should already know about such topics as for loops, while loops, if statements, function calls, parameter passing, etc.)
When appropriate, please illustrate your question with a short sample program. When you send a sample program, please observe several important rules:
Orientation:
To participate in online orientation, click on the orientation link below.
Failure to Meet Prerequisites:
Please don't ask me to teach the COSC1315 material to you. If you don't
already understand that material, it will be your responsibility to learn it,
on your own, without assistance from me.
Carelessness is costly
A few semesters back, on the last Friday of the month, which was anticipated to
be one of the most active trading days of the month, programmers working on a
network made a careless error and shut the NASDAQ stock exchange down for
several hours. There is no way of estimating how much this cost various people
around the world.
A few months later, programmers working for a telephone company made a careless programming error and swamped the 911 emergency call center in Austin with wrong numbers for several hours. Hopefully no one died as a result, but we will never know.
Although careless errors on exam programs may not be as costly as the errors described above, they are costly nonetheless. In fact, the cost for making a careless error on an exam program is just as costly as not knowing how to write the program in the first place. In either case, you get no credit for the program. So, don't be careless.
Correct Email addressI typically receive hundreds of email messages each day, many of them from my students.
When you send an email message to me, make absolutely certain that the Subject line contains the following information as a minimum:
Include your current telephone number somewhere in the body of the message, and make it easy to find. If my email or your email goes down, I may try to call you on the telephone.
If you don't comply with the above, don't expect me to answer your email messages.
Please Be Patientcertifying that you have completed the orientation according to the
instructions.
Computer Studies Student Information Form
The following is requested by the Computer Studies department, but is not a
requirement of the course in which you are enrolled. Whether or not you
provide the following information will not be taken into account when
determining your grade in the course.
If you are willing to provide this information, please compose an e-mail message containing the following information and send it to Baldwin@DickBaldwin.com
If you do provide the information, please make the subject line of your
e-mail message read as follows:
Your last Name, Your first Name, GAME 1343, Student Information Form
DO NOT include this information in the message that you send confirming that you have completed online orientation. Send separate messages for those two purposes.
You should be able to copy and past the following form into your e-mail client and then fill in the blanks. Don't be too concerned about neatness when filling in the form.
Last Name:_____________________
First Name:_____________________
Student ID:_____________________
Course Number: IT__ ____
Telephone Numbers
Home:___________Any issues that the instructor should be aware of:
Work:___________
Other:___________
E-mail address:_________
_________________________________________________
Reasons for taking the course:
_____Personal InterestPlease indicate the following:
_____Required by degree program, which is ______________
_____Work related - please explain in comments section below
_____Recommended by ______________________________
_____Other, please explain in comments section below
_____Hours working per weekWhat computer courses have you completed at ACC or elsewhere?
_____Number of credit hours enrolled in this semester
_____Number of computer courses completed at ACC
_____Highest degree earned
_____________________________________________________
What computer or computer related work experience do you have?
_____________________________________________________
Comments:
_____________________________________________________
EMAIL VIRUS WARNING
I receive thousands of email messages every day. Many of the messages that I
receive contain viruses or worms. Most of the rest are SPAM. A few are good
messages.
As a result, I have been forced to become very selective regarding the messages
that I am willing to open and read. I can't trust that simply because a message
is received from someone that I know, it is safe to open and read. Unless
something in the Subject line of the message causes me to believe that I can
trust the message, I will simply delete the message without reading it.
Therefore, if you send email messages to me, your Subject line MUST be
formatted as follows:
Your last name, Your first name, GAME1343, Brief topic of message
When I see that format, I will trust that the message is safe to open and
read. Otherwise, I will assume that your message contains a virus or
constitutes SPAM, and I will simply delete your message without reading it.
Therefore, if you want me to read your message, you MUST format your Subject
line as shown above.
I normally respond to student email messages within 24 hours except on the
weekends. If you send a message to me and you don't receive a response within
24 hours (allow 72 hours on weekends), make certain that your Subject line is
correctly formatted and send the message again.
Do not send executable attachments
If you send an email message to me and expect me to read it, DO NOT attach any
executable files, even if they are encapsulated in a zip file. This includes
files with the following extensions, just to name a few:
.exe
.com
.scr
.bat
.pif
.vb
If you do send such files, my virus blocker will simply reject the message and I will never see it.
The following file extensions should be OK:
.java
.class
.htm
.html
.css
.xml
.xsl
.doc
.zip (Provided the zip file doesn't contain any executable files.)
If you need to send an exe file, rename it filename.joe and encapsulate it in a zip file. Notify me in the body of the email message that you have included such a file. I will rename it before I try to use it. Note however that the exe file alone is not sufficient to execute an XNA program. Other files contained in the project folder are also required.
If you find it necessary to send a questionable file for any reason, you should also send another message without an attachment notifying me that you sent the questionable file as an attachment so that I can be on the lookout for it.
Grades
I have been notified that I am no longer allowed to send your grades to you via
email. Therefore, I will only provide information on grades in person.
Your official Email address
It is my understanding that as of 09/15/08, all ACC students will be provided
an official Email address by ACC, and that address will be reflected in all
official ACC student records. I have been told that you can cause messages
sent to that address to be forwarded to the Email address of your choice. You
should make it point to either forward those messages, or to check your ACC
email address on a daily basis.File: GAME1343.htm
08/05/11 No announcements at this time
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File: GAME1343.htm