Classroom policies

Social basics

All phones must be put in airplane mode and placed in your numbered phone pocket or in one of the slots in the ten-slot phone charger at the start of class.
Access to the charger is first-come, first-served and if you put your phone in the charger, you must take a piece cardboard to put in your numbered pocket in the place of your phone.
Phones must stay in their pockets or their slot in the charger until the bell rings.
If you do not have a phone, either in general or on a given day, I will give you a piece of cardboard to place in your phone pocket.

Other than a weekly written reflection, there is no homework in this class.
You are of course free to work outside of class, especially when we get to working on projects, but it should not be necessary to keep up.

This is going to be a fast-paced class and you need to spend your time in class focused on what we are doing.
The computers are for programming and research related to your work. Don’t play games, watch videos, go on social media, or anything else not related to the work of this class.
Likewise, this class is not a time to do homework from other classes.

Per BHS policies, you must stay in the classroom during the first ten minutes and last ten minutes of class.
During the rest of class one student at a time may sign out the hall pass to go to the bathroom or to get water. You should sign out on the signout sheet, writing your name and the time you left. When you return, fill in the time you got back.
In addition to the first-ten/last-ten rule, I ask that other than in a dire emergency, you not leave the class when I am talking to the class as a whole. If at all possible, please wait until I’m I’m done and then sign out the pass and go.
If you need to leave for other reasons, such as to go to the Health Center, talk to me and I will write you a pass.
In general, you should be in the classroom during class. If you need to go, go and come back as quickly as possible, both so you don’t miss too much and for the sake of your classmates who may be waiting for the hall pass.

Your job in this class is to learn to program. The only way to learn to code is to do it yourself.
However, other than when you are taking a test, you are free and even encouraged to talk to your peers about your code and theirs.
But know that any code you write, I may ask you to explain. If you get help from a peer make sure they are helping you understand the code you are writing.
If you you are the helper, resist the temptation to just tell your friend what code they need to write.

A big part of being a programmer these days is learning how to find the information you need. There are lots of answers about lots of coding problems on the internet. If you find useful snippets of code that you want to use in your code, cite it in a comment with a link to where you found it.
And, as with getting help from your classmates, you must be able to explain any code you use. So don’t copy and paste code unless you’re going to be able to explain to me how it works.

While generative AI is already a powerful tool for programmers, you are here to learn to program yourself.
There may be assignments where I allow or even encourage you to use AIs like ChatGPT, but unless I specifically say that you may, you may not use AIs to do work for this class.
When I do specifically allow it, I will almost always ask you to provde a link to or a copy of the full conversation you had with the AI.

Please, no food or drink near computers other than plain water bottles okay. If you desperately need a snack, you may come to the table at the front of the room for a quick bite.

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