Block Plan at Colorado College

The Block Plan at Colorado College has a tradition of innovation and flexibility. Please design your own three-and-a-half week course and describe what you would do. (no more than 500 words)

Heretofore men devoured the Antonio's mortgage - brutal shylock's bloody pound - raw, but with discovery of fire the incisive teeth turned puny and incapable of ripping the uncooked. On similar lines it is sufficient to say that the underpinning of multitudes of edifices is Java.

We would have 4 classes a week with each class being roughly 4 hours long and the classes being held on every alternate days 'starting from Sunday'. The duration of classes can be altered as per the need. 

I rise at 6am, re-iterate post wake-up clichés and exercise. I reach the classroom at 5 minutes to 8am for 'Highly effective people' are 'Proactive'. Bells chime at 8am and off our classes begin until noon! At 12pm I would take my lunch and in an hour I would get back to work. For 4 hours spent in class I would spend about 12 hours reading, writing, coding, debugging and performing miscellaneous task (e.g. reading beforehand that which is to be taught on the following day) that are required before attending the next session. I go off to sleep at 10pm. I would invest the 'balance time' on the alternate days to pursue external certifications like Network+, Security+, CEH, LPT etc., music and sports for I believe that an inquisitive mind must not confine itself to the college's curriculum.  

All the classes would include a mixture of theory and practical. In the initial 30 minutes of the class students will discuss their doubts. This will help everyone to learn from one another's mistakes. I would want my professors to cover the theory, demonstrate suggestive algorithms and give similar hands-on practice in the class. I would prefer to solve complex problems outside the class and seek help as the last resort when my wit goes blunt! 

The following is the detailed week-wise break-down of the 12 classes over 3 weeks:

1) Introduction to OOP, classes, objects, packages and methods explained in depth, identifiers, data types, type-casting, number systems, variables, all kinds of operators and operator precedence, basic input-output related code, if-else construct and various loops, inheritance, interfaces, abstract class, polymorphism, and type compatibility. 

2) Use of standard library classes such as wrapper, math, string and object, one and two dimensional arrays, List interface, Array list, iterators, OOP design (UML diagrams, implementing classes, methods etc.), Program (made by others) analysis (esp. efficiency) and Software Development Cycle (Designing, implementation, testing and debugging). 

3) Various sorting and searching algorithms, Recursion (methods and sorting algorithms), Exception Handling, introduction to GUI (AWT, swing classes and NetBeans), Java Applets and Servlets.

During the last half-week I would visit a software firm to gain the real-time experience of working in a company where the guidance of the professionals will add to the experience that cannot be gained in the classroom. To culminate the block and to assess my skills I would build a program (e.g. Library Management) that reflects my understanding of the all the concepts learnt during the block followed by a viva.