Ishaan Puranam Education Foundation, Inc.

Ishaan Puranam's Reflections

My experience with math and science 10-20-07

Having parents that are both scientists has always played a big role in my love for math and science. In middle school the math courses I took included Pre-Algerba in 6th grade, Algebra I in 7th grade and Geometry in 8th grade. I am currently taking Honors Algebra II at Jordan High School. The science course that I am currently enrolled in is Honors Biology. My experiences in Shodor will only add to my passion and my experience in math and science.

What I learned today 10-20-07

Today I learned about HTML and other languages used to write computer sites, scripts, viruses etc. Before this class and before I was taught by Ernie I thought that all you had to was insert text into a text box like in the site-maker "Freewebs.com". This experience has really opened up my eyes to computer programming script writing and other computer related careers. I would like to continue learning about all these and then perfect my HTLM and then my CSS use.

What I learned today 11-3-07

I learned a lot about Inkscape and Gimpshop today. I am happy that I now know how to make labels, logos, graphics, enhance pictures and more. I am excited that I have learned all this stuff and I am excited to start my project. I am proud that I was able to enhance the picture of the pale woman so well. I am also happy that I was able to understand all the directions and key points with out any problems. Today I learned and heard about Inkscape and Gimpshop. I would like to continue learning about these two programs so I can eventually make logos and learn to build web designs and sites with these programs. Ernie helped me the most, after all he was my director today. Ernie helped my understand of Inkscape and Gimpshop and the mechanics of these two amazing programs. I helped some of the people sitting around me as I was able to understand and pick up the programs quite easily.

What I learned today 11-17-07

I am excited that I could learn about web design. I really thought that all people did was type something up and plug it in a text box and that’s how they made a web site. I was excited to learn about html and how to format the information needed to build a website. In the beginning it was quite complicated with all the abbreviations but now I'm getting a hang of it. I would definitely like to continue making web sites. I am proud that I am able to take part in this prestigious program. This program will definitely help me understand web design, technology, math and sciences much better. I really did not know much about what we learned today so I did not have much to be proud of my knowledge on this subject. I have learned of html and web design. I would like to learn much more about this as my knowledge in this subject is currently limited. I am really interested in this subject and I would like to continue to learn about it, I had no idea that I would enjoy this so much. Ernie helped me a great deal and he has furthered my understanding in this subject. Also Sankit really helped my as he has much prior knowledge in web design and html. I am grateful that these two people could expand my knowledge in this subject. I was not really able to help any one as my knowledge on this subject is so limited. However, I still was able to share my notes with a few students that missed some of the notes. I also helped Alex with what to put in the program.

What I learned today 12-1-07

Today I learned a lot about CSS and how to add css to your html. I learned a lot of the aspects of css and how to do things like tables, font colors font sizes and more. I am proud of all the changes I made to my personal web site. I am happy of all the things I added to my site and how it looks much better with css. I hope to learn even more about css so I can add even more to my site. I would like to learn about how to move tables and do certain things to sections of my script while leaving other parts alone. The teacher who helped me the most was Monte, as he instructed the class today. I had many questions about css and how to use it in my script and he helped my in all of my problems and quires that I had. He taught me about adding css to html and turning a regular site to a good-looking site. Mauricio also helped me when I had questions that were minor. I helped David with some of the questions that he had. I was able to help him though my limited know ledge of css pulled my back of being able to explain all of the details.

What I learned today 12-15-07

I was excited with everything I learned about css and of how to make tables. Though very confusing in the beginning, I now know how to make tables with scrolls and tables that you can click and make more tables appear. Today I learned that css has endless possibilities. I am most proud of the fact that I was able to make the table that you click and other tables come down. I have learned of Divs and all the possibilities of using this tool. I would really like to learn more about this, as it is very confusing. When I first heard about divs I was extremely confused about what they were and now I still am but have a slight understanding of heir possibilities. Ismael and Kathryn helped me greatly as they taught me and explained many hard and tricky topics. I helped Mauricio and David and Pam with some of the minor problems that they had.

What I learned today 01-12-08

I learned a lot about Agent Sheets today. I did not really know what it was in the beginning but know I understand what it is. I am really excited about all the possibilities of this program. I cant wait it start my project and see how it turns out. I am most proud that once we got started I immediately understood the program. For once I was able to explain what to do to other people other than having other people explain things to me. I really want to learn how to make agent sheets with more factors and that do many other things. I heard that you can make agent sheets that have factors that can kill, help, heal, reproduce and more. The people that helped me the most are Mat and Philip. These two people are interns and they instructed that class. They really made the Agent Sheets easy to understand and learn. I helped Mauricio the most. He got all him work deleted because his computer lagged so I explained everything to him. He was a bit slow today so I helped him a lot.

What I learned today 02-16-08

I am excited that I learned about Net Logo. Thought it is quite complicated, more complicated that agent sheets to me, I think that the possibilities of this program are endless. I am most proud of the fact this I was able to make a model of people getting sick, dying, and people recovering. This model was hard to make and difficult to understand but I am happy I finally got it. I am hoping to learn more about Net-Logo. I think this program is a really good one and there are many things to be learned and many projects that I can do on it. I hope that I can learn more about this program. The teacher that helped me this most was Valerie as she was our teacher for this class. I had a few problems with my script and she easily helped me. The student that helped me that most was Pam, she helped on a few script problems that I had. I helped Pam on a few of the problems that she had with her script though she barley had any.

What I learned today 04-19-08

I learned about excel and SIRS, Susceptible Infected Recovery Simulator. This was exciting because we were able to model situations in which people get sick, recover, and become immune. I am most proud that I was able to make three models successfully and graph and add scroll bars for all of them. I am hoping to learn more about adding more complex situations to the SIRS. Hopefully I will be able to make more complex models soon. Valerie helped me alot because I had a lot of problems with my model. Also Sanket helped me with some of my minor problems. I helped Pam with some of her minor problems.

What I learned today 05-03-08

I am most excited that I learned about Vensim. It was interesting to learn how to make models and how to use the SIR formula on this program. I am not very proud because my computer majorly lagged and I was not able to get my computer to graph my results. I am hoping to learn about more advanced things on this programs and learn to model more complicated situations and models. The person that helped my the most was Patricia as she was our instructor today. Also Sanket helped me when my computer was not working. I was not able to help anyone today because I did not understand the program myself.

Summer Week 1

This week I learned a lot and everyday there was something new. On Monday I learned about the process of writing a script/program on paper rather than starting it on the computer. We also learned if-then statements and did a worksheet in that. Later in the day we learned a lot about modeling and even wrote an entire program on paper. On Tuesday I learned about php and began an interesting program called picbreader. On wednesday we continued some php and started making an advanced Zombie-Human agentsheets model. On thursday and Friday we had tome to work on our projects. My projects this week were a Zombie-Human agentsheets model and a php project on sessions. This week I had the chance to model simulations on agentsheets. I was given the opportunity to begin a Zombie-Human agent sheets model. Later as a project we were told to further our model. I was very happy about this and added 13 extra variables to my project! My project was so good that the interns that we were working with asked me to leave my computer on so they could show it to Joel. I was very proud about this and this is the first time my work has been commended so much. I feel that so far in Shodor this is one of my best pieces of work and was happy to have the chance to make it. On Monday I learned about the process of writing a script/program on paper rather than starting it on the computer. We also learned if-then statements and did a worksheet in that. Later in the day we learned a lot about modeling and even wrote an entire program on paper. On Tuesday I learned about php and began an interesting program called picbreader. On wednesday we continued some php and started making an advanced Zombie-Human agentsheets model. I would like to learn more about all these things that I learned. If I were to chose one thing and only one thing to learn about it would be php. I would like to learn about php because of the versatility of the program. I would also like to learn more about php because I think is is very interesting and many things can be done with it. There were a multitude of teachers that taught me this week. The teachers who taught me this week were: Ishmel, Luke, Kelly, Sam, Joel, Jason, and Philip. I am very thankful for the teachers that taught me because I learned a lot this week. I helped 3 people this week. The first person helped was Yili Wu. I helped Yili with many things including agentsheets, php and modeling. I also helped Pablo with a couple things. I helped Pablo with agentsheets and php. Lastly, I helped Zan. I helped Zan with some agaentsheets.

Summer Week 2

This week I learned a lot of different things. In the mornings I learned Unix and in the evenings I learned AMC. Some of the things I learned in UNIX included: Apropos which gives commands. CD which changes directory. ls lists the contents of folders. ls -l gives the list with a lot of extra information. pwd shows what directory you are in. w shows who is logged in on the server. mv moves or re-names items. cp creates a copy instead of just re-naming a file. rm foo deletes a file. rm-i foo deletes a file with prompt. rm-r bar deletes a directory. rm-ri bar deletes a directory with prompt. mkdir creates a new file. rm dir deletes an empty folder. ln-s links files. We also learned about piping things together and standard input, standard output and standard error. We also learned about Cat, move, less, echo and tall. In addition we learned how to kill programs, ctrl-c, ctrl-z, foreground, background, ssh, scp, sftp, uniq, sortand tr. We also learned about regular expressions like: [], (), , +, ^, and |. The think that I enjoyed the most this week was us learning about vimtutor. In AMC we learned a lot about algebra and statistics. I am most proud that I now know about terminals. I now know how to do basic functions and tasks using the terminal. Hopefully I will soon be able to control my whole computer with the terminal. I am also most proud that I learned how to use vimtutor. Some of the things I learned with vimtutor that I am most proud that I can do are:

The cursor is moved using either the arrow keys or the hjkl keys. h (left) j (down) k (up) l (right)
To start Vim from the shell prompt type: vim FILENAME
To exit Vim type: :q! to trash all changes. OR type: :wq to save the changes.
To delete the character at the cursor type: x
To insert or append text type: i type inserted text insert before the cursor A type appended text append after the line
To delete from the cursor upto the next word type: dw
To delete from the cursor to the end of a line type: d$
To delete a whole line type: dd
To repeat a motion prepend it with a number: 2w
The format for a change command is: operator [number] motion where: operator - is what to do, such as d for delete [number] - is an optional count to repeat the motion motion - moves over the text to operator on, such as w (word), $ (to the end of line), etc.
To move to the start of the line use a zero: 0
To undo previous actions, type: u (lowercase u) To undo all the changes on a line, type: U (capital U) To undo the undo's, type: CTRL-R
To put back text that has just been deleted, type p . This puts the deleted text AFTER the cursor (if a line was deleted it will go on the line below the cursor).
To replace the character under the cursor, type r and then the character you want to have there.
The change operator allows you to change from the cursor to where the motion takes you. eg. Type ce to change from the cursor to the end of the word, c$ to change to the end of a line.
The format for change is: c [number] motion
CTRL-G displays your location in the file and the file status. G moves to the end of the file. number G moves to that line number. gg moves to the first line.
Typing / followed by a phrase searches FORWARD for the phrase. Typing ? followed by a phrase searches BACKWARD for the phrase. After a search type n to find the next occurrence in the same direction or N to search in the opposite direction. CTRL-O takes you back to older positions, CTRL-I to newer positions.
Typing while the cursor is on a (,),[,],{, or } goes to its match.
To substitute new for the first old in a line type :s/old/new To substitute new for all 'old's on a line type :s/old/new/g To substitute phrases between two line #'s type :#,#s/old/new/g To substitute all occurrences in the file type :s/old/new/g To ask for confirmation each time add 'c' :s/old/new/gc
:!command executes an external command.
:w FILENAME writes the current Vim file to disk with name FILENAME.
v motion :w FILENAME saves the Visually selected lines in file FILENAME.
:r FILENAME retrieves disk file FILENAME and puts it below the cursor position.
:r !dir reads the output of the dir command and puts it below the cursor position
Type o to open a line BELOW the cursor and start Insert mode. Type O to open a line ABOVE the cursor.
Type a to insert text AFTER the cursor. Type A to insert text after the end of the line.
The e command moves to the end of a word.
The y operator yanks (copies) text, p puts (pastes) it.
Typing a capital R enters Replace mode until is pressed.
Typing ":set xxx" sets the option "xxx". Some options are: 'ic' 'ignorecase' ignore upper/lower case when searching 'is' 'incsearch' show partial matches for a search phrase 'hls' 'hlsearch' highlight all matching phrases You can either use the long or the short option name.
Prepend "no" to switch an option off: :set noic
Type :help or press or to open a help window.
Type :help cmd to find help on cmd .
Type CTRL-W CTRL-W to jump to another window
Type :q to close the help window
Create a vimrc startup script to keep your preferred settings.
When typing a : command, press CTRL-D to see possible completions. Press to use one completion.

Though I learned a lot about vimtutor I want to learn a lot more about it. I would also like to learn more about Unix commands because I only know a couple in comparison the number of commands. I would also like to learn more about piping. I would also like to learn more about scp and sftp because I only know a little about it. In addition I would like to learn more about sort, uniq, tr, grep chmod ect. Finally I would like to learn more about regular expressions like: [], (), , +, ^, and |. I had a lot of teachers this week that taught me. These teachers included teachers, interns and even apprentices. The following list are the people that helped me: Joel, Phillip, Bethany, Lauren, Katherine, Hanley, Zan and Yili. This week I only helped two people. These people were Zan and Yili. I helped Zan with some Unix and helped Yili reach 100,000,000 trials in the Two Color Applet Game. After 1 hour of tedious clicking we reached our goal and victory was so sweet.

Summer Week 3

This week I learned about the Internet Application WebMO. This week I also used the terminal to modify different Java applets. On Monday, I turned a stopwatch timer into a clock. I also created a "pause" button. When you click on it, the clock stops. In the afternoon, I learned about atoms. On Tuesday, I modified the lay out of a Java applet. I created a box, with the words "Hello World" in it, and placed it in between two other boxes. In the afternoon, I learned about ammonia, water and methane molecules. I went to a website, WebMo.net, and created them. On Wednesday, I modified the layout of a graphing applet. I moved a table from the right side to the bottom of the screen. In the afternoon, I created some more complicated molecules at WebMo.net, such as C2H6. On Thursday, I worked with on my group project. In the afternoon, I learned about the different amino acids. I also learned about hemoglobin, oxygenation and deoxygenation. On Friday, I worked on my group projects. I am most proud of the stop watch timer that I changed into a clock and the pause button I created that pauses the clock. I am also proud of the different layout changes I made in the Layout and Graphit applets. I am proud of the stuff I learned in java. In addition, I am proud of the different molecules I made in WebMo. I created ammonia, water, methane, C2H6 and dichloroethane. I am also proud of the model I made in Vensim of the oxygenation and deoxygenation of hemoglobin. I am hoping to learn more about making complex Java applets that can be used in Websites. During the classes, we only look at the code of certain Interactivate applets and revised that code. In addition to doing this, I would like to create my own applet. This is because all over the web, Java applets are most used for creating games. One of my goals is to create my own game that uses JavaScript. In addition to applets, I am hoping to learn more about the features of WebMO. In the classes, our time was limited so we were limited in our exploration of the program. I am hoping to later revisit WebMO to further explore its uses and capabilities. Yili and Pablo helped me this week in changing the stop watch timer into a clock. Brandon helped me create the pause button for it. Jason helped me a lot with the java stuff, because I didn't understand it at times. Brandon helped with the group project. He was my partner. He helped change the the web site we were given to what was needed. Matt helped teach java, Patricia helped teach about molecules, and Jeff taught about complex molecules. I helped Pablo catch up with the stuff he missed on Tuesday. I also helped Pablo modify the layout of his layout test page. I also helped Brandon with the group project. I helped him fix the errors in our web page.

Summer Week 4

This week I learned a lot of System Administration and Mathematical Concepts. I learned many new System Admin. Commands and learned that that there are many more commands than I thought originally. I am currently learning new commands that I can add to my limited knowledge of System Administration. This week we began talking about many new math concepts like compactness and used state voting lines as an example. I am looking forward to better exploring the compactness of many other shapes. We also tried to write formulas to better understand what makes a figure compact. This task was quite difficult but after a while my group and I came up with a formula that is close to one of the formulas the state uses to determine compactness. I am most proud of our work on our virtual server. It took us a very long time to get it going but when we did it worked out great. I feel like I have learned a lot of new Sys Admin 2 commands. I am very proud that we managed to present our Sys Admin 2 topic somewhat clearly. I am also proud that we did well on our molecule presentation. I am very proud of my work on the treadmill during the mathematics class. Brandon and I both were the testers for our group so we both had to run on the treadmill for several minutes at various inclines. We then used our results to write conclusions to our previously written discussions. I am hoping to learn much more about Sys Admin 2. We have only covered the basic commands so far. I would like to learn more about the advanced commands and possibly do some work with Sys Admin 3. I hope that I will be able to do this before the end of the summer. I am also hoping to learn more about what makes a shape compact. We learned in class that a perfect circle was the most compact shape on the planet. For three-dimensional figures a sphere is the most compact shape in the universe. I was helped by many people. Simon helped us in class with our commands in Sys Admin 2. Joel helped us in class on multiple occasions when our commands did not work. Isabelle helped me occasionally. Ronnie checked over our codes before we entered them into the virtual server to make sure they did not do anything bad. Avi also helped my group occasionally when we could not remember a command. This week I helped many people. I was like the leader in my group with the math formulas, that meant that I had to explain everything to all my other group members. I also helped Yili in a few circumstances when he got behind, this was also true for Pablo.

Summer Week 5

This week my group worked on a database project. I learned how to create a database, login page, and a webpage to display the database. My group created a database of all the restaurants around Shodor. We also created a website so that everyone at Shodor can view the database. I also learned about working together as a group. I am most proud of the database that I helped create. It is a restaurant database. The database tells you the name of the restaurant, a rating from City Search, type of food, price range, address, phone number and google map directions. It is a very useful database for the people of Shodor because all of the restaurants are very close. I hope to learn more about php coding. Alot of our database project was based on php. I am also hoping to learn more about making databases, and login pages. Gavin, Luke, Alex, Ernie and Ismael helped our group on our database project. They helped us make our database, and display it. They also helped us create a login page so that only our group could enter data into it. I helped my group create the database, and display it. I helped my group create the database, and display it. I also got all the information that our group needed. In addition, I entered all the information into the database.

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