I teach AP CSP. This question is about the Create Task. A student of mine wants to complete the Create Task in a program called Webstorm. I am unfamiliar with this program, but he reports that it is similar to Dreamweaver.
Javascript is his preferred computing language, but he plans to include HTML and CSS in his creation too.
Does anyone know if using Webstorm is problematic with the rules/guidelines for completing the Create Task.
Also, I have never had a student use HTML and CSS in their Create Task. Is that problematic?
I haven’t had students use it, but I don’t see this being a problem. We storm is a programming environment, just like App Lab is. In both cases students are still writing the code themselves. When students use app lab, they’re actually interacting with HTML and CSS too - it’s just that app lab’s design mode does this portion for them. If you were to download an app, you would need all three parts! Collegeboard is only interested in the JS though because that is what the student has written.
As long as your student feels comfortable with the platform, I think they should be fine. (This is my own opinion though - code.org doesn’t support/endorse any other programming tool.)
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I agree with @madeline_r_burton - you should be okay.
College Board (who I am in no way affiliated with) doesn’t have any restrictions based solely on the technology. As long as the language the student uses can fulfill the task’s conceptual requirements (in terms of having the required algorithm complexity, ability to work with collections of data, etc), that’s what matters.
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HTML and CSS were not acceptable “programming languages” for the Create PT in previous years. I’m not sure in which parts of the write-up the student would talk about the HTML and CSS but I think they need to make sure they write solely about the JavaScript code. Webstorm looks like a JavaScript development environment and that doesn’t matter at all.
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Curious if anyone else had students who came back from this year’s (May 2024) test stating that the multiple choice questions (MCQs) were harder than previous AP practice tests and the written response questions (FRQ) were not the same as what they practiced; knowing that this is the first year that they had to write their written responses on the AP Exam day? We used the AP Classroom practice tests for both the multiple choice questions and the written response questions to prepare for the actual exam. I have been teaching AP CSP since 2017 and I have NEVER had students come back to me stating that the test was hard. These are students who would clearly have earned a 3, 4, or 5 on previous exams. I am very concerned for them. I was not surprised to hear this feedback from the students who were not prepared. Do I chalk this up to them being COVID kids with low Math scores? Are you hearing the same feedback?