Week 7 · Monday, October 19, 2026 · Room D-221 · No class October 12
Six weeks of tools become one toolkit.
No new material this week, and that is the point. Weeks 1 to 6 handed you version control, a Linux machine, a locked-down server, a programming language, a design method and your first classes, as separate skills. The midterm asks you to show they are now one connected toolkit, and this hub exists to make that true before you sit down with the paper.
What Week 7 is
Monday, October 19 brings two graded deliverables and no lab circuit. The midterm examination (10%) is written on paper and covers Weeks 1 to 6: the tools, the language, the electricity, the design method, the classes. The midterm reflection log (10%) is the assembled record of your own learning since Week 1, built from the journal notes the hubs have been prompting all term; it is due the same day. Precise exam-day logistics and the log's submission format are announced in class and on Omnivox; everything else you need is in this hub, and none of it depends on those details.
The two deliverables
Graded · 10%
The midterm, on paper
Expect what the hubs have been telegraphing since September: writing the command for a described task, the update-versus-upgrade and allow-before-enable reasons, reading a traceback bottom-up, the Week 4 resistor mathematics, tracing pseudocode and Python by hand, converting between pseudocode, flowcharts and code, repairing weak requirements, and writing a small function or class from a spec. The practice exam is a full paper in exactly this style, with worked answers.
Graded · 10%
The reflection log
One honest entry per week: what you built, what broke, what you only understood afterward, with evidence from your own repositories. It is not a diary of feelings and not a copy of the hubs; it is an engineer's log of a skill being acquired. The Exam day page has the entry template, the quality criteria and the assembly workflow. Start it this week, not the night before.
The two-week runway
Between the Week 6 class (Tuesday, October 6) and the exam lie twelve days with no class in them, Thanksgiving Monday included. That is enough time for the full six-session review plan from Week 6 at a civilized pace, with rest days left over. The sessions map onto this hub directly:
| Session | Review page here | Then go deeper in |
|---|---|---|
| 1 and 2 · the tools | Toolkit review (Weeks 1 to 3) | Week 1 · Week 2 · Week 3 hubs, wherever the self-tests expose a gap |
| 3 · code and circuit | Code review (Week 4) | Week 4 hub, especially the GPIO math and traceback pages |
| 4 and 5 · design and classes | Design & classes (Weeks 5 and 6) | Week 5 · Week 6 hubs for any construct that will not trace |
| 6 · the dress rehearsal | Practice exam, timed, closed book | Whichever review page the marking sends you back to |
Revising like it works
Two findings from a century of memory research are worth more than any amount of rereading, and this hub is built around both:
- Retrieval beats review. Testing yourself, answering before looking, strengthens memory far more than rereading the same pages; the effect is robust enough to carry its own name, the testing effect. Every checklist, quiz and self-test across the seven hubs is a retrieval prompt. Use them with the answers covered, and treat a wrong answer as a gift: it tells you exactly where to spend the next half hour.
- Spacing beats cramming. The same hours spread over twelve days outperform the same hours in the last two, because each return visit interrupts forgetting while it is cheap to interrupt (spaced repetition, and the forgetting curve behind it). Six sessions across the runway is spacing by construction.
Practical consequence: a paper exam is answered with a pen, so revise with one. Trace tables, command recall, resistor math and class skeletons should all happen on paper this fortnight, where the exam will happen.
How to use this hub
- The three review pages are the theory of Weeks 1 to 6, consolidated: the load-bearing models, the tables worth memorizing, and self-tests after every section. They compress; they do not replace. Every section links back to the full stage page it summarizes.
- The practice exam is a complete paper with worked answers and marking notes. It is most valuable taken once, timed and closed-book, late in the runway, and then marked honestly.
- The Exam day page owns everything that is not revision: the reflection log guide, what to bring, and how to work a paper exam.
- Troubleshoot this week is a misconception clinic: the specific wrong beliefs that cost marks, stated and corrected. Skim it even if revision feels fine; misconceptions feel fine from the inside.
- Resources is the master library: every canonical reference from all six hubs in one place, plus the study-science reading.
Words of the fortnight
| Term | Plain meaning | Why it matters now |
|---|---|---|
| Retrieval practice | Answering from memory before checking | The single highest-yield revision act; the quizzes exist for it |
| Spacing | Spreading study across days with gaps | Twelve days of runway, used as twelve days, beat two all-nighters |
| Transfer | Using a skill on a problem you have not seen | The exam's questions will be cousins of the hubs' examples, not twins |
| Reflection | Examining your own learning: what worked, what broke, what changed | The log's whole job, and a professional habit (engineers keep logbooks for the same reason) |
| Marking scheme | How points attach to parts of an answer | Shown work earns partial credit; a bare number risks all or nothing |
Where this fits in the course
Week 6 · Oct 6
Objects and classes
The last new material: classes, self, state machines as capsules, your first module. Fresh enough to review last; important enough to review anyway.
Week 7 · Oct 19 · this hub
Midterm and reflection log
Consolidation, practice and proof: three review pages, a full practice paper, the reflection log guide, and the exam itself.
Week 8 · Oct 26
The second computer
The ESP32 joins the bench: analog sensing beside your Pi, and Assignment 2 (the PID light-harvesting brief) lands, written in exactly the requirements language you are revising.
Working at home
This is the one week where home is the main venue, and no hardware is needed for any of it: every review page, self-test and the practice exam run on paper and any browser, and every hub page is a single self-contained file that works offline once downloaded. If you want the Pi for command-recall practice, Week 2's home setup works as always, but a pen and the self-tests are the better simulation of the thing you are preparing for.