Contents

• General & Text Document Requirements
• Programming Requirement
• Database Requirement
• Spreadsheet Requirement
• Mail Merge Requirement & Completion of the Badge Requirements
• Comments on Computers for Scouts

General & Text Document Requirements

Please download the Text Form (located at the bottom of this page). It contains the listing of the merit badge requirements and space for you to write your answers to questions. This satisfies your word processing requirement.

Honesty is vital. Please do the work yourself. Of course, you can ask for help. Do not let other people type answers for you. Do not just copy what other people tell you to write.

Programming Requirement

A web page is source code that a web browser interprets and displays on a monitor. Different browsers interpret code differently. This explains why web pages often look different on different computers. Web pages are written in a special code called HTML, HyperText Markup Language, or XML, eXtensible Markup Language. A markup language is a simple computer language, you write want you want to see, and then put special codes on each side of the text to make it appear different or act as a hyperlink.

Please click on Web Page located at the bottom of this page. A blank webpage will open on your screen. Don't panic! Go to your browser's File Menu, and click Save As. Save "bsa_webpage.html" in a folder or on your desktop or wherever it will be easy for you to find.

For this exercise, please go to the Windows Start Button, Programs, Accessories, and click Notepad. Notepad is a text-editor, which is a very simple word processor. Other computer systems have text editors also. The following instructions should work on any text editor.

Open "bsa_webpage.html". Ask for help, if you are confused. Open your browser, such as Internet Explorer or Firefox, then click File, Open, Browse . . . . Find and open "bsa_webpage.html". Your browser screen should now display the same page as you have in the text editor. You now have a basic set of tools. Programmers use additional tools to work faster, but this is all that is needed. To use these two tools together, frequently save the file you're working on, then go to the browser and click the Refresh button.

The first thing a browser does is look at the first line of a web page. It's looking for something like "HTML" or "XML". Notice how the page ends with /html. This means "turn off html."

The HTML code is then broken into two parts: a header that the browser reads to figure out how to set up the page (See the style information.) and a body that tells the browser what to display.

Please type the additional code shown in the image below into your webpage. Look carefully at the results. You will have your first hyperlink.

Finally, type the table below. Again, look carefully at the results. In this last document, please replace "John Doe" with your name and correct the patrol and rank. Add another name, patrol, and rank to the second row. Finally, add a third table row and save. Don't forget to look at the code and figure out what's going on. Think!

Now you're really writing code. In this case a table to display. Look at its code. Change parts of it, save, and see how the browser displays the information. Think of "th" as table header and "td" as table data. What would "tr" mean?

Congratulations on finishing your programming requirement.

Database Requirement

You've now written and revised software for the Internet. However, its really useful to become familiar with software that allows you to create things on the computer. One of the most powerful tools is a database. A database collects information and allows people to rearrange the information. Many software programs allow you to write a database. On the Internet, Quickbase serves as an excellent program. Another database program that is used for simple situations is a spreadsheet.

Download the Troop Roster located at the bottom of this page. Save the spreadsheet, then open the spreadsheet with your spreadsheet software. It's top row is a list of "column headers". The other rows contain data. Add at least two more lines of information such as friends of yours in the troop. Please correct any obsolete information.

Now, click the upper left corner of your spreadsheet. Everything should be selected (highlighted). Now on the menu of your spreadsheet, probably Microsoft Excel, click Data, Sort. A box of choices will appear. Make sure that you click the button that says "yes" to header row and then sort the data by selecting columns. Repeat doing this using different columns as your main sorting field. In database talk, a field name is the header name of a spreadsheet column. As your final sort, select "Rank" as your main sort field, "Patrol" as your second sort field, and "Last Name" as your third sort field. Save.

Congratulations, you've completed the database requirement.

Spreadsheet Meal Plan Requirement

The spreadsheet represents the start of a meal plan. You will need to select different foods and other goods. This means you will need to re-write some words and COPY lines. Most importantly you will need to play to make the spreadsheet work well.

Copying formulas is critical in using spreadsheets. Download and open the Meal Planner. Complete the first few lines with your name, the type of meal, and the number of people in your patrol.

Copy the last line in the spreadsheet, by highlighting the cells, EDIT, COPY, then going down one line EDIT, PASTE. There are many ways to copy. Ask someone to show you a simpler way. When you copy all of the information, including formulas are copied.

You will need to have at least five items in the meal plan.

Once you feel comfortable with copying, start clicking on the cells with formulas; since this is the only way you can see them. Look at them carefully, you will see the following:

=ROUNDUP(($F$4/C7);0)

This formula calculates the quantity of an item by dividing the number of people to serve by the number of servings per container and rounding up. Look carefully at the code. When you copy the "C7" changes but the "$F$4" doesn't. This is critical to the spreadsheet. Using the "$" symbol keeps cells from changing during the copying process.

=D7*E7

This simple formula is simply the number of packages multiplied by the cost of one package. "*" stands for multiply.

=SUM(F7:F93)

This formula adds all of the numbers in the column from f7 to f93. If the meal plan has more than 100 items, then this formula will need adjusting.

=A7+1

This formula really isn't used in calculations. It merely labels each item. If you copy lines somewhat strangely, then the sequence of numbers may become strange also. You can fix this problem easily, however. Look at the code. See what it is doing. Wouldn't the next line be =A8+1?

When you're copying formulas, you will sometimes get weird results. Look at the image below.

Dividing by zero is undefined. Simply by typing a number in the yellow sections of the spreadsheet, the problem will go away.

Congratulations on completing a five line meal plan and the spreadsheet requirement.

Mail Merge Requirement & Completion of the Badge Requirements

For good reasons, your parents or guardians may not allow you to have your own email address. Also, there are a variety of email software and online email services. You may have to ask for help to complete the following exercise.

Under Contacts or Addresses in your email program, you have the option to create a new Contact or Distribution List. A distribution list contains a set of contact addresses, which makes it easy to send to the same group of people again and again. This is how Mail Merge is done in email. Please create a new distribution list called "bsa_email". Add ad@ashendorf.com and your email address to it, then save.

Create an email with the subject "Computer Merit Badge Documents". If you are mailing your blue merit badge card for me to sign, write that in the body of the email, and in the To: field enter "bsa_email". Attach to the email, the four documents: "bsa_text_form.doc", "bsa_webpage.html", "bsa_troop_roster.xls", and "bsa_meal_planner.xls". Send. If you are using AOL, please send each document separately and do not compress them.

You should receive the email you sent; because you were on the distribution list. I will also receive it. I will reply either with a note of congratulations or with a request for changes. Don't worry, there is no problem with fixing mistakes. Programmers fix bugs all of time.

Comments on Computers for Scouts

A computer for a young adult, must be inexpensive and web safe. Besides Macintosh and Windows computers, you may want to consider a computer using a Linux operating system. Xandros and LinuxMint offer excellent Microsoft compatible software formats for a few dollars. A computer with these systems may only cost $200 - $300 with all of the software legally licensed. This is an issue to Scouts trying to hold themselves to the standards of the Scout Oath.

I (Dennis Ashendorf) use Windows, Macintoshes and Linspire. Linspire has an optional $40 piece of software called Surfsafe which allows pornographic websites to be blocked. Also, Linspire keeps track of all of the software that is downloaded from its website of 2000 software programs so that they can always be updated easily. Coby Ashendorf prefers Linspire over Windows and Macintoshes. Please note that many reviewers on the web say Xandros is somewhat better because it has more support for Windows software.

As an important convenience, only purchase computers that have at least two USB ports in the front of a desktop computer.

All Scouts should get a USB hard drive. These are $20 to $60 small devices that allow data to move from one computer to another. They have replaced floppies, which are completely obsolete. USB hard drives allow students to go back and forth to school with big software projects, which is critical in this world of PowerPoint presentations and graphics.

If you are using a "dial-up" Internet service, please switch to a cable or DSL modem. The speed increase is a great benefit that is well-worth the twenty dollars more per month. Don't scrimp on this.

Connect the cable or DSL modem to a wireless (Wi-Fi) network. It will cost about $100 to install one, but it only takes a few minutes. Many homes have more than one computer. This is the easiest way to share the Internet.

Beware of the hazard of keeping computers in a child's room. They will spend more time in their room to the neglect of the rest of the family. Set rules.

Last Updated: 3 February 2006, ada. The next update should occur during the Spring of 2010, all work will be online.