In about one week, I will be on summer break. But besides that, I have some important stuff to do for my upcoming senior year in high school. Since I have completed all of my required sciences already, the school granted me an open slot for an independant study course. Basically the idea is for us to choose a topic (preferably one that has an associating AP test) and create and follow it independantly; hence the name "independant study". I am interested in persuing an independant study course in Computer Science II (being that I already took Computer Science I). So over the summer, I have to create a course syllabus and proposal of what the course will cover, what I will learn, and the books/software I will need. So here is where the problem comes into play. Although I took Computer Science I, I am new to the idea at creating a detailed course syllabus on my own. I need some advice on what topics/concepts are usually taught in a full year Comp. Science II class. And I want to try and learn as much as I can so that way I will be able to take the Computer Science II AP test next year. So is there anyone here who has had previous experience in an area like this? Basically all I need help on is figuring out what topics and books I should cover in an independantly led Comp. Science II course. -Thanks in advance (Hopefully this will not be regarded as homework help, because it is not)

Does anyone have any input/ideas?

My advice is, create a course on data structures, which is a fairly common 2nd-semester or 2nd-year course in CS

Basically, study: arrays, trees, linked lists, stacks, queues, hash tables, etc.

If you want to make an true inclusinve university-level CS II course, that will help prepare you for the AP, include the associated algorithm theory; algorithmic complexity, sorting, searching, recursion, etc.

Find a few university "Data Structures" CS courses on web and see what their syllabus, textbook, etc say. see my universities' here, though download it if you want to save it because it will be changed now that the semester is over.

Thanks for the advice etothex! I have been googling syllabis for CS II. What I know so far from my research is that I should include a study on algorithms and data structures in addition to a programming language.

In CS I, we learned the Java language. I do not know whether to continue Java in CS II or to move on to another language such as C.

Oh well, I am in no rush yet. I still have 2+ months of free time left to figure this out [smile].

Java should be fine...If I were to take or teach such a course in the future I would probably prefer C++, but you should use what you're familiar with.

The CS AP test also uses java so that's another reason to use Java.