Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Katherine-Blog Post for the Month of March-Andover Innovation Lab/Help Desk

3.6.14.website skeleton.png
Since my last post, things have been picking up speed. I’ve moved on from my research project and have started to learn HTML online through w3 schools. It’s been good, though I wish I had more time to work each day-- I find that when I use w3 schools within a mere constricting 82 minutes, it’s tricky to strike the right balance between reading new material tutorials and actually practicing the skills I’ve learned. To counter that, I’ve decided to try out the idea of the “HTML Journal”. Theoretically, with the HTML Journal I can both take notes on what I learned that day AND attempt to execute the correct use of those skills, all at the same time! That way, I have a continuous log of concepts learned, with working code (and the accompanying physical results!) to serve as a reference for my work at a later date. Plus, by putting my work each day on a Google Doc, I’m able to access and continue my work at home (on the rare occasion that I’m not drowning in homework.) Although, I will admit that documenting the process of learning HTML from scratch is embarrassingly simplistic  at first. As you can see from the included picture of the fruition of my HTML efforts thus far, I am still far from making an aesthetically pleasing product.

Going forward, I’m looking forward to learning the CSS to bulk up my HTML. I’d say I’m downright anxious to get to CSS, actually, because what I have right now just looks silly. Hopefully, by the time I write my next blog entry, I’ll have learned to integrate CSS well enough to make the skeleton I have now into something that actually looks plausibly legitimate website. I guess that if I start making my website look more professional, I should probably step up the quality of my content as well-- but I’m not ready to give up Bill and Ted or my plethora of goofy links, so I’ll worry about that later. I still have plenty of things to learn before I’ll be nearly close enough to that level of proficiency
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