What's Going On? October 31st through November 4th

Lesson 8: Thinking Inside the Box

This week students will complete lesson 8 in class.  Along with this lesson, students will read chapter 14 in the textbook, complete the reading guide, and web assignment 8a.  Students will have Monday to learn some new web techniques with our notes day and Tuesday/Wednesday and Thursday as work days.  The entire class will participate in a class review on Friday to go over some HTML and CSS techniques.

During this week's assignment, we will focus on the "Box Model".  We will take a look at how to add spacing with padding and margin.  We will also practice adding stylized borders into our pages.

Midterm Project

It is really important that students are on pace at the end of this week since we will have our midterm project next week.  Students will start the project on Monday and MUST upload it by the end of class on Friday.  Students will be given screen shots of the final project and will have all week to come up with the HTML and CSS coding to create the website.  Students can use their resources: the textbook, old web assignments, and the internet in order to complete the assignment.  Students MAY NOT work together.  Students who need additional work time beyond what is provided in class must make arrangements before school, during lunch or after school to have the lab open.

What's Going On? October 24th through October 26th

Lesson 7: Colors and Backgrounds

During this short week of school, web students will work on finishing up our seventh unit on colors and backgrounds.  With this lesson, students have the opportunity to try out different background images and address different ways to add color to our pages.  

Students are considered "on pace" for the class after the lesson 7 multiple choice review questions are complete and the web assignments 7a, 7b, and 7c are uploaded to Google Drive by the end of class on Tuesday.

During class on Wednesday, we will review some past web concepts, including how to mark-up text into sections using <div> tags.

What's Going On? October 17th through October 21st

Unit 6: Intro to CSS

At this point in the semester, students have pretty much learned all of the necessary HTML document markup required.  We still could use some more practice marking up sections of text, but so far students have shown a grasp of our basic header, paragraph, list, and image tags.

For a quick review of div tags and how they work to mark up sections of text, you could check out this video:

For lesson 6 we will start modifying the look of our page using CSS.  For this lesson's assignments, we will have our textbook reading along with the accompanying reading guide, our 10 lesson review multiple choice questions and three web pages.  This week all three web assignments will be presented as follow-along tutorials in the textbook.  I highly encourage students to READ about the changes they are making to the code so that when it comes time to make these changes on our own, we understand the reasoning behind the code syntax.

Students are considered "on pace" for the class if the lesson 6 assignments are complete by the end of our class on Tuesday/Wednesday.  Students who need additional time in the lab are encouraged to come in early (the lab opens at 7am) or during their lunch period.

After lesson 6 is complete, we will move on to lesson 7 where we will learn about how to make more changes to color and backgrounds using CSS.

What's Going On? October 10th through October 14th

Checking In

Last week students filled out a form reflecting on their current progress in the course.  These forms should be signed by someone at home and then returned to me.  Since this course is offered in partnership with WCTC and students who successfully complete the class with a "C" or higher will earn WCTC and North credit, I want to maintain an open line of communication so that there are no "surprises" at the end of the semester.


Finishing Up Lesson 5 and Starting Lesson 6

It seemed as if students needed some extra time last week finishing up on lesson 4, so we did not begin lesson 5 until the end of last week.  With lesson 5, students explored more about adding images to web pages and learned how to make an image map.  Students will apply these techniques in the three web pages that go along with lesson 5.  The plan is to finish up lesson 5 this week on Tuesday/Wednesday and begin lesson 6 on Thursday.  Students should have their lesson 5 reading guides completed by Monday's class and be prepared to take our 10 multiple choice review questions on Tuesday/Wednesday.  Reading guides and the lesson review questions can be found on BlackBoard, so please be prepared!

We started to use the industry-standard software, Adobe DreamWeaver, last week.  This is an extremely costly program so it is probably not something easily accessible to students outside of our computer lab.  If students need some additional time to work they can see me.  I arrive to school by 7am each day and would be more than happy to open the lab.