Web Fundamentals

Taught by Alexandra Ackerman
Code available at https://github.com/newschool-webfundamentals
Presentations available at newschool-webfundamentals.github.io

Today's Goals

  • Introduce ourselves
  • Go over the topics and structure of the class
  • Discuss the syllabus and this week's homework
  • Developer tools activity - let's break a website

This class is specially designed for people who think code, math, and computers in general are intimidating. Through a series of playful challenges, you will learn how computers, code, and the Web actually work. Along the way, you will pick up valuable skills and knowledge that will allow you to do more complex interactive projects in the future. It’s strongly recommended that this class be taken along with the appropriate News, Narrative & Design class.

Introductions...

Who am I?

About me

  • Graduated from Lang (C&M and Journalism)
  • Got $$$ from Google to learn to code
  • Started working as developer in 2014
  • Fell in love with coding and building tools for journalists
  • Now Engineering Manager at Contently

What's a developer and what do I do?

  • A programmer who creates programs and apps for the World Wide Web
  • We build and maintain websites from the ground-up
  • Works on front end, back end or a mix of both

Who are you?

  • What year?
  • What major?
  • What do you want out of this class?
  • What's one thing you know about computers/internet/tech?

What you can expect from this class

  • Practical knowledge of HTML, CSS & JavaScript
  • Learning lots of new material
  • Feeling lost and overwhealmed at times
  • Develop basic coding skills and be able to teach yourself new technologies

What you'll learn

  1. How the world wide web works
  2. HTML & CSS
  3. Libraries - Bootstrap, Materialize, Chart.js
  4. JavaScript & jQuery
  5. Read, understand and modify someone else's code

What you won't learn

  • Backend development
  • SQL & Databases
  • Python, Ruby, or any other programming languages I haven't mentioned yet

This course will focus on the fundamentals of frontend web development from the perspective of a journalist.

How will I know if I'm doing a good job?

Monthly retrospectives to hear what's working in the class, what's not working, and what you'd like me to start doing to make this experience as helpful as possible for you.

General structure of each class

  • Warm up or quiz
  • Introduction of new material
  • Guided practice (I'll show you how to do something with the new material)
  • Lab and independent practice
  • Wrap up and homework explained

Class choice

Toward the end of the semester, I will devote one or two classes to topics you want to learn. Start thinking about that and we'll take a vote.

Let's go over the syllabus...

GitHub

Throughout the course, you will be required to post assignments to GitHub.

Since we have some time, let's set up your GitHub accounts and go over this week's assignment.

Now it's time to have some fun...