Hi, I'm Colleen Van Lent and I'm happy to welcome you to Introduction to HTML5.
I am very excited to teach this course because I love the idea that we
finally will have some course that really will explain the basics to as many people
as possible.
I love working with people and I love working with technology and
I think the best thing we can do is have as many people involved as possible
to really make sure that we're building things that everyone can use.
In this course, we will be covering the basics.
I really can't emphasize enough that we will be starting
at the very basic building blocks.
We'll start off talking about what's called syntax and semantics.
What are the actual codes that people write In order to make a webpage
a webpage?
Are there any special meanings behind any of these words that can convey special
information to those who may not be able to access the web the same way I do?
Perhaps, someone who uses special accessibility tools.
After we cover the syntax and semantics,
we're going to talk more about the accessibility idea that I just eluded to.
This idea that if we're going to build a webpage, what do we need to do
to make sure the most people as possible can access the information?
We're also going to be talking about getting started in technology and
writing code.
When I mean talking about getting started I mean really talking about
getting started, right down to you and
I are gonna walk through together on how we're going to create a file.
One of the things I think that really trips people up when their starting to
learn computer science or any type of technology based criteria, or curriculum,
is that professors or instructors say let's get started, here's your homework.
Go ahead and do it and
everyone just kind of stops cuz they're not sure where to get started.
I really want to be there for
you to show you how to get started and get off on the right foot.
Let's talk about what we'll cover in this course.
In Week One the focus is on questions.
It's not on coding, it's on questions.
I want you to understand what happens when you type something into the URL.
If you type in www.introwebdesign.com,
how is this page magically appearing in front of your browser?
I also want to talk to you about what types of tools you are going to need
in order to code.
We're gonna talk about editors and browsers and
other different software tools because I want you to know right from the start
what you're going to need in order to succeed in this class.
Finally, we're really going to talk about HTML5.
What happened to HTML1?
What happened to HTML2?
What is this evolution of what's going on with web design and the languages we use?
In Week One, again, almost no coding.
Really, just giving you an idea of how the web works and
why it's important for you to be able to interact with people and
with code that's being used to create your sites.
Week Two, we're gonna talk a little bit of theory, and then, unfortunately for
some people, a lot of code.
There's this idea of something called the Document Object Model,
upon which all webpages are built.
If I can get you to understand just a little bit about that, then later on,
if you decide to go off and use WordPress or some other software to make your own
website, you're gonna be able to really understand what's going on so much better.
We're gonna talk about things called contextual tags and headings and
different things we can use to make our site have different meanings and
different appearances.
We're going to talk about links, images, lists, tables,
and also multimedia in case you would like to add any video or audio to your site.
Week Three, we're really going to put it all together.
At this point, you should know just enough about HTML5 where you'll be dangerous.
Where you can create something that works but doesn't work all the time.
In Week Three, we're gonna put it together, and I'm gonna talk to you about
some of the things that are often overlooked, such as validating your code.
How can we make sure that the code that you wrote doesn't just look good,
it's syntactically correct?
It's going to work everywhere.
Again, when we validate your code, we'll talk about the syntax but
we'll also talk about accessibility, which is hey,
we validated your code to make sure the rules are there.
Let's also validate and make sure that the meaning is there, as well.
Finally, we'll talk about what's called domain name registration and
web hosting because it's a lot more fun to make websites if you can actually put it
out there on the internet and let your friends and family see it, as well.
Finally, we'll work on a final project where you'll put together a lot of
different things that you've been learning.
You are going to create what we call, syntactically valid multipage website.
Your site will have at least two to three pages.
After you've done your coding, you'll run it through to make sure it validates and
it's very accessible.
Your final project is actually going to be something that's a little bit ugly,
I'm gonna admit to right now because we're not going to be talking about styling,
we're not talking about different things.
I really just want you to understand the HTML5 language and
that's all about content.
Let's talk logistics.
Let's talk about who this class is for.
Who am I aiming for for my star student?
I'm really looking forward to teaching the complete beginner.
This class is not for those people who were building a computer down in their
basement when they were 12 years old.
You are very welcome to hang out with us but
we are really here to talk about how we, through persistence, can create a website.
One of the things that I'm kind of anti about is the word passion.
Now, I'm passionate about teaching you this material but
I don't really feel like you need to be passionate about technology or
passionate about computing to really get a lot out of this class.
Instead, it's about persistence.
I'd like you to just hang in there and learn enough that you can go off and
really help people build better technology.
A little bit about of who I am, I have a PhD in computer science which is
really the least important part of my qualifications to teach this class.
Instead, I have two decades of teaching experience and
I've taught a wide range of different students.
My emphasis is always been on education and I'm somewhat famous for
running around the classroom helping people debug their code,
finding out what's going on here, finding out what's going on there.
This whole idea of teaching this class is
novel to me because I am sitting here not moving.
The important part is that I really do care about people succeeding and so
I am hoping that I can help you take your skills to the next level.
Here is that what everyone wants to know.
In this class, what kind of workload will there be and how will you be evaluated?
There are going to be weekly videos.
Some of them are like this, a lecture format.
You should really feel free to watch them anywhere but
I also like to include some videos that are going to be much more demo format.
By that, I mean you really want to watch the video with a computer next to you, so
you can type along and test it out and try it.
There will be weekly readings.
Most of them will be from a free online textbook but
there may be some other online articles I include as well, if I
happen to come across something that's very timely for what we've been learning.
There will be weekly assessments, typically, in the form of quizzes.
There will be that final project and I put in here warning, it will be ugly.
I don't mean that the process will be ugly.
I think you'll find it very straightforward.
It's just again, I can't emphasize enough that
this class is about the language HTML5, it's not about creating beautiful sites.
It's about you really learning just the building blocks and it's always so
much easier to build something ugly the first time than build something beautiful.
How will you succeed in this class?
In a perfect world, you would be coding with two or three other people and
you'd be talking and you'll never be coding alone.
I'm hoping that you'll create a community, probably through the message boards.
I need you to work smart.
One of the things that kills me is when people say I spent three or
four hours working on this.
I never want to hear that from a student.
Instead, I feel that if you've ever run into a problem when you're coding,
you should stop after 10, 15, 20 minutes max and go walk away.
Go get help from someone, take a break, think about something else.
It's all about working smart, not necessarily hard.
Next, you really need to learn to look things up on your own.
There is no way I can teach you everything you need to know about HTML5,
and you wouldn't want me to, it would be very boring.
Instead, you need to feel the confidence to go out and
use search engines to look up the topics that you're interested in.
My job is to give you those key words and key ideas so
you know what it is you want to search for.
Finally, you really need to practice, practice, practice.
You will not succeed in this course unless you've written the code yourself and
really tried to muster your way through some of the mistakes and
typos that you're going to have.
Let's just review.
Once again, this class is for beginners, and I'm excited to have you join us.
When you're done with this class, you will have the ability to write and
understand HTML5 code.
You're not leaving as a developer but
you are going to leave as someone who understands code.
Finally, one of the key things that I'm gonna stress throughout this whole course,
is that you will understand the importance of accessibility in technology.
If when this course was done, I had even one student who said, hey you know what,
I'm gonna go on and I might not be a coder but I am gonna go work with somebody else
to help make their code more accessible, I would be thrilled with that.
Welcome to the course and
I hope you have a lot of fun as you learn more about HTML5.