Re: Part 1 of beginner's course written

On 15 Apr 2013, at 21:37, Janet Swisher <jswisher@mozilla.com> wrote:

> On 4/15/13 1:28 PM, Chris Mills wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> Today I've put together a first draft of the beginner's course:
>> 
>> 
>> http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/beginners/the_beginning
>> 
>> 
>> Let me know what you think. Does the language hit the mark for complete beginners? Is this too much theory up front? The next Part dives straight into practical coding, and I've tried to keep this as short as possible.
>> 
>> 
> Hi Chris,
> 
> Thanks for writing this! However, I think that yes, it is too much theory up front. This is mostly stuff that gets between the learner and making a web page, which is why they came here. In addition, it conveys a sense of "Careful! The Web is complicated and you might break it!" 
> 
> About the most essential parts of this seem to me to be:
> * What is a web browser? (The rest of the web architecture can wait until needed.)
> * Tools of the trade (Just browsers and text editors; leave aside FTP for now.)
> * What web standards do we use to build the Web? (I'd rename to "What languages do we use to build the Web?" Indoctrination about web standards can wait until later.)

Thanks Janet. I think you are right. I will have another go at this tomorrow. ;-)

> 
> My challenge to you is: What are the learning outcomes for this section? What will the learner be able to *do* when they've finished? (For more info, see http://www.library.illinois.edu/infolit/learningoutcomes.html)

Readers will

* Know how the web works, at a basic level
* Know what a web browser is
* Understand what technologies they will be learning in this course
* Know what software they need to do web development, and have installed said software

I think this is probably reasonable at this stage

Received on Monday, 15 April 2013 21:04:15 UTC