Tuesday evenings I head over to Kaprielian Hall for my favorite class this semester, Web Publishing (ITP 104). As you may have read in my blog this summer, I worked for an online media company helping to re-launch a website. Well, prior to this summer I had no experience with web publishing, but slowly picked up bits and pieces as I worked. This fall, I had space in my schedule for a fun 2-unit elective, and after my summer internship I thought it would be exciting to actually learn web publishing in a classroom setting and fill in all the pieces I had missed. In this class, we learn the basics of HTML and CSS, and each have space on USC’s server to practice what we are learning and publish our work. Here is a link to the class syllabus.
This class is a 3-hour, once a week, interactive, lecture-lab class. As many professors will say, the best way to learn is to practice over and over again. In this class, that is exactly what we do. The first part of class is an interactive lecture where we follow along and make our own webpage as the professor does. The remainder of the class is then reserved for us to work on our weekly project while the TAs and professor are there to help. Within the past six weeks, I have already learned so much about web publishing and made four web pages. Each week we build on what we learned and practiced the week before, and by the end of the semester I will have made a full website on my own in addition to the various pages I have made along the way.
Lastly, the professor, Professor Dent, is amazing! He is very helpful and provides many links on his website to provide additional support for challenging concepts. He also records his lectures and uploads them to his website along with a summary of what we went over to help us out if we get stuck with anything. This really helped me when I transferred into the class late. Being able to listen to his lecture made it as if I never missed the first week.
Overall, this class provides a great break from my other engineering classes, but I still get to learn a very useful skill that I know I will use in the future.
Until next time,
Lauren
My “Movie Preview” Project.
My most recent project, a calendar.
