I reckon I’ve got one of the best books for learning HTML and CSS in my hands, after reading through a few chapters of Head First HTML, by Elisabeth Freeman & Eric Freeman.
I came across this book while reading one of my favourite blogs: Creating Passionate Users by Kathy Sierra, and thanks to the lovely librarians at Wentworth Falls TAFE, I can now review the book for myself!
I’m excited about this book because it’s got soo many excellent ideas and activities for learning HTML and CSS from the ground up… which I’m hoping will be really useful to learners in our Web Design course!
Last week I think I nearly scared off half our group after a bunged-up exercise! We were only in our second week of the course, and one person was having some issues getting his page to look like his excellent prototype (as is completely understandable at this stage!) I thought, “hey, why don’t we all look at this together on the big screen and see what’s involved in creating a CSS version of Rob’s prototype” - stoopid move. Turned out to be a lot more complicated than I initially thought (requiring some complicated relative and absolute positioning), and waaay too complicated for a week 2 workshop! (Lesson for me: always work through exercise before demo’ing to make sure it’s at the right level!)
So this week, I’m hoping to help those learners who feel like they’re drowning in a sea of HTML tags and CSS properties by giving them a taste of this excellent book. We’ll learn some of the ins-and-outs of linking our web pages together (much more appropriate than CSS positioning for a week 3 workshop!) and have fun with some of the excellent activities from HeadFirst HTML!
Hi Michael,
Don’t stress out dude. Working as a class on Robs web page didn’t actually go as horribly wrong as you might have thought. We addressed a few problems that may have been a bit hard to grasp but they were the same problems I was facing and let me know exactly how to deal them. Learning isn’t always understanding at first. Next time we come across these issues we’ll recognise them as something familiar. Also it’s a good lesson about the frustrations of programming. Negative things aren’t bad.
I suppose my point really is; you’ve got great ideas for teaching and everything so far has been great! :)
I’ve used that book - great stuff!! The activities are excellent.
On the subject of text books - do you have any suggestions for good beginners guides to Flash 8?
In terms of examining interesting examples of HTML CSS, have you checked out the Open Source Web Design site @ http://www.oswd.org/? It’s great for learning how to achieve positioning etc and you can compare techniques from one example to the next. Gr8 for inspiration too!
Hope Week 3 is lots of fun! ;-)
The Head First series is great, they are a real inspiration.
Scaring students in the early stages of courses is so easy !!!! I’ve done it many a time and I keep on trying to make projects simpler to put in more of what I call steping stones. But it often still doesn’t work. (I just think i’m scary) It’s great you were able to solve the problem, I’ve made the mistake of doing this and getting myself in a real mess of confusion.
Do you think it’s because we are both starting projects/tasks early in the course, instead of just lots of tutorials ?
Addye, thanks for finding the positives ;)… it’s great working together with learners who learn from all situations :)
Jo, I haven’t even used Flash 8 yet (we’ve got MX here at TAFE), but the Flash Developer Centre has lots of great videos etc (I’m sure you’ve already used this!)
Robin, have you used the Head First series before? They sure do look amazing, in terms of what you learn about learning too! Yeah, I do think it’s probably related to doing projects early on… I want to think about a more gradual progression (BTW: I’ll email you a group activity/game we tried last week for practising HTML/CSS)
Is this a book a beginner could use on their own? I’m beginning to think that I won’t be able to learn this stuff unless I join a class - especially the CSS stuff…
Definitely Rose. I mean, I don’t think you can ever replace the group-learning experience, but this book does it’s best to create a real learning experience between you and the book ;).
Definitely for a beginner, assumes only that you understand folders and files and how to use a web browser. Lots of great visuals and activities… based on Kathy Sierra’s ideas about learning (She’s previously written a similar style book for learning Java).
I haven’t used the head first series with students before, mainly because I don’t teach java. What I have done is using some and metaphors with actionscript stuff. I odd to credit a “metaphor”. Maybe some the excerises could be reworked for the wiki.
About to dive into with a new group tommorrow that seem really confident, changed some of my approach but I still really think real or real like projects are really important to start with.
I love to her more about the game for practising HTML/CSS.