Intro to Coding Interactives Spring 2016

Course Objective

This is a class that teaches students how to build multimedia web packages for both mobile and desktop. Students will construct web presentations that combine multiple media forms, and design a longform story in a way that connects each piece into a cohesive narrative structure. Students will learn both the technical skills for building web packages — HTML, CSS and jQuery — as well as design/journalistic concepts for presenting content on different devices, with emphasis on how each medium influences the content. This is a production class where students will have to build a news package on a real news story they reported on.

programming comic Via Foxtrot ©Bill Amend, Educational Re-use

Jan 21
Class overview and HTML refresher — An overview of how the class is structured followed by a brief refresher lesson of what was learned in Web Skills.
Jan 28
More HTML Markup — Class will cover all the HTML tags left off from Web Skills, including some newer HTML5 ones. We will also demystify several technologies and acronyms.
Feb 4
HTML Tables, Forms, and Video/Audio Tag — Class will cover how to display tables and forms using HTML markup. We won't cover much about how to style them just yet. First we need to understand their structure and how they work. We will also cover HTML comments, escape characters, inline vs block elements.
Feb 11
Intro to CSS — Class will cover Cascading Style Sheets, including how to select the various HTML tags within a document using classes, ids and type selectors. We will then explore additional selector types and learn to use Chrome's web inspector.
Feb 18
CSS Boxes, Lists, Tables, and Forms — Class will cover how to use CSS for changing the look of boxes, lists, tables, and forms. We will talk about prefixes and pseudo-selectors.
Feb 25
CSS Layout — Finally, class will cover basic page layout. This will include positioning, floats, and styling a basic web page from the ground-up.
Mar 3
CSS for mobile — Class will cover media queries, viewports, and all the many quirks in doing mobile web design; responsive website design.
Mar 10
Web Design Concepts — Class will talk design. It will cover typography, color theory, CRAP (contrast, repetition, alignment, proximity), a modified Maslow’s hierarchy triangle, mood boards and storyboards.
Mar 17
Building a Boot Strap Website — This class will cover a soup to nuts lesson on building a Bootstrap website.
Mar 24
Spring Break — No class.
Mar 31
Introduction to jQuery Part 1 — Class will cover basic jQuery selections and DOM manipulation.
Apr 7
Introduction to jQuery Part 2 — Class will cover basic jQuery selections and DOM manipulation.
Apr 14
CSS3 Animation, video, and audio — Animation can be done using only CSS. But paired with jQuery, it can be a powerful tool. Class will also cover how to control video and audio using jQuery and CSS.
Apr 21
Workshop session — Some time given in class to workshop your projects and meet with the instructor.
Apr 28
Workshop session — Some time given in class to workshop your projects and meet with the instructor.
May 5
Presentation of Stories — Students will present stories to the entire schoool