Why Learn About Web Design?

The very first HTML tags we learn about in class.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I start every school year with a ‘get to know you’ form. Here’s a few different responses about why students are in my Web Design class this year:

• I like computer programming and basically anything with computers.
• I took it because my friend was taking it.
• I’m working on Python with my own personal time and I thought this would expand my knowledge.
• I like computers, and my cousin said that’s a good job in the U.S, and that makes a lot of money, so I decided with my dad to experiment and see if I like it.
• I took web design because I thought it would be a good skill to have when I’m older. I’m not completely sure what things we will be going over but I would think some of it might help making an online portfolio for college and maybe my own website/store/etc. if I ever felt the need to!
• It looked interesting and some of my friends said it was a good class.
• Because I want to make games and websites and I knew this class would be lit.

I did not give last year’s web design students an end-of-the-year reflection journal, but here’s some of their comments about what they thought about the class in March:

• I liked getting to design something of my own and seeing how it comes out.
• I really enjoyed being able to design my own business website. I liked it because I got to bring the idea I had in my mind to life.
• My favorite project was the Personal Web Page that we made in September, as it was the most personal one that I created, and was the first experience I had with creating an actual webpage.
• My favorite project was the business project when we got to design someone else’s website. This was my favorite because I got experience someone else’s way of thinking and mix it with they way I do things.
• I enjoyed learning to create my own website from scratch and make it completely custom to what i’m looking for; that is something that Blogger or an online template cannot do AND that skill may come in handy if I ever need a website to run my future business.
• My favorite project in this class is probably the fashion website because we get to work with partners and we’re making it based on someone else’s design and ideas instead of our own.

It’s fun to think about what my students will learn this year as they turn in their very first project, a webpage created with HTML and CSS, this week!