Teaching Web Development to Students at Delta Streets Academy
Feb 08, 2023
Recently, I was asked about my experiences teaching Introduction to Web Development to high school students at Delta Streets Academy. (Read the original article!) About half of the students in this class took our Introduction to Computer Programming and Electronics course last year. In that class, they learned some blocks-based coding with Scratch, then used Arduino's text-based language to write programs to control and interact with electronic circuits. The other half, though, had no prior programming experience.
After just a few weeks, these students already know the difference between CSS selectors that target the element with a given ID versus those intended to affect all elements that have a specific class. They've learned not only how to adjust an element's appearance, but also how to apply simple animations to give an element realistic interactive behaviors.
In addition to using the HTML file to define the structure and content of the web page, then using CSS to control its appearance, the students are learning to code in JavaScript to turn static pages into dynamic web applications. Their first project was a four-function calculator capable of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. They've had to use conditional statements, sometimes with a compound condition, to make decisions based on the current internal state of the calculator.
Their next project will be to display a monthly calendar. They will need to determine how to layout the page elements so that any month of any year can be displayed. This involves determining on which day of the week the first of the month falls, as well as how many days are in the month being displayed. Pop quiz: Assuming rows with 7 squares that represent a week of days, how many rows are needed to display the calendar page for any month? Even I had to stop and think about that!
We at the Excalibur Solutions STEM Academy are grateful to Delta Streets Academy, not only for giving us this opportunity, but also for serving as a pilot site for our interactive classes program during the 2021-2022 school year.
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