As I began watching the YouTube video for one of week 0’s assignments, I got excited when I had many “aha moments,” due to my experience in information technology on the military side. However, as I got my eyes on the reading assignments, I had a mixture of anxiety and ease.

In all honesty, programming seems like it is a giant puzzle that takes a lot of effort to solve. I have always had an interest in teaching myself the basics of coding, but I got extremely overwhelmed when I made the interesting choice of starting off with JavaScript as my first language. I used to feel extremely discouraged when people’s response to me expressing my love for public relations and interest for programming was “they are completely unrelated.” The blogs regarding computational thinking & journalism part one and part two granted me some ease and made me feel like it can be one of the most marketable skills a communications professional could have.

In the “Timeline of Software Languages” reading, it conveyed that coding languages are always changing. It was interesting to read that there are so many languages out there that serve different purpose, yet have the ability to feed off of each other. In the technology realm, programming and devices are constantly evolving. I predict that in the future, there will be many professions that will be valuable if they have at least some exposure to programming. The “Timeline of Computer History” is a great example that computers have never stopped changing from the 1930s.

Overall, I am happy to learn that programming isn’t so much a new world, but a part of ours that many professionals haven’t taken the time to get to know.

Is this a whole new world or is this a world I never took the time to see?

Welcome! Our first class session is Tuesday, Jan. 15 from 5:10-7:30 p.m.

Be sure to review the syllabus before the first class.

The readings, site registrations and software installations below must be completed by Sunday, Jan. 13 by 11:59 p.m. The analysis post is due by Monday, Jan. 14 by 11:59 p.m.

Pre-course assignments

• Required: *** Complete this survey before doing the readings and analysis post ***
• Required: Reading/watch
  • How the Internet works
  • Timeline of software languages
  • Timeline of networking and the web
  • Computational thinking and journalism: part 1 and part 2
  • WordPress software philosophy
  • GNU free software philosophy
  • Unix philosophy
  • The Zen of Python
  • The Pragmatic Programmer Quick Reference Guide
• Required:
  • Download and install Sublime Text (all platforms)
  • Create a free GitHub account
  • Download and install GitHub Desktop and connect it to your GitHub account
• Required: Write analysis post that includes why the ideas in the readings matter, what you found most interesting and your main takeaways from topics discussed. Also, email your GitHub profile link to the instructor. Due Monday, Jan. 14 by 11:59 p.m.

Required free software to install:

• Sublime Text 3 (Mac and Windows)
• GitHub desktop (Mac and Windows)
• MAMP (Mac) or XAMPP (Windows)

Notes on required software:

• These three programs must be downloaded and installed before the first class to be sure you can hit the ground running.
• If you have problems installing that you can’t resolve by searching online, please contact the instructor as soon as possible.
• After you install them, you don’t have to start using them before class starts, but you’re encouraged to explore what they do and why we’ll be using them.
• Important: Don’t change any MAMP or XAMPP settings.

Be sure to subscribe to the blog to get all the updates posted here:

Analysis Posts

Everyone will receive an individual login for this WordPress site so you can submit the analysis post. If you haven’t used WordPress before, please see the first section on how to post. Be sure to:

• Add a title that briefly describes the content, themes, etc. of your post
• Under “Categories,” check the box for “2019 Spring class”
• Under “Tags,” add one called week0 — with no spaces between week and zero (it will be one of the suggested options when you starting typing “week”). After that you can add other tags that are relevant to what you discuss in your post (e.g. history of programming, computational thinking, etc.)
• If you don’t want your post’s content publicly viewable on the course blog, please change the “visibility” to “password protected” in the publish box (top-right of the post edit page; see instructions) and enter the password I sent by email. That way everyone in class can read it, but not the wider web.
• Under the “Notifications” section, always check the “instructor” box, which notifies me your post is ready.
• Change the status to “pending review” and save

The weekly analysis posts don’t need to touch on every single thing covered, especially this time because there was such a variety of material. Ideally, in the case of a reading/video, a post will explore a particular theme or topic you found most interesting. Choose one (or a few) things and go into more depth.

In the future, if most of the work assigned one week is skills-based or project-based, you can reflect on that experience. Also, as mentioned in the syllabus excerpt, those assignments will be when you want to talk about progress you’ve made and any hurdles.

Some brief explanation can be ok, but definitely avoid summarization for the analysis posts. The only exception is if you’re doing an explainer of something you learned while working on your final project.

The point is to do one or more of the following — or something along these lines:

• analyze the materials
• find connections between the materials within a given week (or, in the future, between weeks)
• relate something to your experience (how it could help you, how it enlightened you about something, etc)

Also, be sure to link back to the materials you reference in your post.

Please let me know if you have any questions by email or in the comments below. I look forward to meeting everyone at the first class session!