Tag Archives: internet

Modern Day Journalism

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Our world is constantly developing and changing. From the readings, we can see how the internet evolved to lead us to where we are today. It is not going to stop here and as our demand increases, the urge to create something new is a requirement. As our world becomes more complex, the problems we face do too. Computational thinking is a critical way to solve such problems because we need to understand and assess the situation before taking a stab at solving it.

I found it very interesting to learn more about the importance of our mindset behind learning how to code. As PR professionals, we understand the importance of digital platforms and how crucial it is to utilize them as best as possible. A couple of years ago, I was working for a tech company that helped couples plan their weddings. One of our main goals was to constantly update our mobile app to make it as user-friendly as possible. Consumers are always on their phones and we need to meet such demand. We must understand human behavior to understand their needs. Journalism is evolving and in order to do better journalism, we need to incorporate innovation and technology. We must look at a matter as a whole then dissect it into small pieces, in order to find patterns and understand what the issue is made up of.

 

Coding for Dummies(me)

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The introduction to HTML this week has shown me that it is the most complicated simple thing I’ve encountered. Even lesson 1 which started off very simple then became into almost a new language (which it is). Although it was a bit tough, I found myself actually enjoying the work I was doing.

After the coding lessons it is quite interesting to see how websites are broken down into a couple of <p>’s, <h>’s and a few backslashes. While it is obvious that if you write some certain letters and numbers together a website will be produced, it is crazy how truly simple this process is and that it can also be learned on a basic level even for free. Although it is said that memorizing these tags tags, can lead to being fairly fluent in this type of coding, it is shocking that there is a belief that something such complex could be easily understood through a basic series.

After seeing the first lessons of coding, I can’t help but think that I was born too late. I feel like if I had expressed an interest in coding while being born 10/15 years before, I could be the creator of Facebook or any other popular social media. The act of just adding more numbers and letters right under previous ones in such a fine tuned manner seems like it only took a matter of time. I do know it is obviously a lot more than the way I’m explaining it, but I appreciated that these lessons even gave me the confidence to feel this way about websites.

 

The Internet

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The first thing that struck me when first diving into the readings was how much more complex the internet is. As the video mentioned I was one of those people who viewed the Internet as a “cloud,” with all the information circling around up there. It also came as surprise to me how many different so called versions of the internet there are, dating back many years. I will admit some of the readings were almost like a foreign language to me. It took a couple re-reads to fully grasp the concept of computational thinking, and how that actually applies to my life. Simply trying to answer my little questions with abstract or even specific Google searches that relate back to the topic I was originally trying to figure out. Something else that caught my attention was how many different versions of coding there are. As someone who is new to the whole concept of web development, I of course heard of Java and C++ but seeing how many there actually are and where they date back too is pretty incredible to me. The readings definitely peaked my interest for the class and I look forward to the information that will be learned!

Web development sounds hard. But if you do it right it can be easy.

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If someone told me, a former history major, that I would be enrolled in a web development class I would laugh at you. Then I would log off Twitter, because the trolls shouldn’t get you down. But… here I am. Ready to learn.

This week’s reading was a helpful collection of foundational texts for the class. Since I am starting out with no programming skills whatsoever it is helpful to read about how a lot of platforms aim to be as simplistic as possible.

The idea of simplicity not only as an esthetic but as a mindset was also discussed in Greg’s blog posts. Oftentimes journalists can get bogged down and not see the big picture. Thinking pragmatically and putting effort into making sure you’re being as effective as possible is an important mantra to have at the beginning of this class. I’m sure there will be a lot of bells and whistles that can be added to things, but remembering to stay in a minimalistic mind frame will be important for the class.

It also serves the actions of reporting as well. Sometimes I can get thrown into a tailspin looking for the perfect kicker, or spending an inordinate amount of time on things that a reader doesn’t care about. Getting out of my head and making sure that I’m working smart, and not hard, is an important lesson.

I also really enjoyed the basic primers of how the internet came about, and how it functions. It’s really easy to forget all the channels things have to go through to ping back and forth, and having a healthy sense of how things came to be from a historical and, well, factual standpoint can only help. When learning about a whole new field, a solid foundation of how we got to where we are today is important.

Overall, this coming semester looks like it will have challenges, but web development is a very exciting thing to dive into. After all, I use the internet for 95 percent of my job, so understanding how it works, and how we strive to make it simple is a good starting place.

GitHub profile: https://github.com/savvylee11