Tips, web design book reviews, resources and observations for teaching and learning web development.
An interesting post from Khan Academy about Newbie Syntax Blindness got me thinking about teaching syntax. First let me point out that Khan Academy is dealing with a different situation than face-to-face teaching. Their problem is about finding ways to alert students who are working online with useful messages about what their syntax errors might … Continue reading “Syntax Blindness”
Several interesting things have come up in the last week or so that I think need to be connected. Who’s Not Online? Pew Internet did a study on Who’s Not Online and Why. They found that 15% of American adults do not use the internet at all, and another 9% of adults use the internet … Continue reading “The State of Things and What it Means for Web Education”
When you are running a business, it is important to test your advertising and marketing strategy so that you can develop a better method of reaching your target audience. The primary goal of marketing is getting the name of your company and the products or services that you provide out to the public. The second … Continue reading “What A-B Testing Is and Why You Should Do It”
ARIA landmark roles are used to improve accessibility and provide useful navigation points that a screen reader recognizes and can find quickly. The role information is written into the HTML as an attribute of any element that fills a particular role. In the code, they look like this: <header role=”banner”> <nav role=”navigation”> The current list … Continue reading “Think about ARIA roles when choosing a WordPress theme – Updated”
Drupalcon Keynote by Karen McGrane with Video, Slides, and transcript. One of many worthwhile ideas she discusses: I’ve gotten the reputation of being the president of the WYSIWYG Haters Club, which is true, and if you don’t buy into my rationale here today… I’m going have to continue my graffiti crime spree. People assume I … Continue reading “Useful Links: the future of content, Adobe web fonts, HTML Imports”
“One thing is more frightening than speaking your truth and that is not speaking” -Audre Lourde Adria Richards by George Kelly via Flickr Here’s the tale of Adria Richards at the recent PyCon Conference. It unfolded like this: 1. Comments from men seated behind Richards sexualizing forking and dongles made her uncomfortable. She wanted to … Continue reading “Why We Should Just Listen When a Woman Speaks Up”
Last time I checked, I had 12,000+ tweets on Twitter, where I’m @vdebolt. It took me several years to achieve that number – watching my grandkids tweet, they could do 12,000 a day – but I’m just a few-a-day kinda gal. I was thinking about the various ways I use Twitter in a day or … Continue reading “5 Things I Can’t Stop Talking about on Twitter”