Bridging the Gap: Teaching Web Literacy in Our Communities
Last month, I had my first opportunity to teach an introduction to HTML coding class at the library. I was a bit more nervous before teaching the class than I usually am before teaching Word or Excel classes. I worried that there might be a big gap between what the students were expecting to learn and what I had prepared to teach.
I started the Building the Web: Intro to Coding class with some discussion questions from the Web & You activity. It was interesting to learn that the students were more interested in sharing NOT how they currently use the web but what they wished they could do with more skills. For example, one of the students was an artist and she wanted to learn how she could upload images of her artwork. She was always confused by the embed code as none of the characters made sense.
As a class, we worked through a local history remixed version of the #commontags Thimble activity. The students added HTML tags to give structure to the page. They also changed and added images. And concluded by adding a bulleted list of resources.
None of the adult students had any prior experience with HTML. They were all able to follow along with the steps in the tutorial. One of the students shared that she attempted to take a coding class online at a community college but felt lost from day one. The in person class gave her the grounding and foundation that she need to feel confident to pursue more online classes at her community college. She felt like she would have more success the second time around.
The students left the class feeling a little more empowered and the web was a bit more demystified. Success!
