Project for beginning Web site creator

A co-worker came up with this suggestion for an intern of his. It’s a great idea for a budding Web site developer.

I thought the process of learning XHTML might be a little more fun if you weren’t just reading a book. To fight the tediousness, I have come up with a little project that should help you grasp XHTML/CSS and perhaps be beneficial to you in the future. The goal is for you to create your own personal website. A place where you can put some information about you, your resume, and some pictures. While creating this site, use a text editor.  Using a text editor will help you understand what is going on and how websites actually work.

Your site should include the following:

At least three pages that are linked together. (Home page, Resume, Pictures, etc…)
It should use an external CSS to change the presentation of the site. (What’s the difference between an external stylesheet and an inline one?)
Add color to your site
Put in a background picture
Alignment
Anything else you’d like to try
You should include the following XHTML elements:
Headings
Paragraphs
Line Breaks
Tables
Lists
Links
Formatting (bold, italics, etc..) with both HTML and CSS. (Why is CSS better?)
Image
Horizontal Rule
Your site should be valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional. (Check markup at <http://validator.w3.org/>http://validator.w3.org/)

I’ve also found a couple sites that may do a more concise job of explaining HTML to you. I’d recommend checking these out.

w3schools.com HTML Tutorial
<http://w3schools.com/html/default.asp>http://w3schools.com/html/default.asp

w3schools.com XHTML Tutorial
<http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/default.asp>http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/default.asp

HTML.net HTML Tutorial
<http://www.html.net/tutorials/html/>http://www.html.net/tutorials/html/

w3schools.com CSS Tutorial
<http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp>http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp

Remember to have fun and not get overwhelmed.

MATHmaniaCS: passing on the excitement of mathematics and computer science to kids of all ages

Here are some good computer science lessons for K-12:

http://www.mathmaniacs.org/lessons/index.html

Excellent demonstration of sorting algorithm

I thought this was a very good demonstration of sorting by a cute little girl!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zybl598sK24

Gallery: The evolution of the PC

http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2346-10877_11-300807.html?tag=nl.e101

A terrific set of 44 pages showing past PCs. Good description given for each computer.

Book: Invent Your Own Computer Games with PYTHON

“Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python” is a book that teaches you how to program computer games in the Python programming language. Each chapter gives you the complete source code for a new game, and then teaches the programming concepts from the example. IYOCGwP was written to be understandable by 10 to 12 year olds, although it is great for anyone of any age who has never programmed before. It is a book to teach computer programming to non-programmers by making simple (but fun) games. IYOCGwP is distributed under the Creative Commons license.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1441413030/

Educational Robot from IPRE

Here’s a nice robot for education! I especially like the language they use to program it in

http://www.roboteducation.org/guides.html

There is even a free book about it online

http://wiki.roboteducation.org/Introduction_to_Computer_Science_via_Robots

Computer Science for Fun Web site

http://www.cs4fn.org/

A product of Queen Mary, University of London, this looks very interesting! The site describes itself like this.

“Explore how computer science is also about people, solving puzzles, creativity, changing the future and, most of all, having fun.”

The cs4fn magic book looks particularly good.

There is an applet where you can do some simple AI programming for a game of Noughts and Crosses ( Tic-Tac-Toe ).

Another good applet is the What is an Algorithm applet.

A Brief History of the Digital Revolution

http://www.cs4fn.org/history/digitalrevolution.php

A good two part series on the early years of digital technology.

Photos of recent robots

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/03/robots.html

Lots of photos or recent robots!

“Robotic systems continue to evolve, slowly penetrating many areas of our lives, from manufacturing, medicine and remote exploration to entertainment, security and personal assistance. Developers in Japan are currently building robots to assist the elderly, while NASA develops the next generation of space explorers, and artists are exploring new avenues of entertainment. Collected here are a handful of images of our recent robotic past, and perhaps a glimpse into the near future”

Jeliot 3 is a Program Visualization application

http://cs.joensuu.fi/~jeliot/

Jeliot is a really nice tool for showing visually how a program works. Useful for teaching students about programming.

“Jeliot 3 is a Program Visualization application. It visualizes how a Java program is interpreted. Method calls, variables, operation are displayed on a screen as the animation goes on, allowing the student to follow step by step the execution of a program. Programs can be created from scratch or they can be modifyed from previously stored code examples. The Java program being animated does not need any kind of additional calls, all the visualization is automatically generated. Jeliot 3 understands most of the Java constructs and it is able to animate them”