DGST 395: Week 4 Summary

Week four of this course has been my favorite week from everything we have learned so far. When I was first introduced to my subdomain and HTML, I needed clarification and didn’t think I could make anything worthwhile about my website. After seeing my classmates make fan pages for their favorite shows, hobbies, or people, I decided to make my webpage about Grande. The original title for my website was “Emma Lord / DGST 395,” which I now find incredibly dull. The current title for my website is “Ariana Grande’s Discography,” which I find compelling because I am a huge fan of Grande’s music.
My experience teaching to my peers had highs and lows. One of the informative aspects of the teaching was that I learned a lot about the basics of HTML and could see how my classmates were navigating it; it helped me get into the groove of it because I am a beginner. One of the lows of peer teaching was that it was hard for me to expand upon my ideas and produce a twenty-minute lesson because I needed to learn beyond the basic syntax of what I was teaching. Because of this, it was difficult to expand on and create a lengthy, information-packed lecture.
One of the most helpful aspects of learning HTML for me was W3schools.com. They had everything I wanted to know about HTML and CSS; it was organized and straightforward. Another tool that helped me was looking at my peers’ code for their websites. If something needed to be fixed for me after trying multiple times on W3schools.com, looking at my classmate’s codes gave me a better understanding of how to get my code to work.
This week has improved my digital fluency and citizenship because I gained a plethora of information about what truly goes into creating a website, both ethically and technically. Before this, I didn’t realize the intricacy of what goes into publishing a website or any digital software, and now I have a greater appreciation/admiration for individuals who can do so.