Personal Learning Needs

I had to spend a lot of time and late to post but it was fun!

Name: Youngsin Seo

Student Number: 10774331

I want to learn basic coding skills such as XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and MySql.

XHTML

“XHTML is a family of current and future document types and modules that reproduce, subset, and extend HTML 4 [HTML4]. XHTML family document types are XML based, and ultimately are designed to work in conjunction with XML-based user agents. The details of this family and its evolution are discussed in more detail in [XHTMLMOD].” Cited from World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) [ http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/]Basically it says that this is next generation of website markup language from combination of XML and HTML 4, therefore web developers should consider adopting this programming language in working area.The reason I choose XHTML is not because it is cutting edge technology but there are many benefits such as In XML, it is relatively easy to introduce new elements or additional element attributes, through XHTML modules and techniques for developing new XHTML-conforming modules, XHTML will be adapted easily on new devices such as mobile phone application. Through a new user agent will be able to perform best effort content transformation. XHTML documents conform to the XML standard, so they are readily viewed, edited, and validated with standard XML tools. XHTML documents can still be written to operate as well or better than they did before in existing HTML 4-conforming user agents as well as, XHTML 1.0 conforming user agents. XHTML documents can utilize applications (e.g. scripts and applets) that rely upon either the HTML Document Object Model or the XML Document Object Model [DOM]. Cited and edited from webreference.com [www.webreference.com/xml/column6/] The writer on this web site said that XHTML is extensible so if you adopt this language this will work on most interconnection devices such as TV, Mobile phone, Digital tablets etc and this technology will reduce consummation of resources such as bandwidth in web site performing.

CSS

“Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a simple mechanism for adding style (e.g. fonts, colors, spacing) to Web documents.”[http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/]Advantages of CSS from wikpedia. “ By combining CSS with the functionality of a Content Management System, a considerable amount of flexibility can be programmed into content submission forms. This allows a contributor, who may not be familiar or able to understand or edit CSS or HTML code to select the layout of an article or other page they are submitting on-the-fly, in the same form. For instance, a contributor, editor or author of an article or page might be able to select the number of columns and whether or not the page or article will carry an image. This information is then passed to the Content Management System, and the program logic will evaluate the information and determine, based on a certain number of combinations, how to apply classes and IDs to the HTML elements, therefore styling and positioning them according to the pre-defined CSS for that particular layout type. When working with large-scale, complex sites, with many contributors such as news and informational sites, this advantage weighs heavily on the feasibility and maintenance of the project.׆ [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_Style_Sheets#Advantages] The reason I choose to use CSS in my learning objective, I feel that if I am not using CSS, I will be buried in dune. Besides, this is exactly what I need to control and manage my new website. CSS will provide flexibility, accessibility and controllability on my website. Even I can improve accessibility to disabled user, such as I can make a blind user can hear the contents on my website. According Wikipedia, CSS can provide “ CSS can also allow the same markup page to be presented in different styles for different rendering methods, such as on-screen, in print, by voice (when read out by a speech-based browser or screen reader) and on Braille-based, tactile devices.” This will be immensely important in my website because literally aged people requires these support in web surfing. Although, I am not decide yet whether I can or should not.

PHP and MySql
I am going to use PHP, Apache and MySql for server side technologies, The number from Wikipedia of PHP installation on websites and web servers proves how much these languages are popular, which means it will make my work easier than other languages on developing my website. Above all These three technologies are free software, and I do not write why free software is better than others because that is not issues in this subject. I do not write or think about web server, which is Apache, either. I am renting web space for my website so my preparation is almost done.Cited from Wikipedia“ PHP is a widely used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. It generally runs on a web server, taking PHP code as its input and creating web pages as output. It can be deployed on most web servers and on almost every operating system and platform free of charge. PHP is installed on more than 20 million websites and 1 million web servers . The most recent major release of PHP was version 5.2.6 on May 1, 2008.” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Php]
Definition of MySQL on Wikipedia,“ MySQL is a relational database management system (RDBMS) which has more than 11 million installations. The program runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases.”[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysql] Citation from about page on mysql.com “ Many of the world’s largest and fastest-growing organizations use MySQL to save time and money powering their high-volume Web sites, critical business systems, and packaged software ? including industry leaders such as Yahoo!, Alcatel-Lucent, Google, Nokia, YouTube, Wikipedia, and Booking.com.” [http://www.mysql.com/about/]

SWOT Analysis

Strengths

• Determination
• Patient
• Easygoing
• Generous

Weaknesses

• Hasty
• Concentration
• Imperfection

Opportunities

• Learning what I want to know
• Achievement
• I want to investigate how elderly people can learn something through a website, which they are not used to.

Threats

• Insufficient knowledge, skill, time, money and support.

Learning Needs in DMT

• HTML
• XHTML
• CSS
• Javascript
• PHP

Learning Plan

My learning plan is quite simple which is stick to the basic coding of each technology so I will have confident about my abiltiy to build a proper website.

Objectives

• Build a website
• Meet the standards (css, HTML and XHTML)
• Write code my hand so I will have better skill
• Learn the technologies which I choose in depth
• Gain more information about current trend and futurastic technology

what do I want to learn?

• How fast I can find the code what I want to use in my website.
• Reading and understanding other programmer’s work
• Stick to the basic so that I can learn fundimantals rather than cuttng edge skills
• Find out which skills I can adapt to my website though surfing relevant websites as much as I can

Strategies

• Planning detail
• Follow plan
• Do not give up

how will I do it?

• specific
  • Spend certain amount of time to study
  • Put study as priority
  • Every week evaluating my work and revision
• quantifiable
  • Every school day, after 2pm to 8pm on Tuesday, I will study on this subject.
  • Every Saturday two hours I will study on this subject.
  • Every Monday after 9pm I will study on this subject.
• related to the fulfillment of the project
  • Since target users are aged people who do not have much exprience with web surfing, I have to find users to test and evaluating my website.

Resources

• What exactly will I use?google, various free codes websites, official website of each languages etc

• concrete
  • · http://www.codango.com/jsp/dir/tutorials/
  • · http://java.sun.com/products/jsp/syntax/2.0/syntaxref20.html
  • · http://www.apl.jhu.edu/%7Ehall/java/Servlet-Tutorial/
  • · http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/date-and-time-type-overview.html
  • · http://www.w3schools.com/sql/default.asp
  • · http://www.php.net/links.php
  • · http://www.php.net/downloads.php

Proposed Project Description

1. what will you build?
   • I am going to build a website which can provide an information such as how can you turn off the computer in Windows oprating system.
   • And this website will provide a little bit of fun such as a small pretty icon will explain or lead the user where mouse pointer should move to the right place.
   • And When user pointed an articles, the text will be shown bigger.
   • And When user pointed a photo, it shows a explaination of the photo.
2. who is it for?
   • Users are 60s~70s years old, who do not have any exprience on computer
3. what technologies will it use?
   • XHTML
   • Java script
   • PHP
   • mySql
4. how does it satisfy your learning objectives?
5. The combination of technologies what I am going to use, are well known to be adapted and proven to web developers For example, Wikipedia, Google

sketches

Schedule

Working Schedule

Weeks	Task	Technologies	Working time
Week 6	Desgin , Plan and Study mySql	mySql	10 hours
Week 7	Desgin , Plan and Study php	php	10 hours
Week 8	Desgin , Plan and Study javaScript	JavaScript	10 hours
Week 9	Desgin, Plan, Study HTML, XHTML and css	HTML XHTML css	10 hours
Semester Break	Overall testing	validation	10 hours
Week 10	Overall test	Evaluation	10 hours
Week 11	Make working better	add new features (e.g. pop up message), consider accessbility and usability	10 hours
Week 12	Evaluation	testing and make it better
Week 13	Test	Consider graphical attraction (color, icon)	10 hours
Week 14	Task	Technologies	Working time