This year in the web development and design course was insane. This year I had a new teacher named Joshua Choate, at the beginning I was a little hesitant to open up to him but after a few classes, I realized that he was a great teacher who really pushed me to think outside the box. I learned so much from him and his class and I am thankful for the experience. In my blog, I will review how I’ve grown and evolved in his class during my sophomore year.
Quarter 1
I found the first quarter to be the most challenging for me because I had to adjust to new classmates, academic workload and expectations, and a teacher at the beginning of the school year. Additionally, The Web Design & Development class was easy in the previous school year because we were only required to do simple assignments but this year we had harder assignments, new concepts, and new programs that we had to learn such as WordPress. One thing I hated the most about this school year in quarter one was the blogs not only were they a new concept in our class but they were also extremely excessive imagine doing a 600-word essay every week. Opposite of that one thing I loved doing in the first quarter was the “Personal Logo Design Project” This project not only helped me brand my website but also brand myself.
Quarter 2
In quarter 2 I can’t say I was fully in my element but I was feeling well about school, this is also about the time I realized I needed glasses and went to get them, after getting my glasses focusing in class just became easier. Furthermore, in the second quarter, we started learning about PhP in my class this is something that interested me because this was a new coding language that I had never heard of before. One thing that I loved during this quarter was the “JavaScript Automatic Break Timer” project, this project was the first assignment that required us to learn and apply multiple coding languages that we learned together. Opposite of that, one thing I hated during that quarter was the “Image Gathering for Website” project, the reason I disliked this project was that it required us to modify images to a website theme which I believe can be very subjective I also hated the fact that we had to use a specific ugly color scheme for the images which made it difficult to be creative.
Quarter 3
I loved quarter 3, this was the quarter where I really got into the “scholar” mindset and treated school as an absolute priority. During this quarter I felt like I had grown, I got more mental clarity and everything in class just felt easy. This calmness helped me cool down, socialize, and make friends in and out of my web class. In this quarter my grades were also acknowledged by the school and I was able to join NTHS. One thing I did in my web class that I liked this quarter was the “PHP MySQL Voting” Like the break timer project I had to use multiple coding languages to create a function and I found that fun.
Quarter 4
Quarter 4 was okay, I felt like we had a lot of major projects and general assignments this quarter. During this quarter my teacher also signed me up to build a website for my school’s club which I’m currently working on and It’s turning out great. I loved the change of pace this quarter and I also loved all the projects I had this quarter. Furthermore, the projects that I want to specially point out are the “IoT Device Implementation” and “Web Design Final Project” projects, normally I hate working on group projects but doing these projects with my classmates Connor Krause, Owen Fales, Demetrius Warden, Issabella colon, and Erinys De Leon was really fun. This year was great thank you Mr. Choate i hope to be able to accomplish even more next year in your class.
Conclusion
In conclusion, my first quarter in the web development and design class at DC Tech was rough as I had to adjust to new classmates, academic workload and expectations, and a teacher at the beginning of the school year, my second quarter I started learning more about coding a website and learned about the coding language Php, In quarter three I was really able to balance my mental health and my academics nicely earning membership into NTHS, and last but not least in quarter four I was able to get projects to help with my resume and learn how not only build but also plan, market and sell a website. This year was great thank you, Mr. Choate, I hope to be able to accomplish even more next year in your class.
