Journal 7: Professional Learning Network

For the PLN assignment, I’ve been utilized twitter, as well as RSS feeds from professional organizations for student affairs professionals in higher education.  To name a few, NASPA, ACPA, and CaCCCHE provide information on upcoming regional, national, and international conferences, topical research, and publications, calls for papers and readers.  They announce webinars, and provide links to videos, workshops, and opportunities to connect with other members, and provide comments.  There are questions and comments posted in forums, regarding best practices, and one in particular that I engaged in regarding freedom of speech on campus.  

The type, and tone, of information I received changed immediately following the presidential election.  In fact, the quantity of posts increased substantially.  Statements of support to students and professionals were received from these professional organizations, as well as universities around the nation and the world, addressing fears and uncertainty.  There remains a great deal of need for discussion, and one-hour virtual dialogue groups have been created where the student affairs community can come together to intentionally address feelings, experiences, and reactions to the election. I also participated in a webinar, where a panel of faculty, staff, and administrators, representing six universities, from various regions in the country, addressed actions being taken to mitigate possible impact on college campuses.  I really appreciate that these organizations understood the immediate need for student affairs professionals, people really, to come together this way, and created a means for us to do so.  It helps me cling to #whateverhopeisleft.  

I believe that the tools I’ve used in my Professional Learning Network, have been quite helpful and valuable to me, personally, as well as the work that I do in student affairs, and my ability to be a resource to students in general, and women in particular.

Journal 6: Self Reflection on HTML and CSS

My thoughts around HTML are as complicated as HTML.  I find it interesting, confusing, frustrating, and exciting. To be clear, HTML is not a programming language, but rather a markup for the content of a webpage or site. Okay, i get it, but that somehow doesn’t lessen my frustration over the need for exactness within a sequence of strange characters.

HTML is not intuitive, for me at least.  But, I find that eventually the sequence and structure of characters become a bit more familiar. I find it peculiar that its sequence of letters and symbols actually have meaning, but i suppose the same can be said of any language. 

What I find exciting is that at the completion of a series of seemingly unrelated characters and symbols, there is meaning, and something that makes little sense, results in something that does.  Go figure!

The most challenging and rewarding assignment, for me, was the Contest book assignment.  I used TextEdit, as instructed, but I found that although I followed instruction to the last character, when looking in the browser, strange characters appeared.  I tried multiple times to eliminate the cause of these erronious characters, but to no avail.  I was concerned about including the additional segments of the assignment, so I saved each segment separately. Some of the segments were fine, but a couple of them were not.  Finally, I had to copy and paste them together, and it worked…almost entirely. I spent far too much time on this assignment.

http://www.cpp.edu/~arroberts/512/book/Chapter9/contest%209_1.html

http://www.cpp.edu/~arroberts/512/book/Chapter9/9_4.html

Overall, I have a basic understanding of HTML, its purpose, function, structure, and capabilities.  I haven’t memorized codes, but i know how they’re used, and more importantly, I can identify resources.  

CSS is about the style, or look, of a webpage’s content.  I find this to be more complicated than HTML.  I understand the usefulness and effectiveness of a separate style sheet, but the simple fact that it is not embedded in the HTML content, requires understanding of the symbiotic relationship between HTML and CSS.

So much is happening in CSS, that I find that it can be overwhelming.  The page formatting, color, font, images, are all contained here, so the coding can get complicated. 

CSS is not without its challenges.  Like HTML, it is not intuitive, and requires familiarity with its sequencing and structure.  It is further complicated by the need to determine formatting. How the page will appear, and for which type of device, is determined in CSS. I find that there’s a lot of trail and error involved, in order to achieve the right look, but after a while the element names, and the numbers you attach to them, become more familiar. 

What’s great about CSS, is the ability to apply it to a series of pages, as well as effect all pages by making changes to only the style sheet.  Brilliant!