Angela Geronimo

Why I took this class:

I took this class because I want to learn how to program. I have a couple of friends that know some programming languages like HTML and Java. They were my inspiration to take this class because I aspire to reach or possibly exceed them in programming. This class would certainly be a big help. I also wanted to be one of the first people to take the class since this is the first time it is being offered to a public school in Hawai'i.

What I want to get out of this class:

By the end of this school year, I want to be able to program fluently in at least two programming languages. I also want to be able to program a robot for First Robotics Competition (FRC) using Javascript. Doing so would allow me to utilize what I learned and make a contribution to my robotics team.

Difference Between UX and UI

UX stands for User Experience. It deals with organization, layout, etc. Essentially, it's how the user interacts with a website. For example, a good user experience would be a website that is easy to navigate, isn't cluttered, and has a logical flow of links and bodies of text. With these traits, the user would have a pleasant time browsing throught the site.

UI stands for User Interface. The user interface deals with the aesthetic aspect of website. It can include color

I feel that I am learning HTML and CSS at a decent pace. The logic behind the commands in CSS is easy to understand. As for HTML, I can make sense of most of the tags, but I think I need to memorize the tags and their funcitonality in order to be able to use HTML proficiently. Sublime text has been helpful due to being able to shortcut and see the color coded text. I don't think I'd be able to distinguish between certain commands without it. I'll go more into detail about how I feel about both languages.

Most of the tags such as "p," "class," and "id," make sense because they are self explanatory. Personally, the most difficult aspect of HTML is typing out the code and deciding which elements to give a class or id. Formatting can be done through logic. I've found that hitting the "Enter" key in the right places makes the different elements stand out.

CSS is easy to understand but there's also some information that needs to be known in order to format a website to one's liking. For example, there's the difference between margin, border, and padding, and how specifications for each are inputted. Since I'm a beginner I went through a lot of trial and error in an attempt to change the sizes of the margin and what not.

The concept of responsive design is easy enough to understand. One way I remember how web design works is the web page responds to the size of the screen. The name is already self explanatory, but any type of help is good enough for me.

I think that working on the Digimon Go project is fun yet frustrating at the same time. As of today, I've got all the html and colors down. I just need to format the site properly and use pseudo class selectors for the menu bar. I think the project is a good method of getting us to practice HTML and CSS, though I'm struggling with the CSS for the most part. I made so many classes but I feel like there's a more efficient way to go about things.

Media queries were somewhat easy. I say this because I understood how they worked and how they would be typed, but while trying to do the block family I made one small mistake that led me to have a bad time for through the majority of the project. Apparently there should be a space between "and" and the query. Here's an example:

@media screen and (min-width:800px)

Doing the block family was frustrating at first because I was wondering why the blocks weren't centered. It turned out that I floated them before making them in-line blocks.

Overall, working with media queries was an interesting experience that cause me multiple headaches.

At first, javascript seemed a bit intimidating but it wasn't as difficult as I anticipated it to be. I remember trying to learn it last year because of robotics, but I didn't get very far. This class has certainly been a huge contributor to what I know today.

I would like to get more into using this language, especially since FRC (FIRST Robotics Competition) is coming up and I want to help Ian program our robot.

The aliens project was a fun and effective practice for using conditional statements. It was also good that I had worked with logic recently because of math team, so writing the statements was a piece of cake. I also had a good time coming up with humorous quotes for the people to say in response to the alien/color quantities.

The problem that SchoolComm was trying to solve was the lack of communication between students in clubs outside of school. Some clubs have troubles with officers trying to contact their members to come to meetings, turn in forms, etc. The app solves this problem by allowing students to talk to each other in chat rooms which are run depending on the club. Students with officer status within the app may also send reminders and update a digital calendar.

I think that our video would be better if we had more footage of interviews. We were only able to interview one person. Although the content of their answers was good, it would be nice to have more variety. Our video was only 1 minute and 50 seconds long, when we were aiming for 3 minutes.

The features on our app are:

• group and individual messaging
• membership status
• club status
• forms and surveys
• reminders
• access to the school lunch menu

I think that the features we have right now are sufficient. If I were to add anything, I'd probably just add some sort of game or maybe make it so that when a member checks in for a meeting, then they'll earn points. With those points, they could unlock some sort of non-official status or some sort of reward, albeit online or in real life.

Ironically, our team's problem was a lack of communication. Although we talked about what we would do during class, we were usually unorganized when we were working on our project after school. Filming for the video portion of the challenge was also awkward since some of us weren't really good at acting. Despite all these problems, we were able to manage and pulled through with a decent project in the end.

Next time, I would work on the video earlier. We were doing the video last minute, so we didn't have much good footage to work with. Other than that, I wouldn't really change much.