I enjoy learning, and having changed jobs over the summer I finally found the time to research the classes on offer at The City Lit. My boyfriend has been doing classes for several years now. I decided to take up classes in anthropology and web development for my first go at adult education.
My motivations for selecting web development were twofold:
1. My main social and family circles include lots of web developers and other people working in new media, and programming languages and website functionality frequently form topics for discussion. I wanted to learn more about the technical side of website development. With a degree in Maths, and several years exposure to website basics, I felt confident that I would be able to understand the concepts, and apply the logic.
2. As an IT project manager, it is useful to understand the ways in which developers can make websites more interactive, together with the best practices and difficulties associated with this particular language.
Having signed up for the HTML for Beginners and its follow up, Advanced Web Design and Hosting, it made sense to look at the basic Javascript class. Another factor was the fact that I generally have weekends free in October/November, whereas in the Spring and Summer I am often busy at weekends - so it was a case of 'Now or never'.
As I have a blog, I have the chance to try my hand at putting into practice what I am learning in these classes, although after only one class I suspect that I'll be needing input from my more proficient friends and colleagues before I try my hand at doing more advanced things on my website!
Mary Loosemore
29 October 2005