Sure sir. -original message- Subject: [AI] FW: [Cavi-announce] CAVI Announces New Introduction to PHP Course From: "Pranav Lal" <[email protected]> Date: 21/12/2013 12:25 pm
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Monica Moen Sent: Friday, December 20, 2013 4:54 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [Cavi-announce] CAVI Announces New Introduction to PHP Course Hi everyone. CAVI is expanding our course offerings next term and that means we have several new courses to introduce. Char and I are working on adding materials about these courses to the wiki as well. We'd like to tell you more about the Introduction to PHP course that will be taught by Sean Randall during the winter term of 2014. Sean wrote an outline for what and how he will teach, and I think it's best to use his words to describe the course. If you want to enroll in it after reading this message, and if you have already taken the HTML course in any term, please just send an email to [email protected] to ask us to enroll you. You do not need to fill out another application. Only new students need to fill out an application to enroll. The course will be offered on Wednesdays at 4:00 PM Eastern, 9:00 PM British time. I believe this is Thursday morning at 7 AM for those in Melbourne Australia. An Introduction to PHP: Course Overview My aim for a PHP course would be to take students with an awareness of HTML and, by course completion, enable them to integrate extra functionality into the websites they create or maintain using one of the most popular programming languages on the web. Having taken CAVI's introduction to HTML course would be a requirement. Block One The first block of the course would cover theoretical groundwork, including topics such as: . what is PHP? What does "PHP" mean and what is it used for? . how it differs from and can be used inside of HTML, how it works outside of a web page, and how it can be used to generate alternate media (such as audio, images and XML). . The dialogue between browser, web server and PHP, and what it means to execute code on the client or server. . The need for a local web server and how one can be obtained and configured with relative ease for local development, with emphasis on security implications. Practically, at the end of the first part of the course, a student should: . Have a basic understanding of PHP and the items mentioned above. . Have a working web server installed on their local machine or network, and the ability to get information into it (from a file manager and text editor), and out of it, with a web browser. Block Two The second block of the course introduces programming in PHP, where we will: . Start with a hello world program to test that PHP is properly installed and configured. . Examine a few small scripts, to learn about variables, decision making and iteration, data input and output and program flow (which will be boring, but necessary to progressing later on). . Pseudocode a small PHP application; perhaps a "higher or lower guess the number" game or similar, something taking input from a form in a small way and processing it. All this will be written out and designed in a Human readable form, rather than written directly in PHP to start with. Practically, at the end of the second part of the course, the student should: . Understand when we are working in or out of PHP. . Recognise variables, be able to identify their type, and be able to read if statements and various types of loop so as to understand what a program is doing. . Understand the benefit of designing a program on paper before you begin to code and have brainstormed and designed their first prototype application. Block Three The third block of the course will cover the implementation, debugging, testing and analysis of the design from block two. In this part of the course I aim to let the student's drive the progress, acting as a reference they can call on, writing code under their direction, debugging and analysing code they write themselves and providing best practice guidelines as issues arise (on matters such as minimising branching code, variable names, input validation etc. - all issues which will inevitably arise due to the nature of the software design). Practically, at the end of the third part of the course, the student should: . Have designed and written, or helped to write, a fully-functional PHP application. . Found and fixed bugs in the program so that it runs and performs as expected. . Have learned about input validation, the implications of not using it and how to implement it themselves. . Critiqued the initial design, finding strengths and weaknesses, and taking lessons away to make future design and development more effective. Block Four The fourth and final block of the course will encourage the creation or examination of a number of scripts to add functionality to existing websites. Students will be given a shortlist of such snippets and encouraged to think of their own as well. These might include: 1. A Countdown to a specific date or time 2. adding a webmaster's Skype status to a contact page 3. Producing random or rotating data, i.e. a random quote, fortune cookie, word of wisdom etc. 4. A poll or voting system 5. Charting visitor statistics (by country, browser, operating system etc). 6. A visitor's guestbook 7. a contact form 8. a podcast generator Please feel free to suggest more! as a class, we will design and implement several of these suggestions, or examine some already created and published online. Using our local development environment as a sandbox away from the public web and learning to read code written by others we will also gain an understanding of script security essential for publishing our scripts to the world and using code by others. This sort of work will cement our understanding of PHP structure and methodology, providing students with an excellent level of knowledge to take their study further and use PHP themselves. at this stage, I will also be spending time on individual student projects, as many students by this time will want to design their own ideas. Practically, at the end of the forth block, a student should: . Have designed and implemented several of the shortlisted projects. . Have examined code written by others to learn how it works, but more importantly to be able to see exactly what it does to be sure it's safe to run. . Complete the course by creating something of their own; which can be from the short list (i.e. a contact form, a guestbook etc), or be well on their way to doing something else they want to create. --Monica Moen _______________________________________________ Cavi-announce mailing list Manage your own subscription: [email protected] http://www.ciscovision.org/mailman/listinfo/cavi-announce Register at the dedicated AccessIndia list for discussing accessibility of mobile phones / Tabs on: http://mail.accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/mobile.accessindia_accessindia.org.in Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in Disclaimer: 1. Contents of the mails, factual, or otherwise, reflect the thinking of the person sending the mail and AI in no way relates itself to its veracity; 2. AI cannot be held liable for any commission/omission based on the mails sent through this mailing list.. Register at the dedicated AccessIndia list for discussing accessibility of mobile phones / Tabs on: http://mail.accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/mobile.accessindia_accessindia.org.in Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in Disclaimer: 1. Contents of the mails, factual, or otherwise, reflect the thinking of the person sending the mail and AI in no way relates itself to its veracity; 2. AI cannot be held liable for any commission/omission based on the mails sent through this mailing list..
