March Session progress celebration + reminder about our June session!
Are things going "swimmingly?" We'd say so.
Great things are happening!
First of all…
We’ve been meaning to celebrate the student progress and update everyone about how things are going in this session, for a while now. We could say “we haven’t had the time” - but the reality is: we just prioritize the class. We’d rather work with the students or build out future lessons than write a newsletter. It’s OK. It might be a really good thing. ; )
“This is the funnest “class” I’ve taken like, ever”
We didn’t want to spend any time marketing either, but we came up with a few weird ads to help us reach our hopefully weirdo future students. [promo-v2, skeptical-phone-call, very-serious-ad, ivy-codes]
June 7th session
People are taking the summer to get out into nature after our unexpected hibernation - and so, our June 7th session has openings.
If you’re interested - or know someone who is, - send them our way. We’d rather pay you than Facebook or Google. Let’s keep things human!
The March session students
The students are amazing. Really. (If you’re reading this - we love you!)
We’ve all come so far! (and it has been really fun)
We are learning so many things - so fast!
It takes a while for all of the concepts, tools, and processes we introduce - to take form.
Our goal isn’t to produce “socially acceptable pieces of production art” like this:
We’re working towards real portfolio pieces - and not just some busy work.
We’ll try our best to illustrate what the students have been working on with some quick collages.
Getting real
During the first week, we explore things on paper. We investigate those mundane things in life things - that we rarely consider. These exercises feel like simple warm-ups, but come full-circle as students begin to define “objects” in a programming language. (don’t tell anyone… but this is basically programming)
“This project is challenging me in many deep psychological ways, that I thought I had overcome in the past few years. I’m thankful that it is happening now, so that I can learn and grow.”
Getting weird
We encourage our students to go wild. When you’re first learning a graphics program - it’s best to admit that you are learning a graphics program (for the first time). Embrace it!
So, we start with gradients because they are so useful in so many ways. It’s a way to introduce Affinity Designer (the graphics program we use in the course) - and also to explore colors that we can use in CSS gradients (code!).
“My confidence was at such a low and I thought about giving up before discovering Perpetual Education. Because of this mentorship, my mentor Derek, and all the students at PE, I’ve been able to feel hopeful about my career and future for the first time in years.”
Visual tricks!
As we work with images - (because websites have images) - we explore a few different visual treatments. Becoming a Photoshop expert is a little unreasonable, but with a few “tricks” up your sleeve - you can explore ideas and then use them in your code with the new CSS filters and blend-modes.
“I’m so thankful that we learn about all the aspects of Web Design.”
Getting technical
We’re talking about content and hierarchy from the beginning - and after we spend a good deal of time on basic text styling, we move into more advanced layouts. We learn how to program everything from scratch instead of using pre-made CSS frameworks.
We look at magazines and websites all of the time… but we don’t consciously think about how they work behind the scenes. (They are boxes. Boxes in boxes in boxes.)
“I’m not anxious anymore about how much HTML or CSS I should know. There’s simply no end. As with real human languages, you’re always learning new words and new concepts. I’m learning to not be afraid about learning.”
Vector graphics and basic animation
Some images are static - but others can be controlled with code! SVGs can animate and all sorts of fun stuff. Other schools seem to leave that for the “creative” people - but almost everyone ends up saying they LOVE SVGs and they are so happy they got a chance to learn about them.
“Because students help each other out, they learn from each other build their communication skills and empathy. They have a sense of community because they work through problems together and have a common goal.”
“Like many of my classmates, I already had some idea about coding for the web. Do I feel bored? Not at all. I’m truly happy about the teaching style I’m receiving: a holistic approach in learning to design for the web. I’m not only learning to build websites, but also to design them, and learning about what makes a good design. Finally!”
BUT - did we mention - that everyone is writing A TON of code too?
It’s true. It’s difficult to show that part in a blog post.
Things are coming together
There’s a bunch more to learn - but when the students had a “real client project” sprung on them… with only a 4-day turnaround:
Everything starts to add up.
Research
Strategy
Art direction
Visual design / layout
Programming…
They did it ALL.
There were some tears. Things felt weird. But they did it.
“I enjoyed yesterdays introduction to real world design situation.
I feel like I’m being given an opportunity to allow me to gather my skills I’ve learned so far (that are still quite scattered in my brain )
and put them to work.”
“I am extremely confident that my confidence in getting a job and and working as a developer will be way higher once membership is over.”
The thing about PE
It’s cumulative.
It’s hard to describe. That’s why it takes 6 months.
It’s doesn’t work like this:
You don’t just learn three 3 things, one at a time - and complete them.
It works like this:
You start learning each thing - and you continue learning each of those things - forever.
We introduce each concept/tool/process - and they stack.
What have we covered so far:
Getting ready
Mindset and humans and memory - and tried to reset some mental models.
We’ve worked to overcome our fear and anxiety and push through to do the important work.
We’ve investigated our goals and adventured into those uncomfortable questions… “Am I allowed to be happy?” (yes)
We’ve broken down how our lives and memories are abstract concepts made up of key:value pairs - and our decisions are all small forks in the road — and these are what computers are emulating. We already know so much! Here’s a review video of alpha-1’s first week.
Covered all the computer hardware and software overview and got a deep-dive into effectively leveraging the Mac to do our bidding.
We talked about the history of word processors and early user-interfaces.
We talked about how those documents are the inspiration for The Web
Content strategy - as a basis for document structure - and solid practices for rich metadata and SEO.
File-types and file structure - and FTP to send files around the web.
We even hacked into Derek’s folder and left a scary ghost in there with the command line.
Typography basics and how to use CSS to style websites you might actually want to read.
We’ve talked a lot of about writing - and have encouraged everyone to get a SubStack like this. (this newsletter publisher)
We researched all those responsive (and not so responsive layouts) out there in the world.
Research, client-relations, content strategy, graphic design, programming — all on a tight schedule on a 4-day mock client site.
We got deep into CSS layout practices and positioning (they don’t believe us yet, but the students already know more about HTML and CSS than most boot camp grads / or really - people who have been in the field for years).
Learning how to manage expectations. (Of course most of this stuff is exposure and we’ll need lots and lots of practice).
Oh! And lots of visual-design exploration with our graphics program. We even learned how to break down an SVG into code and prepare it for colorful interactive animations.
We are deep into server-side scripting right now - and in the not so distant future, we’ll be transferring that knowledge to the client-side (JavaScript). This is super exciting because NOW, we’ll really have some interactions to work with so we can talk about complex UI and UX.
It’s hard to capture all of the work - and we know that this list ^ isn’t that exciting! One day we’ll make a funny time-lapse high school “memories” video about it.
A focus on process
While typing out code is great, the decision making process is what people want. To really PROVE your value, you need to explain the WHY for your choices. You need to be able to research and hypothesize and experiment and make choices based on real human feedback.
We’re proud that the students are writing about their progress as a way to solidify their experience and to clarify their goals. Take a look at a few of the posts:
Just to point out a few. We’ll showcase MORE of them in future newsletters.
What’s next
This coming month is going to spread out and cover more server-side rendering, JavaScript and client-side scripting - and we’ll also be working with Content Management Systems.
Stay tuned! ❤️
June 7th session
Let’s get on a call and see if the program is right for you.
What else…
In case you missed it, Derek was interviewed by Don the Developer podcast:
Derek also made a video about the rapidly declining quality - and honesty of the “coding boot camp” industry.
That’s all, folks.