We welcomed a new batch of aspiring programmers last January 30 and since then, it has been a wonderful ride of teaching, learning and even experiencing new things with awesome people.
On the first week alone, this batch already bonded so well they even gave each other car rides. One time, they also invited us (instructors and staff) for a fun time at Laruan Cafe, Maginhawa to celebrate the completion of their first-ever capstone project. It was a culmination of all the things they learned about basic front-end web development.
Before we get carried away and tell you about all the fun things at this cafe and rant about how bad we were at a bluffing game, we’ll now proceed to the actual purpose of this post — share with you the class’ output!
- Name: Manila Aesthetic
- About: Blog site that features all things related to Philippine beauty, art, and just plain old good taste; provides readers with the latest in fashion, footwear, art, music, and lifestyle.
- Name: The Ideé Fixe Lens
- About: Inspired by ‘Humans of New York’; features people with certain skills and passion
- i·dée fixe – an idea or desire that dominates the mind; an obsession
- lens – something that facilitates and influences perception, comprehension, or evaluation.
- Name: AranteBillyWilson
- About: A personal programming (coding) web log of Billy Wilson Arante; features his written articles, side projects, portfolio and all things related to tech
- Name: Surf, Write, Code
- About: A travel and lifestyle blog by Regine where she writes about her passions: surfing, writing and coding
- Name: 春
- About: A personal blog by Haru; features his hobbies, interests and adventures; writes about food, travels and media reviews
- Name: Screen Club
- About: A website for filmmakers and film enthusiasts; inspired by Jonathan’s love of reading movie trends and analysis
- Name: Game Blog
- About: Blog that features game reviews; categorized into: action, adventure, role-playing and strategy games
- Name: Stripteas
- About: A site that serves as an avenue for designers to create customized T-shirts; “We sometimes wear different hats. Our featured designer and designs of the week has its roots from creating music. Music that is so vast and vivid that it transcends to his own skin and tees he wears.”
- Name: Pak Ganern!
- About: Site was born out of Marlon’s love of history; features articles that resonates with the youth today, hence the name.
- Name: Detox Express
- About: Business website of a brand that sells healthy food; also features success stories of people who transitioned to a healthy lifestyle.
During those first three weeks of front-end development, the trainees learned how to create HTML pages and link them to form a website and then style it using CSS and Bootstrap framework. They also learned how to generate ideas and translate those ideas into actual website through sketching and wireframing.
The succeeding days will be more challenging as they’ll soon learn how to think like a programmer with JavaScript and PHP. But as they say, “no pain, no gain” In time, they will have the ability to create dynamic pages like those of e-commerce and social networking sites.
It is interesting to see a group of people with different personalities come together because of a common passion – love for coding. During those times of being their trainer, the thing I most admired from them was their eagerness to learn. They were very active in class and wouldn’t hesitate to ask questions. Apart from that, their camaraderie as a class was really commendable. Everyone has the desire to share what they know and help those who were having difficulties with lessons. For this first output, they all did a terrific job! Congrats, everyone!
Remember, we can do anything we set our minds to but it takes action, perseverance and even lots of bad codes (at first!). That’s how we learn. Til then!
-A
