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Hi! |
This is exciting! We are very happy to have you here. Thank you for being one of the very first beta testers of she.codes! We do appreciate your support a lot!
Should you have any questions or get stuck, you can always reach us at [email protected] or on Skype (Olena is olena.levitsky and Jan is regularwork).
The learning experience is partitioned like a TV show. There are seasons, and every season has episodes. You are currently looking at Season 0, Episode 0 (or S0E0 for short). This season is not part of what future students will see - it is exclusively for you beta testers. In this episode, we will get your personal journal set up, so that you will be able to write about your learning experience.
Because we want to get you up-to-speed as fast as possible, we do not use blogging software or a CMS for the journal. Instead, we throw you right into the deep end! You will use the free web serivce Github for editing your text. This is the same web service you will use throughout the whole learning experience, and it is the same web service you will most likely use in your job later on.
Throughout the various episodes, we will send you out to external websites to pick up their free gems of wisdom. In each episode, we give you a list of links to visit, this list is called a reading list. You can see one below, under the heading Ready?.
In the top, left corner of each reading list, you will find an indicator of the season and episode it belongs to (S0E0 for this one).
This thing is called the id, so this episode's id is S0E0. The id is a link, but it is a very special link - one you should not click!
The id is linked to a little program called a bookmarklet. A bookmarklet is meant to be dragged into the browsers bookmark bar, which is usually below the input field for the address.
(at least in Chrome it is.)
So, go ahead and drag the S0E0 link of the reading list below into yur bookmark bar.
There! You just installed the bookmarklet for this episode!
Basically, whenever you are on an external website studying their content, you can bring back the reading list by clicking on the bookmarklet in the bookmark bar. Like the location indicator in a tram, it shows you where you come from, where you currently are, and where you go to next. More importantly, it will show you our annotations, comments and hints for the page you are currently looking at! That's why you should always make sure to click the bookmarklet after navigating to a new page on an external website - we might have some valuable comment for you! Simply make it a habit to click the bookmarklet whenever you do not see the reading list!
Okay, so here is your first quest, your first reading list! After you have installed the bookmarklet, start by clicking on the headline next to step 1, it will take you to a help page on GitHub that explains how you create your account. It will tell you to follow links and you will navigate to various pages on GitHub's website. Whenver you navigate to a new page, it is important to re-open the Reading List by clicking the bookmarklet to show any hints or comments we have for that particular page! These comments are a bit like easter eggs – you need to find them all to solve your quest. The Reading List also tells you how many pages on the external website you will be visiting and how many notes we hid on these pages in total.
All the links in the reading list open in a new window. After you finished all the steps, please return here (simply by closing that window).
You have created your account on GitHub, learned how to create a repository with a Readme.md file, and how to edit that file. You have also learned how to write formatted text using Markdown-syntax.
Now it is time to write about this amazing experience! Go back to your repository and look for a blue line saying my-notes-on-she.codes / +. You can create a new file by clicking on the + symbol. Call that new file journal.md.
To make your journal file compatible with the she.codes platform, please stick to the following format.
-
start each entry on a new line, starting with a
#followed by the date -
as the date format, please use
yyyy-mm-dd(meaning four digits of the year, followed by a dash, followed by two digits of the month, followed by a dash followed by two digits of the day). -
after this special line, you can use all of the markdown tricks you have learned!
# 2014-07-21
I cannot think of anything more fun than
- to learn new programming stuff
- to beta-test **she.codes**!Knowing how you feel while studying the material we show to you is very important to us. Please write down all the little confusions, misunderstandings, or even frustrations you might encounter, but do not leave out the fun and exciting moments as well!
Should you encounter terms that you do not understand, we leave it to your judgement whether you use Wikipedia, Google, or anything else to search for the definition or explanation. If you find something that helped you, please make a note of the url in your journal. If English is not your first language, and you struggle with certain words, please consult an online dictionary and take a note of it. We want she.codes to work for as many women as possible, so it is important to us that the language is as accessible as possible.
If you get stuck and contact us, please also write about this incident in your journal.
So, it probably makes sense to keep your journal open at all times in a dedicated tab or window of your browser.