Hi everybody. Welcome to the Web Design for Everybody Capstone. I'm really excited to have you join me, and I'm hoping that you're going to get a lot out of this project as we work together. So what is a capstone and how does this work? Well, the easiest way for me to explain it to you is that while the course is still structured, all the scaffolding that we used to have is gone. These past four classes, if you've been with me, I've been very specific about what you need to do for each assignment. But now's the chance for you to really decide what it is you want to learn. The type of things that you want to show off to your friends, families, and other peers. So, how this works is that it's a six week long capstone. For each week has goals, but it's really up to you to decide how you're going to achieve those goals. And I'm going to talk about that in week one, when we talk about the course logistics, the different things that you can look forward to. We're going to talk very specifically about the portfolio that you're going to design and create for this course. I also am excited to talk to you about the idea of portfolio options. One of the struggles that we've had in many courses is this idea of peer grading. It's hard to do peer grading when what you want to do is different from what other people want to do. So in this course, you're going to choose the option which works best for you. I'll also talk briefly about the portfolio rubric in week one, because it's always nice when you get started to have very specific goals that you want to achieve. In week two, you're going to jump in and start to formalize your topic. As I said, I'm going to refer to the word portfolio quite a bit, but it doesn't need to be a portfolio in the regular sense of, hey, this is all about me. It can really be about anything you want. So you'll come up with your topic and then you'll create a wireframe to kind of show the rest of us what your end product is going to look like. You'll also complete a very quick peer review to kind of give feedback to your other classmates on how you think their wireframe does as far as displaying their kind of hopes with their webpage. With week three, hopefully by now you've already started coding, but if you haven't, you're going to. There won't really be traditional lectures during this course. Instead, I'm going to provide optional lectures that will help you learn how to use some of the tools that are out there that can support your development. I'll also try to include some, not necessarily inspirational, but ideas for things that you can add to your portfolio to make it look a little different. So I'm hoping in week three, people will really be able to pick and choose the topics that really apply to their portfolio. Week four, I just want you to keep coding. I want you to keep working on your site, fixing those little things, trying something new. I will also include some optional lectures on hosting, or how to get your site out on the web, if when you're done you want to share it with a wider audience. With week five, we're going to do something a little bit unique hopefully. You're going to submit your homework, your final portfolio in week five, but as an optional peer review. My hope is that this will give you an opportunity to get feedback before the final submission. Because really, in this class, it's always been about you learning something, empowering yourself. I don't want it to be about, no, am I going to pass pay per view? So, I'll include, again, some optional videos for you about validation. But the real goal for week five is going to be to complete as much as possible of your portfolio as you can. Finally, week six will hopefully be a breeze for you. If you submitted the optional week five assignment, you can review the feedback from your peers, make any changes as necessary, and then submit the final presentation of your work. Something we'll be doing in the capstone is offering live office hours online. The point of the office hours, is that I can help you with issues you're having right now. While my hope is that my pre-taped lectures will be helpful, there's no way I can foresee exactly the kind of issues you may be having. So this will be a way for you to contact me and me to give you almost instantaneous feedback. I'll take questions live, but just in case people can't make it, I'll also have a place, or discussion prompt, where you can post your questions beforehand. Students can upvote the questions, and I'll try to answer as many as possible. All of the office hours will be recorded and posted afterwards so people can still access the information. So, my goal for the whole web design for everybody specialization was for people to learn something in a very non-stressful way. I wanted people to come in, find out that they can do a little bit more than they thought in technology, and feel good about themselves when they're done. So this capstone is not intended be some great punishment and a way to weed people out. Instead, the capstone is here so that you can review those concepts that maybe you didn't quite get the first time around. I want to provide a safe place for you to try new things and mess up and try again and maybe get them the second or third time. Or maybe just decide in the end, you didn't really need that in your portfolio at all. I also really want you to celebrate what you have already learned. It's going be a really interesting next few weeks because we have people coming from all different backgrounds. And I want everyone, the beginners, the web developers, the people who have some experienced, some who have none, to all feel that they're achieved something really great by the end of this capstone. Thanks.
