A Coding Lesson from Khan Academy and a Christmas Poem

Have you heard of Khan Academy®? It is a free learning resource for people of all ages, offering on-line instruction on a huge variety of topics. The website is https://www.khanacademy.org and it is well worth taking a few moments to check it out.

Yesterday, I received an email about an "Hour of Code" opportunity offered by Khan Academy®, and I decided to take a peek. Before I knew it, I was deep into the "Hour of Webpages" tutorial, learning some basic HTML and CSS coding and having a really good time! One of the assignments was to write a poem, using the HTML skills that had just been taught.

I am not a poet. In fact, I think a poem of mine has only ever appeared on this website once, and it was really just a few rhyming lines.  The challenge of writing poetry was actually more daunting for me than trying to use computer code, but I wanted to complete the assignment. I took some inspiration from our recently decorated Christmas tree, and I gave it a try.



I am sharing my little poem here, as an example of how easy it is to learn a bit of basic coding from Khan Academy® in just an hour or so.

Using my newly acquired skills, I was able to write text in several colors, make a title heading, and create line breaks. By googling "centering lines of text using CSS" (a skill not taught in this introductory lesson),  I even figured out how to format my poem to appear in the shape of a tree:

Tree Lights

Shiny

bright,

red & white.

Simple strands

placed happily there, by

several sets of willing hands.

Green strings full of pretty lights,

wound round fragrant pine boughs,

illuminate

the festive 

nights.

I should probably stick to writing prose, not poems, but I can now do so using a little computer jargon! I even learned how to include the photo of our tree in this post without using the Blogger "insert image" tool, but by actually writing the correct code.

Of course, on the Blogger platform I have always been able to do all of this without knowing how to code, just by using the available tools. But, I have learned that some understanding of computer coding can really be helpful - when something goes wrong, or when you just want to make some changes that are not otherwise possible.

I can't wait to see what else I can learn from Khan Academy®. Can you?

NOTE: All Khan Academy® content is available for free at www.khanacademy.org. I did not receive any compensation for mentioning their website, and all opinions expressed are entirely my own.

Have you ever taken a Khan Academy Course or visited their website?

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