Review: Homeschool Programming: KidCoder Beginning Web Design

When the opportunity to review a computer programming course from Homeschool Programming, I thought it looked like something that my older son would enjoy in a few years, but wouldn't quite be able to do *yet*  as it is recommended for 4th - 12th grades and he is just starting 1st grade this week.  My husband thought it looked fun, too, so we decided to go ahead and review the KidCoder Beginning Web Design course.  When my husband was in college (his double major was in Electrical Engineering and Computers: Systems and Networks), he studied Pascal, Basic, Fortran 77, Cobol, C ++, Visual Basic, Visual Basic +, and Machine Code, so he knows some about computer programs, but hadn't done anything with html which is covered in Beginning Web Design.

 

The program was easy to download and install.  It walked you through the steps to get you started.  Having never done any online homeschool programs (or any homeschool programs at all!), it was a little confusing at first as to where the "syllabus" was, but then we realized the Table of Contents showed that you just do one lesson a day for four days a week for 13 weeks and you're good! 

Topics Covered in this Course

• Mark-up concepts
• Website layouts and files
• Backing up projects
• Essential HTML symbols
• Styling of text
• Using symbols and lists
• Internal and external hyperlinks
• Navigation bars and footers
• Simple CSS effects
• Spacing and positioning
• Graphics and image editing
• Tables

There are also videos to go along with the course, which is wonderful if you have an audio-visual learner!

My husband had some difficulty finding the "Activity Docs" as it wasn't where it said it was going to be in the pdf/book, but under "Student Menu".   He found a few of the examples a little comical (Like using crocodiles to explain the angle brackets), but on the whole, my husband thought it was laid out in an easy to understand way and builds nicely towards making your own web page. 

KidCoder Beginning Web Design is available for $70 for the course only, $85 for the course and videos, and $20 for just the video.

We received a digital download (pdf) of the book and online access to the videos for the review, but purchasers will receive an actual book and a CD with the videos. 

I received a free copy of the KidCoder Beginning Web Design 1st Semester in exchange for my review for Mosaic Reviews.  No other form of compensation was received.