From the course: HTML for Educators

Why learn HTML? - HTML Tutorial

From the course: HTML for Educators

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Why learn HTML?

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- [Instructor] Before we answer the question of why learn HTML, it would be helpful to know what HTML is. HTML, or HyperText Markup Language, is the ubiquitous foundation of the web. Let's begin to break this down from the end. HTML is a language that's easy to quickly become conversational in. There are some basic vocabulary, syntax, and rules that you'll need to learn, but most people can pick up the basics of the language in about 10 minutes or less. Next is markup. HTML code is wrapped around content to identify what it is and establish a structure that can be displayed on any webpage. HTML is a text-based language that's easy for all of us normal humans to read, write, and modify. In fact, the only thing you need to create a webpage with HTML is a plain text editor and your brain. Finally, there's the hyper part, which is usually thought of as the ability to link multiple pages together, but it's so much more than that. And as an educator, this is by far the most exciting and foundational concept that you really must get. The content that you mark up does not have to all reside in the same physical place until you bring it all together with your HTML code. That's so fundamental, it bears repeating. The content that you mark up does not have to all reside in the same physical place until you bring it all together with your HTML code. Take a second, pause the video, and think about that statement and the implications for any materials that you post online for your students. So, why learn HTML? We all have our reasons. It may be that you want to improve your ability to deliver engaging content to your students, or you're frustrated with the restrictions of your learning management system to format content the way that you want it to look. Or it could be simply the insatiable curiosity and love of learning that many of us educators share. For me, it was sitting in front of Mosaic 1.0 in 1994. And after being introduced to the concept of how to surf the web, I asked a very simple question to my friend Larry. How do you write one of these pages? He smiled and said, "Open up a text editor." About 15 minutes later, I published my first web page. It was pretty basic, okay, it was pretty awful. But it was mine, and it was on the web, and I did it. For the rest of this course, we'll be exploring writing HTML that empowers you to express your ideas, and pulls resources together for your students from across the web.

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