In my week 3 RMIT tutorial for networked media, I was introduced to something that I never thought I would have to encounter in my life – HTML coding. I knew there was an assessment on it during my professional communications degree, but I tried not to think about it. Why? Because like several others in my course, I was honestly afraid of the idea of having to learn another language, let alone a new computer language. I already tried to learn French for several YEARS in high school and I can barely speak any of it.

Luckily this tutorial proved that there was really nothing to fear. Of course as with all new things, there will be some degree of difficulty at the beginning, but it is easy to get over. We went over the absolute basics starting with the types of software we have to download and use for HTML tasks including TextWrangler and Fetch. We went over the basic set-up and what we are required to need and know for the in-class HTML exam. For example, I did not even know that HTML tags look like this: < > and that they mark the beginning of a piece of coding.

Prior to the lesson on HTML, I felt somewhat “threatened” and overwhelmed by the very sight of HTML text. So much so that I did not even take the time to really learn to even recognise what HTML was. As soon as a web page would appear with anything that looked like this “<article> <header> <h1>Internet Explorer 9</h1>” I would close it straight away and assume the page or link was broken. Times have definitely changed now, and I am actually taking the time to learn what these symbols and words mean when combined and what this translates to when put onto a webpage. A very useful website that has helped me do this can be found here.