Forum Moderators: coopster
how do i approach teaching php? where do i start? how do i approach writing learning material..
apologiers if this q sounds stupid....just thought i introduce someone i know to something constructive, but could use some advice....
k
A lot of tutors learn from their students, so its not important to know everything, but you need to know something. Start from the bottom and work your way up.
:)
- start by looking at some web pages and using the "view source" to show how things get translated from html to a nice page.
- go back and create a simple web page that is essentially a "hello world" type of thing.
- convert that to php with simple echo statements.
- break out the <head> stuff and put that in an include and include it.
- build a table using a looping construct and just have it put 1-1, 1-2, 2-1, 2-2 etc in the cells
- create a multi-dimensional array with firstname, lastname, birthday and now use your loop to create a table. Multi-dimnesional arrays are surprisingly difficult for some people with no programming/math background.
- send the array to a function that returns that table as a string, then echo the string.
- put the function in a different file that gets included as a function library.
When you get your pupil to this point, check back here with a report!
Tom
im gonna try it soon, adn sure, will report back once in a while to let know how it goes. just need to covince the pupil its for her own good shes learning it. he he
k
You didn't mention the educational level of the students or their age range. Are they currently students in an educational institution? Adult learners?
Are you more comfortable in the traditional educational system or constructivism? Are you teaching in brick & mortar or online?
and yep, ive been thnking abt books as well, ive thought many times i could use it myself aswell...
no its not online. it will be i person.
im not sure when i will be doing this, it could for all i know take another few months before i even get started, but no harm in doing some research :)
Depending on the student's interest & skill level, I'd suggest you developed a learning objective on her needs & interest, then break it down into smaller goals.
Not knowing your relationship with the student I'd also suggest you find out how she learns best. Some students are "hands-on," while others do better reading about it, while others knowledge acquisition is by watching someone do it. She'll appreciate that the material is presented to her in a form that facilitates her learning.
Most of all keep in mind that you want her to be inspired to learn the material.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents.
As this person knows nothing about HTML even, I would follow a "baby step" approach. The HTML page that you start from could be the front page and you slowly build out to a flexible, dynamic solution. Still, you want to break tasks down into simple, concept-based tasks that a person can grasp in one session. When they have understand variables, you can show them arrays, for example.
Never forget that you too learned some of this over a long slow apprenticeship and many of us didn't even write our first line of PHP or HTML until after many years of coding in other languages. Personally, my coding experience is really quite limited compared to many folks here, but even in my case PHP was the sixth language I had toyed with so I was surprised at how hard something as simple as multi-dimensional arrays can be for beginners.
Tom
