My assessment website was built using HTML, CSS and hosted on University GitLab services and project.cs.cf.ac.uk. I utilized the techniques taught in the course and applied new technologies to improve them constantly.
During our classes, I was lucky to get feedback from one of my classmates. Feedback from another person’s point of view is valuable as you end up missing critical detail when lost in code. He noticed that my navigation bar was a bit dull and not visible enough. I noted this point and started working on highlighting the nav bar by applying a darker colour to it. This dropped the quality of the whole design of the webpage and did not reflect well. I realized design matters too. Along with good quality content, a webpage needs to be visually pleasing. This creates an engaging experience for visitors which in turn will give a positive image. Whether consciously or not, we all react to visuals, people are naturally drawn to good design.  

I picked a colour palate to match my website and began giving the navigation bar a lighter shade. The theme of my website was lighter with light grey, beige, and pink and dark pink for the main heading. This kept the design consistent. When it came to the nav items, I introduced a hover tag that highlighted each item when pointed by the cursor. This created an interactive experience for the visitor.

After working on the content for each page, I noticed that introducing references on a whole new page made the website too clumpy and hard to read. After hours of wondering how to put the reference cited in the content, I remembered my course lecturer, Mr. Matthew Morgan, saying that references could be placed at the end of each page. My references were at the footer allowing easy access to citations.

The assessment mentioned 60% of marks were allocated toward the content of the website. So the next step was to write text and make it interesting. I decided to add an example flowchart explaining the use of computational thinking in everyday situations. I was trying to bring an example that people can relate to. Thinking back on my own experience, traveling to a new country and arranging for food can be hard. The instant packets that your mum and grandma forced you to carry (even after complaining about airport security or baggage allowance), were so useful at the beginning but ended up running out fast. I had to quickly find a grocery store, find relevant groceries, and figure out how the system worked here (self-billing, close expiry dates, lots of frozen foods). The flowchart summarises the entire process.

Introducing the module ‘Computational thinking’ at the very beginning established a foundation for developing a problem-solving mindset. Before this, I never noticed how one approached a problem that led to a solution. The concepts I learnt in this module will be used in all aspects of life, including decision-making, and logical reasoning.

I was always amazed by how the computer could do highly complex and a million different things together. But after reading an article on Computational thinking by Jeannette M. Wing, where she explains how computational thinking comes easily to us and that humans are the ones who make the computer do the work it does. Computer is just a dull and boring machine. Humans bring colour and emotion to it using their imagination, creativity, and logic.

CMT119 introduced HTML and CSS, which is a fun programming language to work with. Creating webpages, viewing them on the browser, the changes, edits, frustration with flexbox and media queries. But the satisfaction of finally getting the right results that you had in mind is pure joy.