A three day Workshop on Web technologies was conducted at Government College Of Engineering , Kannur on March 11,12 and 13. This programme was Conducted by ICFOSS and Department of computer science , GCEK in association with Space. About 30 students from 1st,2nd and 3rd year of computer science participated in the event.
The programme started with a short introduction to free software , followed by a session on HTML in which various tags for developing a basic website is discussed. Students were given a task to design a web page after giving its layout on screen. It looked like a simple task for them and they completed it without much difficulty. Then we moved to basic styling through CSS, with some examples to show inline,internal and external way of doing styling. They were quickly assigned another task of style a given web page in their own way and it looked bit more complicated this time, because they got just a short introduction and tips to css. Both the activities made them engaged and busy throughout the day , without much theory sessions involved.
Day 2 started with an illustration session in which, tutors explained how the css task that were given on last day can be implemented efficiently implemented step by step. The difficulties they faced during styling last day , made them to ask lot of questions on how something can be styled in some way.After that we moved to a session for developing responsive websites using Bootstrap Framework. Since a basic knowledge in javascript is also required for understanding Bootstrap , they were given a basic introduction to it too. Introduction to Bootstrap, how it makes the site responsive to the screen size, its Grid System and basic css and js components that comes with bootstrap were discussed in that session. The day ended with a handson session on developing a profession website design using bootstrap. Students were active and energetic throughout the session since even a small spelling mistake resulted in improper output. Eventhough the workshop was progressing bit slower than we anticipated , students engagement in all sessions were really impressive.
Day 3, started with LAMP setup that is required for server side scripting. During the LAMP setup, they were also given breif introduction to how web actually works, about http protocol, client and server side scripting languages and applications in web, and finally about php. Student actually got a connection to all these terms and technologies with this session. Afternoon session,a simple login system with php and mysql was implemented step by step, in which form handling, request methods, session variables in php, database acess and retreival were discussed and illustrated. Students developed their own versions of login systems at the sametime as we completed the session. They got the confidence to explore more and implement their own ideas in future. A breif discussion on various new technologies in web were also discussed during the end of the day and students were given a task of developing their college website using the technologies that were described during the workshop .
Overall, the workshop gave them a confidence and interest to various web technologies and we hope some valuable contributions from them in future. The resource persons for the programme were Jithin and Suman.
