3 courses in 3 months – March 2024
Happy (very) belated new year. Hope IT has been very busy. Our new year has started with a full slate of courses; we finished 2 courses already, and one new course is coming up.
Data Analysis course in January:
We had 2 students attend our Data Analysis course in January, the third time we taught it. Below are the highlights of this course.
- Both students were from the Door of Hope. Ages are 13 and 17.
- Great to see students learn about data analysis, which is used in many companies, and very marketable.
- This was an on-line course, to avoid the spread of COVID. This also allows students that are far away to join in.
- Recruiting for a course early in the year is difficult, as our partners are also just regrouping after the holidays. We were pleased with the turn out.
- The course covers how to make sense of data, and how to present this data, in grids or charts. The above US chart was created by our student in the course, showing the states in different shades of blue. The darkest shade is the highest value.
- On the chart on the left, we show which states had the most cases of COVID.
- But after thinking about this a bit more, we notice something: Just because a state has a larger population, that should not mean they did poorly in preventing the spread of COVID.
- So the chart on the right shows percent of cases by the state population. This changes our understanding: Now which states had more COVID cases per their population?
- The other main dataset we reviewed was Video Game sales, globally. We had fun finding which games sold more, and in which region of the world.
- We also saw that just selling more games does not mean you make more money: that also depends on price.
- We also saw that if a game was just introduced, less were sold due to lack of time.
WordPress in February:
WordPress helps to make websites quickly and easily. It is a great skill to have. We had two students come to this course.
- The students are 10 and 13 years of age, both from the Door of Hope.
- We had 6 students sign up for this course, but only 2 showed up. We need to keep working on sign ups, and getting students to the course.
- One of our older Hope IT students co-taught this course:
- This is the same student that took this course for the first time last year, and went through the Hope IT internship, using his gained WordPresss skills.
- He got paid to co-teach this course.
- We want all of our students to grow, including giving them teaching skills. It is not easy in an on-line situation, given the broad age range in the class. Still, he kept track of each student’s progress and helped them as needed. We saw his teaching skills progress even more over time.
- We are touched by the topics the students pick for their websites.See the two pictures below of some of their web pages.
- One was a help resource to select Health Insurance.
- The other was how to have kids learn to play video games
- The students learned how to change web pages
- They changed existing web pages, and added newly created web pages to the website menu.
- The students added links, videos, pictures, and even created a blog.
- The students learned about plugins, which enhance the features of your websites.
- The best plugin we use is Elementor, the web page builder, that makes changes just by clicking and dragging.
- The WP Power Stat plugin allows one to see the traffic of those coming to our website, and which pages they go to.
- Another plugin example is how to control what is shown after a Google search, describing your web page, called Yoast SEO.
- We introduced other plugins, like duplicating a webpage, and we talk about security plugins, keeping your logins safe…no strangers allowed into your website administration dashboard.
Intermediate SQL/database course in March:
Hope IT continues to have another back-to-back-to-back course. This next one is very, very special. Our new SQL/database course at a higher level…our very first Intermediate course. All other courses are beginner’s courses, just to get a taste of the topic. This next SQL/database course offers direct skills a programmer needs to get data our of a database.
This course Hope IT determined is an invite-only course. We have one student coming (from the Door of Hope.) He is a Senior in high school, and very ready for real-industry skills. He takes our Hope IT courses very seriously. We look forward to this new course to start, and will give you an update. This course will be an on-line course, as this one student lives far away from Pasadena. We’ll give you an update on how it went.
What a start of the new year! At the end of our SQL/database course, we would have 12 straight Saturdays of courses, 3 courses in a row. That’s a record. Our team is strong enough that someone takes breaks, others on the team continue the course. We enjoy working as a team. The bad part of all these on-line courses, we don’t really have photos to share with you.
God bless.
Peace,
–Mike Veerman
Hope IT team lead
