An Example of a "Learning Process" Journal (using the 2 colored box format)

• Cascading Style Sheets: The Designer's Edge (2004) by Molly Holzschlag
• Learn XML in a Weekend (2002) by Erik Westermann
• Teach Yourself XML in 21 days (2003) by Steven Holzner.

7:50 am

I have been working intermittently with these three books for the last 4 days, but have failed to keep track of my learning process. This is a striking failure since this is the first real example of authentic learning in some time. Let's try to redress the situation by making a few comments before moving on.

• I have completed the Holzschlag book, and found it both enjoyable and useful.
• I have deconstructed my amportal web page and rebuilt it using XML and CSS. I am pleased with the result, but cannot say that I fully understand all of the options. I liked the idea of placing a couple of W3C icons at the bottom indicating that the page was both XML and CSS valid.
• The basic ideas are:
  • to create an XML file for each set of data
  • to create a Schema file for each set of data
  • to create a set of CSS files for each set of data
  • I should be able to use the same Schema and CSS files for more than one course website
• I have downloaded XMLSpy for creating XML files, but am not yet comfortable with the software. I will purchase this when my trial period ends.
• I have downloaded TopStyle, which is integrated into Dreamweaver for creating CSS, but am not yet comfortable with it.
• I have heard that Dreamweaver mx 2004 provides excellent CSS support but do not yet know more about it. I will have to make a choice between upgrading Dreamweaver (which makes sense to me) and purchasing TopStyle.
• There are a number of excellent online tutorials for XML and CSS.
• I think I should back up a bit and be more systematic in my learning approach.
• Another question I have is whether it will make more sense to modify my existing course pages, much like I did for amportal, or whether I should reconceptualize and redesign my course materials from the outset and use copy & paste to insert text and images into the new pages. My intuition is to opt for the latter. However before I do that, I think I should make sure that I fully understand both the ideas of XML, Schemas and CSS as well as learning to use the appropriate software.
• Microsoft provides extensive XML support with their .NET products but this is too expensive to pursue. It is also proprietory and may lock me in to a system and approach. I will stay away from this for the moment.

8:20 am I will begin Steven Holzner's book, "Teach Yourself XML in 21 Days" in a fairly rigorous fashion.

Day 1

• "XML is all about storing your data" [p. 10]
• "XML is not about displaying your data. [p. 10]
• "the reason XML has experienced such popularity is that it stores its data as text, meaning that XML documents can be transferred using the already-existing Web technology, which is built to transfer HTML documents as text." [p. 10]
• "the whole idea behind XML is to let you create your own markup" [p. 12]
• XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language
• "XML is a creation of W3C" [p. 13]
• W3C publishes 4 levels of specifications. The first three are various forms of preliminary versions. The final level is called a "Recommendation". XML 1.0 is in this form (since Oct. 6, 2000).
• XML 1.1 is now in recommendation form (since Feb. 4, 2004) [http://www.w3.org/XML/Core/#Publications] but it is suggested that one continue to use XML 1.0 since not all browsers may not be able to handle 1.1.
• An element is the fundamental unit for holding data. All elements begin with an opening tag and end with a closing tag.
• "You're free to make up your own element names in XML" [p. 15]
• An element may:
  • contain text
  • contain other elements
  • be empty
• An element may also support attributes (within the opening tag)
• An attribute contains:
  • the name of the attribute
  • and = symbol
  • a value, enclosed in quotes
  • example: encoding="UTF-8"
• XML files can be:
  • well-formed (which means they follow the syntax rules)
  • valid (which means the data follows the syntax specified in a DTD (Document Type Definition) or an XML Schema.
• http://www.w3.org/xml
• http://www.w3.org/XML/1999/XML-in-10-points
• http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/
  

• I had previously downloaded the code examples for this text from the SAMS website [p. 5]
• There is a substantial amount of jargon and nomenclature that one must learn, if only so one can communicate with others.
• When I try to open the downloaded code example by double-clicking on a file, the system immediately recognized XMLSPY as the appropriate software.

9:10 am A good start.

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