A workshop you can return to
When someone opens a lab page, they need to work out where to begin, what to try and how to keep what they have made. I built the platform around that sequence. Each Friday has a check-in, an experiment and a save-and-reflect step. A student can open a guide when it becomes useful and then return to their own project.
The map keeps all eight labs open. Missing a Friday does not lock someone out of the next activity. Earlier exercises remain available when a later project needs a particular skill. The page also offers a practical starting point for someone who is new or returning after an absence.
The material includes editable code exercises, playable demonstrations, Construct guidance, a research library, computing-history activities and publishing help. The important connection is between trying something, observing what it does and making the next decision.
Open a project→Try one change→Test it→Save and reflect
Eight connected Fridays
The autumn map moves from a first web page to an independently made interactive work. Each session has its own focus, while students can keep developing a project across the sequence.
| Date | Lab | What students practise |
|---|---|---|
| 2 October | HTML & CSS | A place: structure a page and explore how styling changes an encounter. |
| 9 October | JavaScript | A choice: events and changes of state, followed by separate AI-assisted coding practice. |
| 16 October | Construct 1 | A secret: first contact with the editor, objects and interactive space. |
| 23 October | Construct 2 | Rules and rooms: memory, conditions, transitions and the Gate Engine exercises. |
| 30 October | Project and library | A next step: connect the work being made to examples, concepts and research. |
| 6 November | Future lab | Bring it together: revisit earlier skills, improve the project and plan the final submission. |
| 13 November | Feedback clinic | Sharper: investigate what a visitor understands and what needs attention. |
| 20 November | Ship it | Shipped: check the working link, export and walkthrough before submission. |
As I write this on 5 November, the final three sessions are still ahead. The map is a teaching plan and a set of available resources, rather than a claim about what every student has completed.
Code you can investigate
The web exercises let students work with HTML, CSS and JavaScript directly. A change in a CSS value can be compared with the rendered result. A JavaScript action can be tested against a prediction. The colour studio and code explanations make the relationship between a rule and its effect available for inspection.
Construct offers another way to approach the same questions. What object receives an action? Which condition must be true? What does the system remember when someone enters another room? The toolkit gathers the relevant editor actions, shortcuts, troubleshooting and export routes, including links to the course's existing templates and guides.
The Gate Engine makes rules and transitions concrete. A student can use that experience to think about their own work: whether a door responds to a key, a remembered decision, a delay or a different condition. The point of an example is to make a rule understandable enough to change deliberately.
Learning to judge the output
The AI-assisted practice raises a further question: how do you assess a proposed solution when it looks convincing? A useful test is specific. Follow the link. Activate the button. Read the code that changes the state. Check the source behind a claim. Replace a generic description with the actual material or decision.
The new coding museum gives this topic more room, alongside practical VS Code advice. It covers project folders, finding files, formatting, debugging, reusable CSS, animation and performance. Students can change one specimen and compare the roles of HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
Making and research belong together
The academic library begins with the student's own object: what are you making, and what might help you understand it? Its genre explorer connects forms of digital work with examples and research directions. A student can move from an interaction to a concept, a work to study or a search term.
The library also includes starting points for books and articles, searches through Google Scholar and Sikt NVA, source evaluation and Chicago author-date guidance. These resources support the move from finding something that sounds relevant to checking what it actually contributes.
That connection matters for the final assessment. The creative work and the accompanying discussion need to speak to one another. A useful process note records an intention, a choice, a test and an observation. It gives the student something particular to examine when discussing genre, theme, form and audience.
The platform's final guide brings the creative work, written discussion, walkthrough and working link into view. Its publishing guidance helps students check the version another person can access. Official submission requirements and deadlines remain with the course brief, Mitt UiB and Inspera.
Access includes being able to find your place
The accessibility console offers text-size controls, a high-contrast mode, a calmer layout and reduced motion. It also responds to the device's reduced-motion preference. Those options sit alongside ordinary interaction choices such as headings, labels, keyboard routes and visible feedback.
The repeated three-step structure helps a student understand where they are within a session. Morning and afternoon clock choices display the same 105-minute plan with the appropriate times. The scheduled breaks remain part of the plan.
Progress is personal. Three stars per lab make 24 across the eight sessions, with local checklists and notes when browser storage is available. These are a record on that device, not a grade, an attendance register or formal approval of obligatory work. Saving a checklist does not save the actual project files; the finishing step asks students to keep those separately.
Storage behaviour is explained where it matters. A browser can refuse storage, a different device can have a different record, and clearing data can remove local progress. The teaching material remains open even when that personal record is unavailable.
Today's tools have a history
The time machine approaches computing history through small actions: ordered cards, a read-and-write tape, a relay to inspect, a musical sequence, linked information and a connected web. The historical account and the fantasy laboratory are identified separately.
The coding museum uses the existing Lovelace punched-card and Turing tape-machine exhibits. Their imagined conversations concern practical questions: what a program changes, how to investigate a failure, and how to keep a visual language consistent.
The dialogue is labelled as fiction. Historical links lead to Lovelace’s notes and the Turing Digital Archive. A student can read the transcript or use the same motion and accessibility controls as the other lab pages.
The next lab: open the machines
Friday 6 November puts the course’s ideas into eight small practice machines. Students tune a page’s typography and spacing, reverse a JavaScript state change, uncover a thought in an archive and test a door on both sides of its key threshold. Each station connects an action to a technique from an earlier lab.
The evidence desk compares two research directions from the course library. The future simulator changes who can enter a fictional memory library when its access rule changes. The test chamber lets students compare an interface before and after revising its label. The export bay checks a model package for an entry page, assets and an extra outer folder.
The equipment-room artwork and its animation come from the existing lab. Only the chosen station is shown at once. Practical actions record which stations a student has tried, with feedback through the existing sound controls. This practice record is separate from the lab’s stars and formal assessment.
Students can choose the stations useful to their project. The full eight-lab recap, new VS Code and web-development tips, troubleshooting and submission requirements remain in a reference drawer. The feedback clinic and publishing session are still ahead on 13 and 20 November.
The session’s destination is the student’s own work: use one discovery, test its effect with a neighbour and save the version they tried. Their project notebook, three milestones and the scheduled breaks remain part of that route.
Explore the platform
- The original lab mapAll eight sessions, project checklists and the three-step route.
- Friday's Future labAll eight labs, practical tips, troubleshooting and an assignment route.
- The coding museumHTML, CSS, JavaScript, animation, VS Code and critical judgement.
- Construct toolkit and guidesEditor actions, troubleshooting, templates and publishing.
- Academic libraryGenres, examples, research and referencing.
- Computing historyHistorical sources and interactive teaching machines.
- Final-assignment guideRead alongside the official course brief and Mitt UiB.