Teaching PHP

Anon

Hey hows it going everyone. I am teaching an PHP class to my local high school (for fun) and nobody knows anything about PHP, MySQL, or Apache. You guessed it, I get to teach all of that. From everyone's point of view what do you think I should teach? Some major things that I shoudl not leave out. They are Senior's in High School that have been through 2+ years of web development training. So yea they know their stuff, just not on Dynamic sites. Think of stuff that might be useful if they are planning on going into web development. I am a fellow classmate of them also so they will listen to me. So what do you think I should hit? I am looking at everyone's input. Thanks!
Chad

Anon

I am a senior in high school as well. I never took any classes because, well, they were not ever offered.

It's ok though. I've a nice bookshelf ranging from HTML to PHP/MySQL to Linux and just to about anything else you can think of.

When trying to explain to someone what PHP is, most of the time I have a difficult time trying to explain the difference between server side and client side coding.

So basically, just hit that hard, and you should be ok. PHP is a great and easy language to learn. You should do just fine.

Anon

I am more than comfortable teaching it (I taught Flash earlier) Well I am more than excited to teach about PHP. I will defintly expalin Client Side opposed to Server Side. Sounds like a good suggestion thanks! Thats sweet you are a senior in HS, IM me sometime Chads2k2. I am always on (THANK GOD FOR ROAD RUNNER) 🙂 Cya!
Chad

Anon

I've been looking for a class in PHP/MySQL here in NJ, but I canot seem to find any school that offers it. I've been through a portion of the CIW (Certified Internet Webmaster) training.

The forums here are helpful, but for someone new to PHP as I am, I find it difficult sometimes to apply some of the solutions offered to what I am trying to do. The answers are not always in the manual either.

Good luck!

Anon

Well I dont know what to say, just keep posting your code and someone might send the code back that works. But I dunno what to say. Sorry not much more help. Thanks though!
Chad

Anon

I teach information technology at a high school in Iowa. I am teaching my students php/mysql. What I have done is set up a linux box with Redhat 7.2 and Apache with php support compiled in, I am using phpMyAdmin to help with learning Mysql. The two seem really to go hand and hand to deliver dynamic content. I have set up user accounts for each student and have given them the ability to ftp their files to the home directory. This files can be viewed from the web by placing them in a folder called public_html, so they can test their php, mysql etc in a live enviroment.I

If the students have not been exposed to any programming languages except html, make sure they understand basic programming concepts (ie. variables, arrays, loops etc)

Good Luck!

Anon

Loops and Arrays are a must of course, make sure that you teach them how to apply an Array correctly because they may be the only solution for a problem sometimes. (Remember the 2D's and 3D's).

This is something easy that should help them understand how the page becomes dynamic.

PHP takes certain conditions into account and makes the page accordingly. In other words, PHP is the source code that writes the source code for a webpage.

Thats basically all I can think of which may be helpful...

Anon

Thanks everyone. I will keep it all in mind. We are on Win 2000, I have set up PHP, MySQL, and Apache on them. So we dont need to share off one another. So we are all set up that way. I know we should be on Linux or Unix or something in that nature but I have to work with what I have, and what I have is Win products. Thanks though! I will defintly cover everything you mentioned.

shaitan

Hi Mate,

Another thought is to check out what commerical traning courses there is a see what they cover. Check out this link for an example

http://training.gbdirect.co.uk/courses/php/

Cheers

Ray