I’ve spent years using HTML (or trying to) on discussion forums – often with help from other posters who seemed to know how to do everything I didn’t. (Like the paragraph break in one embarrassing instance.) I’ve also spend a number of years looking at the HTML on Blogger and WordPress when things got a little screwy on the visual editors. But, I never really knew enough beyond the basics. So, a couple months back I decided to fix that. At first I considered buying a book, and embarking on my own course of study. And then I thought about it, and just how exciting learning code would be, and I quickly realized that without a structured class, I’d probably set the book down one day, and a month later realize I’d never got back to it.

After some searching for some digital marketing and internet development classes, as well as getting recommendations from friends and former colleagues, I found Ed2Go, which offers online learning with structured – yet self directed – lessons, quizzes, tests, and as well as a discussion board where students can talk to one another and TAs answer questions. What I also like about the outfit is that many community colleges offer the Ed2Go classes, so while students obviously don’t earn credits, they do earn CEUs and get a nifty certificate at the completion of the class. (Interesting to note though, that not all prices are the same. All the Ed2Go classes offered via LaGuardia Community College, located in Queens, NY, cost about 20-30 percent more than a community college in New Jersey).

So six weeks ago I began working on lessons twice a week that taught me HTML. After 12 lessons, I took a quiz, passed with flying colors, and got a fancy certificate that says I completed 24 hours of training and earned 2.8 CEUs.

Now, this doesn’t mean I can create a fancy website. What it really means is that I could build a decent enough site that looks like it’s straight out of 1995 (tables!), though it would be a tasteful site. But having a better understanding of HTML has really helped me speed up scheduling blog posts, figure out problems with images, and move things around with ease.