Weekly Assignments Final Project About me

1. Project management

This week I worked on defining my final project idea and started to getting used to the documentation process.

Overview

This week introduced the foundational practices of Fab Academy: planning a final project concept, setting up version control with Git, and building the personal site you are reading now. A few things that are worth mentioning is the conversations on the use of AI. Since I am also taking other Academany courses I have mixed feelings about the use of AI. There is a use case, certainly, but I belive that documentation should reflect a student's personal journey and expeirence as much as possible to help future students navigate the program while feeling supported in their journey.

Git Hub and The 3 Academany Programs

I am currently completing Fabricademy and will continue interating during Fabacademy. My final project in Fabricademy focuses on increasing engagement and understanding of how Labs in university settings can utilize tools, machines, and softwares to create. My final project will require the understanding of coding, 2d and 3d design, 3d print manufacturing, molding and casting, bio engineering, mechatronics, soft robotics, and textile sustainability.

UPDATE: I changed my final project in April and have adjusted the site to reflect these changes

The Github Experience VARIES

As mentioned above, I have spent August 2025-June 2026 in both Fabacademy and Fabricademy, what I did not mention is that I am also a student in Fab Learning Academy. Each of these Academany programs have COMPLETELY different GitHub requirements, templates, and expectations. One of the most difficult things I have experience during these 10 months has been learning Git Hub and also learning it from the lens of three highly complex programs. Before August, I'd never experienced GitHub. Every week since August I've learned something new. Unfortunately, the majority of that meant assuming I could utilize what I learned in one course about navigating documentation in another one of the courses. This was not the case at all. In most cases, any attempts to use what i'd learned in another course ended with my documentation being incorrect or completely breaking the source code and spending hours trying to figure out what I did wrong. In many cases I'd reach out to an instrutor for help and be reprimanded for "not doing ____ correctly" when an instructor in another course had (within the same week) spent time explaining to me that this was the correct way.

With the aforementioned in mind, I will be attempting to explain GitHub based solely on Fabacademy within this page. For an understanding on GitHub for the other courses, check out my documentation within THOSE websites only. I'd recommend not using the github instructions for other Academany courses in other Academany courses. If you are taking Fabacademy, learn from other Fabacademy pages. If you're taking Fabricademy, remembember to check out the work of other Fabricademy students. If you are a student of Fab Learning Academy, stick with what is being taught within Fab Learning Academy.

Documentation Matters SO MUCH so PLEASE listen to me when I warn you to stick with what you're being shown per class if you're taking multiple classes like I have.

Git Hub, WEB IDE and HTML

I found the tutorials provided by fabacademy super helpful. I wanted to have a cutesy site with a lot of flashing GIFS and videos but I honestly do not have time for that. I really needed to focus on finishing Fabricademy and Fab Learning Academy so we're going to keep all of them simple and get the actual projects done.

Let's talk about things that confused me

I hope you have a local instructor you can lean on for information regarding opening your git hub and navigating to your project. If not, please be sure to pay attention in class when this is discussed or check out the previous year's info on this.

How To Make A New File

This haunted me in each course. Let's walk through it:

  1. Once you have the WebIDE open (it looks like the inside of the movie "the matrix" in my opinion), In the left pane, click on the file where you want your new file (for example, assignments). Right click the folder where you want the new file and choose "new file."
  2. Name the file based on your needs (for example, week 20). THIS COMES IN HANDY almost daily. Long story short, you will need to create files like these in the future in order to allow a user that is scrolling through your documentation to find what you want them to look at.
  3. Click on your new file location, it'll open a window in the WebIDE. I'd advise you to just copy and past the original template into this new file page just so that you have something to work from later without having to figure out the website's template from scratch. The contents of the original template have helpful things already built in like the header, footer, font type and sizes etc. If you're keeping it simple, like me, this is the way to go.

How To Upload Images and 'Assets' (like your gcode files)

  1. RESIZE & COMPRESS before you even start any of this. Seriously, I'm having to go back and do this and it's exhausting. If you're a Mac user you can do this using sips in terminal (sips -z 1200) and if you're using Windows, paint is the original helper, just resize to < 1200 px wide and save as jpg at 80% quality. You can also just use the web with sites like tinyjpg or squoosh.app (both are free).
  2. Inside of WebIDE, right click the image folder and choose upload. Select your compressed image file from your computer. If you dont see the uplad option use the upload icon in the file tree toolbar at the top of the panel.
  3. It's super important that you use relative paths when pulling the image from the image folder 'into reality' on your site. Here's an example of a relative path "image src=.../images/week01/yourfilenameyoufound" (this isn't an acutal path but your relative path should looke like this).

Comitting and Pushing Changes

Honestly, if you don't do this part, all of your efforts are wasted.

  1. Within the lef panel of the WebIDE there is an icon that looks like three dots (two on top one under) connected by two lines. This is one of the most important buttons in the WebIDE.
  2. Click on the Source Control icon, type something in that will remind you what you're trying to save (for example, 3d print update, honestly make it specific so you and others know what changed.) and press commit. WAIT until you see a pop up (for me it's in the bottom right hand corner of the screen) that says changes comitted before leaving the page. If not, you run the risk of all of the work you've just done not being comitted (saved).
  3. I like to go to my live site and refresh a few times after comitting a change to be sure it actually shows up before I get too deep into the next change. Most of the time it's all good to go but a few times i've checked and my HTML code was incorrect so what I thought I saved correctly ended up being just HTML on the screen instead of what I intended a user to actually read or view. A few times i've thought I properly saved an image or video or file and it's really just HTLM code in that spot. Very frustrating.

Useful links

Reflection

What I learned this week

Git Hub is extremely powerful and can be complex based on what you're using it for and who will be reviewing your work. It's super important to follow the instructions given to you by your evaluators and focus on completing the tasks before focusing on being on trend with other students, groups, or nodes.

What I would do differently

I'd listen to my own advice and focus on completing the tasks instead of getting lost in comparisson.

Gallery

It's Me

Files

File Description
students.md Signed Student Agreement (Heaven Whitby)
week01.html This documentation page