 Ohh boy this is going to be fun!!! We have approval to take our web design students on a one day field trip from D.C. to New York for the Future of Web Design Conference.
You can learn more at http://futureofwebdesign.com/2008/newyork/. In short, the conference includes presentations and workshops from the leading names in web design about the most cutting edge UI designs and interactive technologies.
If you have the ability to take a trip (either with or without your students) please comment below and we can meet up at the event. It is conveniently on Nov. 4th - election day - so many of us have off from school.
Hope to see you there...
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First off, well done folks. I think that you struck home in terms of providing a comprehensive course on the field of web development. That you cover everything from the development cycle to design and hosting. Well done.
On the down side, though, with such a broad coverage of the topic, I fear that students will come away with less than on par skills to actually develop a site. More specifically, their knowledge of (X)HTML and CSS does not really seem to meet the standards that the rest of the course seems to meet.
CSS is a standard language that entry level web developers must know. Yet, this course focuses on using WYSWIGS for designing sites, and does not seem to really get into knowing how CSS works. Even worse, it seems to allow for students to develop table based web sites.
Hopefully, as I look through this more, and as the pilot teachers work through the curriculum they will address these issues. Lastly, I may have missed it, but we really need a section or at least a subsection on webstandards.
I look forward to hearing feedback from other teachers. Just thought I would share some initial thoughts...
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 Coming on the tails of the Opera Web Standards Curriculum, the folks over at Web Standards Project (WaSP) posted yesterday that they plan to have a curriculum out as well in March 2009.
The post calls for educators to get involved, and I encourage the NAF web designers to think about following the development of the WaSP curriculum framework or contributing if possible. You can check out their Facebook group here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=18117748777
This could be especially helpful for teachers who have signed on the pilot the new NAF curriculum.
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 I have been enjoying following the folks on the community blog here at NAFspace. What would make this a lot easier is if the community blog had an RSS feed that included all of the other blogs.
We can currently follow individual blogs, but it would be great to be able to have them all in one feed. Surely, this would not be something hard to do. I have tried to contact a few folks to make the request, but to no avail. Maybe a little public outcry will help. Hope so! It is all in good spirit and I don't mean to knock the NAFspace, only help make it better.
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 A question commonly comes up when trying to guide aspiring web developers. "What should I study in college?" The two common answers to this question are either computer science or graphic design. Wow! Two hugely different degrees. This comes in part due to the dichotomy of the web design field. It blends art and programming.
Unfortunately students looking to pursue such a field would be hard pressed to find a program that combines these two fields. More so, you may be hard pressed to find even a single web design class that teaches xhtml, css, php or the like at your University. My alma madder (http://www.testudo.umd.edu/ScheduleOfClasses.html) still does not offer a single such course.
I read an interesting blog post called "Do Web Designers Need Degrees" that questioned if someone going into the field even needed to have a degree. I encourage you to take a read: http://marylandmedia.com/2008/07/do-web-designers-need-degrees/. It even has that cool clip from "Good Will Hunting" where he stands up to the arrogant graduate history student in the bar. I doubly appreciate this clip because I studied history in University, not computer science or art.
Often when I am advising students that are interested in web design I tell them to study whatever they want in college and just learn the web design on their own. There are plenty of great web developers with no formal training in the areas of computer science or graphic design. It couldn't hurt, but in this digital learning age, it is not necessary.
A third degree, though, that I encourage some students to pursue is business. Even if you have skills it does not mean that you will have good business sense.
I am interested to hear you thoughts on the matter of what to study or if its necessary!
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I struggle with defining what it means for a student to be "successful web design student." I am learning that it has much more to do with just knowing how to make a website. However, those foundational skills are very helpful and necessary if one wants to build a good site.
If you stay up on the web design blogosphere you are likely aware of the myriad "Top 10 this or that" blogs that web designers and developers post.
I just came across this one: http://www.search-this.com/2008/06/24/10-things-any-web-developer-worth-their-spit-should-know/ that I think applies well to the high school web design student. I won't type the list here, so go check it out ;)
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 I just read an article from the Design Sojourn blog called "A Blueprint for Design Education 2.0" In this article author outlines a framework for a four (or more) year program in design. http://www.designsojourn.com/a-blueprint-for-design-education-20/
I feel that the ideas (modified slightly) in the article most relevant to the high school web design teacher are the following:
- Learning should take place through modular projects with real world application.
- Projects should become more complex throughout the course.
- Assessment should mimic response as a client would give it.
- Educators should walk in both the academic and professional world.
- Students should come out of the program with experience of the entire design process - working with a client from start to end.
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 In addition to the Sitepoint Reference site (http://reference.sitepoint.com/css) that I referenced mentioned in a previous entry, Elite Web Design and Blogging published a list of 20 great tutorials for learning CSS. Several of these I am comfortable giving straight to students without making revisions. You may feel differently, however, I am sure that if you teach CSS you will find them helpful.
Here is the link: http://elitebydesign.com/getting-started-with-css-20-awesome-introductory-tuts/
Helping our students develop CSS literacy should be a major focus of our web one classes. Personally, I feel that a success web one student should be comfortable creating a layout (ideally with floats and clears) that several of these tutorials cover.
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 For those teaching web design, the phrase "Web Standards" is hopefully a buzz word that we are working to integrate into our own curriculums.
In short web standards are a set of recognized best practices that ensure that web sites are accessible to all users, regardless of the media they use to access the site.
Recently, the folks at Opera, yes, the web browser, released a curriculum for Web Standards. The url for the this new curriculum is http://www.opera.com/wsc/
I suggest that we all look over this curriculum and work on implementing what we can of it in our classrooms. Keep in mind that this curriculum does not get into everything web. It does not for example cover CSS, good design practices, or other such things. The focus is primarily on standards.
For those folks (wherever you are) working on the new curriculum, this would be some great content to be sure that we include.
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