[Air-l] Undergraduate HTML text

[Alexander C Halavais]

I've had some success going in the other order. Talking about higher-order
design issues up front, then doing some work in Photoshop, and THEN talking
about HTML and Dreamweaver.

I've also run into the "Comm majors aren't computer science" argument more
than once. HTML isn't rocket science, and in my experience students have a
harder time with computer *anxiety* than they do with actually learning some
of the basic coding. In fact, they often are surprised at how easy it is,
and have a really good time with it, once they get over that initial
timidness. Dreamweaver is great (I use it a lot), but it is a helpful tool
and not a replacement for knowing some HTML. I tried a couple of texts, and
found the students liked Elizabeth Castro's book. It does a good job of
demonstrating each new bit of information with a chunk of working code.

Finally, for flexibility's sake, I would push Python rather than PHP, if I
were to do any scripting in an intro class. I've tried, but at least in the
quarter system it usually turns out that we run out of steam before we hit
anything on CGI. Were I to teach it again, I'd follow Danah's advice and
instead do a couple of weeks on installing existing scripts, including some
of the basics out there as well as Moveable Type, etc.. Of course, you need
to have that HTML grounding to be able to do this effectively, I think

Alex


-----Original Message-----
From: air-l-admin at aoir.org [mailto:air-l-admin at aoir.org]On Behalf Of
aoir.z3z at danah.org
Sent: Saturday, October 26, 2002 1:26 PM
To: air-l at aoir.org
Subject: Re: [Air-l] Undergraduate HTML text



I guess it depends on the level and the amount of time, but i'd suggest
(in a sorta technical level order):

Basic HTML concepts and then build through Dreamweaver
Some combination of Photoshop/Illustrator/Fireworks/Freehand
Flash
PHP & MySQL

And possibly throwing in basic setup/design of Webblogs (i.e.
MoveableType) and that movement (which is still new and interesting,
always a motivation for students and can definitely get into the comm
perspective).

Of course, this is just the technological section of it...

danah


On Fri, 25 Oct 2002, Nicole Ellison wrote:

> I'm looking for a good text to use in an undergraduate web production
> class (Comm Dept)-- something technically sound but accessible,
> preferably grounded in some solid design principles. Any suggestions?
> Has anyone used Weinman's creative html design.2?

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