I've been following this discussion with great interest.
I've taught HTML, CSS and JavaScript at a TAFE, but not as part of a
coding course, as part of a graphic design course. That's an
interesting environment in which to think about standards -- the
students were totally focused on design and graphics, and were really
learning three applications: Photoshop, FireWorks and DreamWeaver,
rather than what web pages were all about. A brief excursion into
source code left them for the most part baffled, if not horrified.
Why would anybody do it that way when we have Dreamweaver?
I agree with points others have made:
1) IT staff have an amazing amount of control over what is allowed --
to the detriment of the students' learning what happens in the real
world. Not one of my students had ever FTPd a file to a server so,
for instance, all their paths had to be relative and they could make
mistakes with case-sensitivity with impunity.
2) Syllabuses are either out of date, or more likely, so general as
to be meaningless -- students on my JavaScript course had to learn "a
scripting language". Students on my HTML course had to learn "a
markup language". I could have taught them Visual Basic and SGML and
been entirely within the guidelines.
3) There's no time -- I taught a class of fifteen graphic designers
the very basics of HTML in a class lasting in total, five hours or
so. When they said "how do I get two columns in my page?" I taught
them to do a table. Mea Culpa. I did, of course, explain about table
versus div positioning, font tags versus CSS, but I didn't attempt to
teach them two completely different languages in that very short
time. If they achieved a valid page with an <h1>, a couple of <p>s
and a working link, I was happy. But I can't say I advanced the cause
of standards much...
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"Have You Validated Your Code?"
John Horner (+612 / 02) 8333 3594
Developer, ABC Kids Online http://www.abc.net.au/
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