On 11/01/2009, at 4:08 PM, James Ducker wrote:
Ultimately teachers should aim to teach the skills that are
required of students entering the industry.
The TAFE students I tutor in Sydney are being taught XHTML, XML, CSS
table-free layouts, and so on, so not a bad start. The JavaScript
courses look like they could use some improvement (see below). I
think the biggest shortcoming though is that students are being
taught the skills with no context, i.e. they are not taught how to
further perpetuate their skills, which is an important shortcoming
in an industry that evolves so rapidly.
On a side note, my personal opinion on web media courses focusing
on rich web content is that they should still entail the bare
basics of HTML, XHTML, and CSS, with a toe-dip into JavaScript.
These technologies are so fundamental to the web, and given their
role as standards they should be part of any web-related courses.
One of the most consistent problems I encounter when tutoring
students is that a "toe-dip" into JavaScript simply doesn't work. JS
is a fully-fledged OO scripting language, and as such in order to
teach it properly a grassroots introduction to OO concepts is
necessary. The course seems to have improved in the last year or so,
in that they are teaching more current applications of JS, but
that's about it.
Web development courses should definitely include JS, but for the
media-rich courses, such as the new media arts design courses that
dabble in the web as a presentation medium, I think the bare basics of
JS should suffice—sorry; that’s what I meant. (:
—Pascal
- James
On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 4:11 PM, Simon Pascal Klein
<kle...@klepas.org> wrote:
On 10/01/2009, at 6:50 AM, Matt Morgan-May wrote:
Hi,
Excuse me for jumping in here, especially (in this case) as a Flash
partisan. But I fail to see how this kind of project can be anything
other
than a good thing overall.
What I don't understand is why people are instantly critical of
projects
that are actually attempting to increase access to new technology.
I've
heard a constant drumbeat of "don't use Flash: it's inaccessible" in
the
years I've been involved in the field. But if we don't have people
pushing
that envelope, doesn't that make that statement self-fulfilling
prophecy?
There are lots of us out there working on improving the
accessibility of
both existing and future content authored in Flash.
There are many arguments to be made for HTML -- I made loads of them
while
working for W3C, all of which I would stand by today -- but it is
not all
things to all people. The fact is that many educators have found
that they
can use Flash to teach their students effectively. I'm not an
educator by
profession, but my wife is, and she prefers Flash over HTML/CSS/JS to
develop her courseware. If you were to tell her she's wrong,
especially
before seeing what kind of work she does, I think you'd probably find
yourself dodging a couple shelves' worth of education texts. Telling a
professional their tools are wrong is not the most endearing of
approaches.
In my opinion, the best one can do is to learn what they're doing,
and offer
ways to make that output more efficient, more inclusive, and easier to
produce.
Teachers aren't usually web developers, and we shouldn't want them
to be. So
I'm all for companies taking on the technical problems so teachers
can be
teachers, and so on.
Ultimately teachers should aim to teach the skills that are required
of students entering the industry. It's not uncommon that many
secondary and tertiary IT and web media courses are grossly
outdated. From my experience this is mostly attributed to the
teacher's education in the field which they received when they did
their tertiary education in order to teach, and have since not
remained up to date with new developments and sadly even standards.
Money and a requirement to regularly attend courses to keep
educators up to date help in this regard but nothing beats personal
interest—the high school IT teacher that in their own time is
actively involved in his or her field will be more likely to teach
his students about the latest relevant and exciting bleeding edge
technologies.
On a side note, my personal opinion on web media courses focusing on
rich web content is that they should still entail the bare basics of
HTML, XHTML, and CSS, with a toe-dip into JavaScript. These
technologies are so fundamental to the web, and given their role as
standards they should be part of any web-related courses.
Just my 2¢. Thanks for raising this topic. (:
—Pascal
Thanks,
M
Accessibility Engineer, Adobe
Christie Mason said:
Exactly right. I've sadly watched Flash take over eLearning and still
haven't figured out the attraction, except that it offers the
control of PPT
while appearing to be "rich". There's only a very few types of
web sites
that still use Flash for delivering primary content - media sites,
those
that focus more on "look at me" instead of being a resource to
their site
guests, and eLearning.
Since, supposedly, eLearning is about offering web based resources for
learning it just doesn't make sense to me that it has ignored all
the ways
the web has supported, continues to support, learning w/o using
Flash.
Flash on the web is like cooking with garlic. A little adds depth,
a lot is
inedible.
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Simon Pascal Klein
Concept designer
(w) http://klepas.org
(e) kle...@klepas.org
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--
James Ducker
Web Developer
http://www.studioj.net.au
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Simon Pascal Klein
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(w) http://klepas.org
(e) kle...@klepas.org
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