sreiach Posted January 24, 2008 Posted January 24, 2008 (edited) :: I now realize this should be in the "Web Design Forum" but I don't see how to move it :: I had a board member cast a shot across the bow by sending an email saying, "We don't use technology. Our students don't even know how to make a website." This board member's 'real life' job is websites. However, we are also a laptop school with a focus on technology. Now, I read the email and thought about it for a moment. Then realized what a load of cow dung the statement was. Unless you can incorporate it into a class of 'Digital Publishing' where you can compare desktop publishing, online publishing; talk about audience, color schemes, graphic design etc. Whats the point? I don't see any point in teaching a bunch of 13 year olds that in order to make a web page they need to separate structure from design using HTML and CSS. I'm just going to end up with a bunch of poorly coded web pages full of tags. Black with purple writing and more animated GIF's then I can shake a stick at. When are 99% of them actually going to use it? What do your schools do? How/why does it incorporate web design? I know this is a curriculum question but my responsibilities include technology incorporation. I have moved the thread to the web development forum as you wanted Geoff - EduGeek Forum Moderator Edited January 25, 2008 by Geoff :: I now realize this should be in the "Web Design Forum" but I don't see how to move it :: 1
TechMonkey Posted January 25, 2008 Posted January 25, 2008 Ohhh it's a conversation that I have had with the teachers here many a time. The whole give them the rough basics of html or a proper grounding in designing websites. They were doing websites in Word and Publisher but we now have Front Page which I guess is a step up. But to be fair they have a very little time to do each module so even databases aren't taught fully (well in my mind). I'll ask the teachers though what they include it under.
russdev Posted January 25, 2008 Posted January 25, 2008 (edited) Here we teach them basics of html and then design the site in serif pageplus (very good piece of software by the way for students). But interesting side science tech asked me other day about some basic guides to html for her daughter (aged 13) as she wants to use it on various social networking sites... Russ Edited January 25, 2008 by russdev
mrforgetful Posted January 25, 2008 Posted January 25, 2008 Our Year 7s learn web design. Various programs are used throughout the school, thankfully Word was never used and thankfully Frontpage is being phased out. Now it's a mix of Notepad and Dreamweaver 8 / Dreamweaver CS3 using mainly Fireworks for images but some Photoshop and obviously Flash for...well...flash. Some basics are missed out though like directories having capitals and spaces, the first page to be called index.htm etc etc... As with all work I see there are some real dire attempts and some really professional ones too.
MkII Posted January 25, 2008 Posted January 25, 2008 Seems a bit of a dodo science. No one wordprocesses with tags nowadays, soon web design will be the same. Our sch teaches Dreamweaver, which does more harm than good most of the time I think. I started a few kids off on basic html and pointed them to w3schools etc which at the moment I think is a true grounding. Part of DiDA is the production of a web site presentation of the coursework which we do here.
russdev Posted January 25, 2008 Posted January 25, 2008 I think you have to be realistic about this a student needs to very basic understanding of it. so here we teach what page template is like and what basic tags such as h1, b, i href do. But at this age that is all they need anyone wanting to go on further with it will do but think it is unrealistic and unnecessary for them to learn it. What we should be teaching good website design instead like we teach PowerPoint aka no scrolling text. Russ
mrforgetful Posted January 25, 2008 Posted January 25, 2008 I disagree, I want all the students by year 8 to be able to at least knock something up like Amazon's.... ...only joking
Ryan Posted January 25, 2008 Posted January 25, 2008 is deprecated, they should be using ! Sorry, couldn't resist. My old day job was webdesign/dev too. I tried to show a few of our kids a bit of the basics (notepad and IE side by side, save-refresh) at the end of a term, but their attentions spans (or lack thereof) got the better of them. They use Word for a little part of the curriculum that demands a simple web site, which winds me up no end
mrforgetful Posted January 25, 2008 Posted January 25, 2008 is deprecated, they should be using ! Sorry, couldn't resist. My old day job was webdesign/dev too. I tried to show a few of our kids a bit of the basics (notepad and IE side by side, save-refresh) at the end of a term, but their attentions spans (or lack thereof) got the better of them. They use Word for a little part of the curriculum that demands a simple web site, which winds me up no end Well if we're nitpicking....tags should always... BE IN CAPITALS
mrforgetful Posted January 25, 2008 Posted January 25, 2008 Indeed it does...I had a point to make lol. Does mean we all shout the first letter of our sentances?
Ryan Posted January 25, 2008 Posted January 25, 2008 Haha! I just pictured that - starting each sentence very loudly, then tailing off to a normal tone. Anyhoo, back on topic!
witch Posted January 25, 2008 Posted January 25, 2008 It is in the curriculum - here taught at Year 8 - and yes, they use Word. But it gives them a basic idea and frankly there is no time for anything else.
enjay Posted January 25, 2008 Posted January 25, 2008 I had a board member cast a shot across the bow by sending an email saying, "We don't use technology. Our students don't even know how to make a website." This board member's 'real life' job is websites. That is like a Board member who is an accomplished surgeon saying "we don't use Biology. The students can't even perform open heart surgery." No school student will be able to do something as well as a professional, and it isn't fair to judge their competence by those standards. There is no harm in teaching web design (although we only very briefly touch on it) if you feel that the students benefit from this and that it enhances other areas of the teaching. Personally, I think that a good grasp of word processing, spreadsheets and DTP will stand the students in a far better position when they leave for the Big Wide World than knowing how to code a web site.
localzuk Posted January 25, 2008 Posted January 25, 2008 Well if we're nitpicking....tags should always... BE IN CAPITALS Depends which language If it is XHTML then it should be lower case, HTML should be uppercase. Do I win the pedant competition? We teach the basics of web design in year 7 I believe. And we use Dreaweaver and Fireworks. We also teach the basics of DTP (creating a leaflet, IIRC). But I do not know if they are linked or not. The OP has brought up an interesting point though - why do we teach people website design without linking it with its other related skills - programming and design. Website 'Design' should be taught as an art or graphics subject, and Website 'Programming' should be taught as an ICT subject. And then the 2 area's linked with cross curriculum planning. This is unlikely to ever occur though...
PEO Posted January 25, 2008 Posted January 25, 2008 My 12 year old brother has learned php, html and java on his own. Teachers at his school are amazed by his ability to learn something from tutorials and then adapt and creat his own stuff.
SimpleSi Posted January 25, 2008 Posted January 25, 2008 I think once they are OK with using a wordprocessor or a DTP package then they can do web pages. My daughters did this age 10-11 - I showed them how to do it in Word using tables and how an animated GIF can jazz up a simple page. They were able to do the hyperlinking themselves. I did the uploading. The pages are still up if you want to have a look http://www.geocities.com/siwalters_uk/meghome.htm regards Simon
Scotmk Posted January 25, 2008 Posted January 25, 2008 Our year 10's have started doing websites, they are doing it publisher, no html code is being explained to them, and I am shocked that they are being allowed to create them as they are, I saw them being shown a website on how not to do a page, (awful colours, massive text, etc) all the things that are bad. Then they were told to created a new website for the school, so what did they all do, basically cut and copy my lovely (edugeek based joomla site) and then break it up paste i into publisher and kill it (sob), terrible, I know they are learning, but this is no different to doing something in Powerpoint, I think they should be learning much more than just visual, and even in this case, thats not working. .
webman Posted January 25, 2008 Posted January 25, 2008 (edited) Ours are taught to use PowerPoint in KS3 to make web pages. Sadly it doesn't get much better when they start to use FrontPage in Year 10/11 Edited January 25, 2008 by webman
PEO Posted January 25, 2008 Posted January 25, 2008 Dreamwever here. In fact we have macromedia flash and fireworks too. Kids here learn to use it in year 10 and 11. had no problems so far
dbrown Posted January 25, 2008 Posted January 25, 2008 Reminds me of one of our parents - ran a software company - who was always complaining that we did not teach C. We often think our own expertise ought to be common knowledge. As far as web development is concerned I have only ever created very simple pages using notepad or FPExpress, to let people understand how web pages work. The question I always ask is, what is the point? What am I trying to achieve? I've never found a reason for creating good, well designed web sites. Issues of good visual design, appropriateness for audience, effective communication, etc., I find, can all be taught through DTP with fewer technical distractions. My take on web sites & "the internet" is that we are all primarily readers / users / consumers and I want to teach pupils to be good at that. Some, perhaps many, will at some time be creators and then I would expect them to use whatever tools are to hand and the understanding they have as users. Other than the understanding of web structure and of the sort of tools available, I teach little about creating web sites.
FatBoy Posted January 25, 2008 Posted January 25, 2008 The teachers teach year 8 to 10 web design here and use ExpressionWeb and macromedia flash we then ended up setting up a IIS server on a little GX150 so they could upload there web sites internally and view them.
CyberNerd Posted January 25, 2008 Posted January 25, 2008 (edited) If the purpose is to teach web design, teach some basic HTML and use a CMS. Does anyone really make a website from scratch these days - even the technical people will install joomla/drupal/plone rather than design from ground up and the students will already be familiar with CMS (BEBO/Facebook) Personally I wish all students were taught computing properly but they are not -its the same argument for HTML/language vs CMS as it is with command line vs gui. Edited January 25, 2008 by CyberNerd
webman Posted January 25, 2008 Posted January 25, 2008 Isn't it all down to the curriculum that ICT as a subject, follow? Ideally this should provide knowledge to students on how things work and how to get things done. Creating a website in Word/PowerPoint is a bad idea as students don't know what's going on because the resulting document is not a web page and is using the wrong tool for the job - teaching bad practices. Using a CMS doesn't go as far as explaining HTML code and how pages link to eachother without having to explain the layers inbetween. A CMS can give you a website but it's not the only way to do it.
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