Some interesting thoughts on how we learn Web Design:
It has long been my criticism of high-school and university curriculum, that they teach WSYWIG programming, but not true coding. Even if they do approach actual code, standards and accessibility are mere mentions. As a result, they turn out thousands of students that can use FrontPage and DreamWeaver, but few who can hand-code a style sheet or adjust a site for IE/FireFox compatibility. Teaching Accessibility may actually turn a standard web page-building class into a creative workshop of ideas.
I’m pretty confident our web students are learning how to hand-code a style sheet and create accessible websites from the word go… although I think it frustrates them some. Especially getting IE/Firefox compatibility!
I’d love to learn how Teaching accessibility can transform a “web page-building class” into a creative workshop of ideas?
Bill Gates mocks MIT’s $100 dollar laptops - Maybe the quotes have been taken out of context, but it really seems that Bill doesn’t get it - the $100 dollar laptops aren’t about making money…
Over the past year, a few of us on the TALO email group have been thinking about how Blogging might help governments - and specifically educational institutions - to connect more directly with the public… “talking with your customer”.
Back in June last year, we considered Corporate Blogging at TAFE, then later in the year looked at Blogging in the Public Sector (with a followup on Government Blogging). All this was based on the way some American companies are successfully using Blogs to interact and learn from their clients/customers.
Today the Australian IT section has a feature on Blogging the Brand, outlining how Telstra has been using their blog site NowWeAreTalking to reach customers…
“The way of the future? Absolutely. It’s another bona fide communication mechanism and you can actually track its results and effectiveness and it can deliver tangible benefits,” Crisp says.
The article balances this with all the hype currently around blogs, but overall, a worthwhile read for anyone considering using corporate blogs for education!
Just wondering if anyone has got some tips for introducing learners to JavaScript? Whether you’ve learned Javascript on your own or you’re currently helping others to learn - I’d be keen to hear your ideas!
I find the difficulty is finding practical examples of where simple Javascript is useful to students. In the past we’d use image rollovers or scrolling text as nice visual examples, but thesedays they’re both no-no’s as they can either be done with just HTML/CSS or are simply bad practise! A year or two ago it seemed that there was nothing useful that Javascript could do and it was on the way out.
But now Javascript is making a huge comeback with excellent AJAX features on websites that are really useful and usable - meaning that there’s real worth for students to learn Javascript. On the other hand, the code for this kind of stuff is definitely not for learners… so where does that leave us? How can learners be introduced to Javascript with useful examples that can be applied straight away?
I can think of only three simple applications of Javascript:
- The great pop-up window - ok, so it’s not always the best idea, but it can be useful for browsing image galleries, and is a great visual example.
- Form validation - again, Javascript might not be the best tool for this. These days most people prefer to use the server-side programming as you can provide more helpful feedback (and we don’t need to worry as much as we used to about the page re-loading). None the less, it provides a great way to see if-statements in action.
- Expanding/collapsing sections on a Form - nice way to see Javascript tied in with CSS to provide a useful feature.
Hopefully you can think of other simple applications of Javascript, or maybe you disagree totally… let me know! Perhaps we should just be helping learners to utilise Javascript rather than write code from scratch? It’d certainly be more useful…
There’s a great discussion happening on the TeachandLearnOnline list at the moment, with the subject The future of the lecture.
As with all good discussions, it all started with some great questions from Sheree:
It seems that our lecture theatres are becoming more empty as the years go by. With the arrival of lecture streaming and placing lecture notes on the web, students don’t seem to see the need to turn up. Should we not bother with weekly lectures and just put up readings and notes for students on the web and concentrate our efforts on tutorials? Should we just run occasional lectures with guest speakers?
After a bit of a banter, there’s been some excellent questions about whether Uni Lecturers need also be good performers. James then reminded us that perhaps the lecture method is ok, but just overused… but is this really the case? A great lecture on an interesting topic by an engaging speaker can be an excellent learning experience, but this certainly isn’t the norm in my own experience.
No doubt things are changing rapidly in the way universities are “delivering their content”, but will they simply replace often-dry live lectures by downloadable dry mp3 versions? Is there a better way that’s affordable for Universities (and hence students)? I love the idea of students doing their investigation/reading etc on their own or in groups, then coming together in a lecture theatre to discuss and question and interact with their learning, with the facilitation of an expert. But it’s hard to imagine… Look forward to reading how the discussion develops!