Talking of bad habits, I think my Flash stuff is full of bad habits. Using Flash for one. I started getting hopeful when Edward toyed with SVG and Blender, open source animation DTsoftware… hopeful that I might escape the proprietary lock I was in and finnally start learning some alternatives.

But perhaps my proprietary know how was a prerequisite for that? Perhaps knowing and experiencing software lockin is needed before doing the hard yards to freedom.

And then, long before that, there is a good understanding of image, sound and video formats and what they can do, how to use basic free software to get those formats, not to mention the print archive formats like PDf and DJaVu…

I don’t think this is the exclusive domain of graphic design. I think it is essential know how for web designers.

First of all, a big sincere thanks to you for putting in so many hours of thought, work and effort in the course. It’s really been great, I’ve learnt way more than I expected and it will be
kinda sad to leave.

I love the fact that this course is flexible and unstructured and based loosely on what is relevant ro what you’re doing. I know my opinon differs greatly to some in the course, but I’ve never really done that well in ‘traditional’ educational institutions, like high school and uni.
There does however always come the question ‘what do I still need to do?’ so I think the new Demonstrating Web Design site will be fantastic.

While it’s important to cater for what suits the typical learner, from someone in my shoes, pleease don’t cancel out the opportunity for people to learn at their own pace when required. It’s really important to me.

Regarding the multimedia component, when I signed up it did seem to be more of a prerequisite. I’m lucky in that I’ve done a lot of graphic design stuff with photoshop in High School and Uni, and if it wasn’t for that I would have left the course quite in the dark. This also means I’m quite stuck in my ways, so it would be great to find out some fresh ideas, and new (or easier!) ways of doing things. I finished the multimedia component this time last year, so a lot seems like a distant memory. I feel confident with what I already know, but it still would have been great to learn some more, I’m even considering coming back next year to do some flash in the evenings.

While it would be great to do more multimedia work, I think a lot of precious time would be lost where it is needed elsewhere. It is web design after all, not graphic design. We did quite a lot of flash with Leigh last year, and it would have been great to continue with that and keep up the practice (even 4 hours a week would have been great) throughout this year.

Some defined (on paper) structure and planned revision throughout the year for multimedia would have been the cherry on the cake!

Sorry it took me so long to post, but I promised and knew I’d get there eventually!!

PS to brigitte- what are we going to type on if the power is out! ;)

I’ve started there with Networked Learning and Facilitating Online (sorry – no link, I’m rushing, but a search will find them)

I’m slowly getting each department where I work in there as well – with a view that if we ever get our own wiki in our org, it will likely be a media wiki – so the transfer will be smooth.

I’d like to record an interview about your work in wikiversity some day soon Mike. I’ll keep an eye out for you and buzz you to see if you have time.

Hey Leigh! The current course does have a multimedia component (although the new one starting next year is very light-on), but as Brigitte pointed out, it’s not currently integrated with the technical/programming stuff… (the MM class happens in a separate room, with separate challenges) so it can seem like an island off on it’s own.

Partly my responsibility – I think I use the excuse that “I’m not a designer – I’m colour-blind” to just focus on my own area rather than trying to integrate the stuff that other facilitators are focusing on…

Great idea about the software Leigh – get people started on Gimp (that they can use free at home etc), and then introduce the commercial packages!

PS: We’re still using the Web Design@Wikiversity to update all our learning activities etc (Brigitte helps me out occasionally with it too!) It’s been great getting more and more help and contributions from people around the world (slowly!).

I’d started the DemonstratingWebdesign on Wikispaces mainly because it’s (1) got a smaller audience (Australian qual), and (2) it’s much easier to use (main problem I’m finding with Wikimedia stuff is that it’s very scary for lots of people). If it’s still hard to get others involved I might move it over… what do you think?

Great to watch you continually develop this course.

I agree with brigitte. Sound multi media skills are essential – perhaps prerequisite to your course. The absence of multimedia always struck me as odd, but not personally knowing much about code myself I kinda suspected that multimedia was not the domain of your course (old web developer/designer paradigms left in me). Now brigitte has worded up, I think its true – sound multi media is essential to web design.

But not proprietary based. Similar to your approach with code, learning from basic text editor up, I would argue learning from simple and free, through open source and then specialist commercial products.

Also – why wikispaces? I have just started using wikiversity a whole lot more… are you leaving wikiversity?

The one other thing that I feel is critical is that Multimedia be integrated properly with the programming and communications. It is completely disjointed. We need blocks of learning a particular application, say 5 weeks straight on Photoshop, then 3 wks using Flash etc. Perhaps one of the earlier programming assessments could integrate a photoshop task. working with a basic imaging and learning to manipulate effects with it and also resizing and file optimisation.

Each week has felt like it’s been thrown to the wind! If you’ve never used graphics software like that before (which applied to myself), switching from one application to another, week from week, becomes totally confusing as you have no time to familiarise yourself with menus properly and searching for other functions within the menus.

The results from the four hour blocks have been minimal and many dazzling results I have viewed were self-generated by the user experimenting at home.

Sound multimedia skills are critical with web design!

Okay … leaving my soapbox now
P.S. have you listened to the CD yet? Well stop reading and start listening!!! and R E L A X :-)

Brigitte
paper queen of 2006
When the power goes out, everyone will come running to me for technical references! You see it’s not about a hording disorder after all!