Web Mastering - What to Teach?
Source: http://pressure.eightyeightteeth.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/jeff-2020.jpg
Red Peach Designs provides a feature-rich online HTML editor, which could be a great little tool for introducing HTML coding to students.
No need for any downloading or installing of software with this online editor.
Set up and view the text, tables etc in the WYSIWYG editor and then simply click the ‘Source’ tab to reveal the HTML code which is nicely presented in indented format.
Source: Patricia Donaghy, Using ICT in Further Education
Seeing this announcement of a free online HTML editor takes me back 10 years when HTML editing was done with text editor, then Adobe Pagemill, then Claris HomePage, then MS Frontpage, then Dreamweaver (which reined supreme as far as I was concerned). The old argument still rages—teach kids to code HTML or use an editor? It is an obsolete argument.
A few years ago (quite a few!), I urged for a redesign of Webmastering curriculums in the region I was working in. I even went so far as to outline what changes needed to be made. We had, I thought, come to rely too much on simple HTML coding but had left out the really important things like database-backed web sites, etc.
Now, it seems obvious that database-backed web sites are THE WAY to go. With content-managed systems (e.g. blogs and Joomla/Drupal, not to mention wikis and a million other MYSQL backed sites) that are managed by end-users, the question is, why do some Texas high school Tech Apps courses (and Careeer and Technology) still emphasize HTML coding for an entire semester?
If you were designing high school Webmastering class…
- Would you make it an online learning experience?
- What aspects of Web 2.0 would you teach?
- Would cascading style sheets (CSS) be a part of the curriculum?
- Would HTML coding at a simple level be a necessary part but not the whole?
- Would learning how to setup an Apache, MySQL/PHP server on a particular platform be a part of Webmastering?
- Would learning to code PHP to connect to a MySQL database be a part of it?
- Would you focus on Ajax, RSS, developing APIs to interact with existing web 2.0 apps?
I would love to hear your thoughts…the next question: Where would you get teachers who knew how to do this?
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