I've had some success going in the other order. Talking about higher-order design issues up front, then doing some work in Photoshop, and THEN talking about HTML and Dreamweaver. I've also run into the "Comm majors aren't computer science" argument more than once. HTML isn't rocket science, and in my experience students have a harder time with computer *anxiety* than they do with actually learning some of the basic coding. In fact, they often are surprised at how easy it is, and have a really good time with it, once they get over that initial timidness. Dreamweaver is great (I use it a lot), but it is a helpful tool and not a replacement for knowing some HTML. I tried a couple of texts, and found the students liked Elizabeth Castro's book. It does a good job of demonstrating each new bit of information with a chunk of working code. Finally, for flexibility's sake, I would push Python rather than PHP, if I were to do any scripting in an intro class. I've tried, but at least in the quarter system it usually turns out that we run out of steam before we hit anything on CGI. Were I to teach it again, I'd follow Danah's advice and instead do a couple of weeks on installing existing scripts, including some of the basics out there as well as Moveable Type, etc.. Of course, you need to have that HTML grounding to be able to do this effectively, I think Alex -----Original Message----- From: air-l-admin@aoir.org [mailto:air-l-admin@aoir.org]On Behalf Of aoir.z3z@danah.org Sent: Saturday, October 26, 2002 1:26 PM To: air-l@aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] Undergraduate HTML text I guess it depends on the level and the amount of time, but i'd suggest (in a sorta technical level order): Basic HTML concepts and then build through Dreamweaver Some combination of Photoshop/Illustrator/Fireworks/Freehand Flash PHP & MySQL And possibly throwing in basic setup/design of Webblogs (i.e. MoveableType) and that movement (which is still new and interesting, always a motivation for students and can definitely get into the comm perspective). Of course, this is just the technological section of it... danah On Fri, 25 Oct 2002, Nicole Ellison wrote:
I'm looking for a good text to use in an undergraduate web production class (Comm Dept)-- something technically sound but accessible, preferably grounded in some solid design principles. Any suggestions? Has anyone used Weinman's creative html design.2?
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