Bill MacKenty

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How do you teach web design in 2010?

Posted in Blogging Educational Tech Design on 19 - January 2010 at 05:16 PM (14 years ago). 275 views.

Tom Hoffman asks if anyone remembers web 1.0 anymore.

I doubt it. The idea of creating or visiting a website that doesn’t do anything is almost a quaint notion. No video, no sound, just images and text? Bwah. Why bother?

Here is my high school web design lesson plan (in docx format) (pdf here)

I think every kid in America (cue patriotic music) should understand and be able to use basic HTML (end patriotic music).  But for web design?  Here is what I think are basic web design skills in 2010:

1. Basic HTML

2. What is the difference between a web page and a website?

3. Web pages, domain names, web hosting

    3.1 ftp, sftp, ssh

4.  Static versus dynamic

      4.1 Building dynamic websites with javascript or PHP
      4.2 Discuss databases, database design, and very basic SQL
      4.3 talk about how databases are related to dynamic content using a membership model

5. Building a website with expression engine

      5.1 Templating and URL’s
      5.2 Hello world
      5.3 CSS and DIV’s
      5.4 jQuery, jQuery UI
      5.5 Using the other kind of template
      5.6 Images and image paths

6. Adding common interactive elements

      6.1 Forums
      6.2 Search
      6.3 Email lists
      6.4 Blogs
      6.5 RSS feeds
      6.6 Membership systems
      6.7 Contact forms

7. Games

      7.1 Use flash to make games, no I won’t teach you.

8. Standards-compliant website

    8.1 Why open web-standards are important.