Web Teacher » WaSP

Move the Web Forward

vdebolt — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 13:45:48 +0000

Yesterday on Blue Beanie Day, Stephanie Sullivan Rewis announced a new web project on the blog at web standards project. Her post was called Beyond the Blue Beanie.

Today I’m happy to announce a new project, put together by a group of very passionate web folks, that can enable your entry into the process of moving the web forward—no matter what skill level you’re currently at—Move the Web Forward.

The purpose of the new Move the Web Forward site is to help people give back to the web community. Here’s their objective:

Whether you’re a talented web developer, web-slinging since the days of tables and font tags, or you’re a hobbyist hacker, there are a number ways for you to give back. Below, we list some of the ways that anyone can contribute back to the web platform.

Our goal is to make it easy for anyone to get started contributing to the platform, whether that’s learning more about how it works, teaching others, or writing specs. The web has grown due to people like you, and we want to make it even easier for people like you to give back.

There are a multitude of ideas there for how you can level up, dig deeper, or contribute as a guru. No matter what your level of expertise, it’s possible to get involved.

See Also: Smashing Magazine’s The Smashing Guide to Moving the Web Forward.

Defining front end engineering

vdebolt — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 13:16:14 +0000

Nate Koechle from Yahoo! talks about what front end engineers actually do. Don’t start it unless you have plenty of time to watch, it’s nearly an hour and a half long. But it’s worth it, especially if you are teaching HTML, CSS, JavaScript, web development, or any related class.

The reason I’m hoping you’ll take the time to watch this video is because it so clearly states, from an industry perspective, why the WaSP InterAct curriculum project is so important and what it’s actually about. Industry needs graduates who know what Nate is talking about when they are fresh out of school. InterAct means to help you achieve that goal in your own curriculum.

Nate Koechley: “Professional Frontend Engineering” @ Yahoo! Video

I found this at Yahoo! Video, where you can find links to other talks by Nate Koechley. Nate is an excellent lecturer, well organized, clear, with well presented material. A lesson can be learned by educators just from watching how he moves through the long talk and keeps you with him. And, the talk is an outline of what curriculum needs to be.

Useful Links: Online Lectures, CSS3 modules, the canvas element, menu possibilities, Boagworld

vdebolt — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 13:13:29 +0000

100 Free Online Lectures that will make you a better teacher is from Best Universities, which is amassing some intresting link resources such as this one on its blog.

Four new W3C modules for CSS3 are in the proposal stage and would support the canvas element. Links to each module are availble here, at CSS3.info.

Speaking of the canvas element, Laura Carlson put together some Use Case examples on the ESW Wiki. If you have a browser other than Internet Explorer, you can take a look at some of the possible uses of the canvas element.

Project Seven is testing a new menu system which is very exciting in terms of the design possibilities it may open up.

Boagworld interviewed Aarron Walter this week. Paul gave Aarron a chance to talk about how the WaSP InterAct came into being, where it’s going next and what it means.

How Educators Can Get the Most from WaSP InterAct

vdebolt — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 13:44:34 +0000

Educators, this one’s for you. The WaSP InterAct Curriculum Framework is now available. The curriculum is for high school, community college and universtity level teaching of Web Design and Development. The focus is on using best practices and web standards to create students trained and capable in the skills most needed by industry.

The eleven completed courses (with more to come) that comprise the initial release are grouped into learning tracks.

foundations
front-end dev
design
user science
server-side dev
professional practice

The eleven currently available courses are:

Internet Fundamentals
Web Design 1
Web Design 2
Accessibility
DOM Scripting 1
Findability
Digital Design Production
Information Architecture 1
Internship
Professional Practice
Independent Study

If that list does not contain a course you need or currently teach, there are ways to help WaSP develop future courses. First download a PDF of the framework to see the entire range of courses planned. You can help with the courses still in the planning stage in several ways. You can contribute

However, the best way to help with this curriculum is to TEACH WITH IT.

Teach With It

The framework is ready for education and ready for teachers. The courses are modular. That means you can cherry-pick parts and add them into your current classes to see how they work and fit. Or you can choose to take an entire course and use it from start to finish in a semester. Read the Integration Guide to get a comprehensive set of ideas on using the curriculum.

The framework is ready for education and ready for teachers. It contains competencies that can be measured. Exam questions for assessing the competencies are provided. Assignments are provided that address the competencies, with grading rubrics to help with evaluation.

The framework is ready for education and ready for teachers. Books and resources are listed for core assignments, exploration, online assignments, and external reading assignments. Lab and discussion assignments are suggested. Student blogging assignments are provided. Other outstanding curriculum materials such as the Opera Web Standards Curriculum materials are integrated with the InterAct courses.

Why?

The WaSP InterAct curriculum emphasizes best practices and web standards. Why? The InterAct site says,

Web standards are technologies that are free to use, and work the same, regardless of device or platform. Provided you build a website using web standards and best practices, it will be usable by anyone, regardless of their location, the device they are surfing the Web with, and any disabilities they may have.

Standards for HTML, CSS, JavaScript and the other languages that make up the fabric of the Web are critical for its continued growth and success.

Give students a strong grounding in web standards based education and they are ready for the demands of industry, better equipped to find a job in a fast-changing environment, and prepared to step into a job without any additional training from an employer. This last point is a big one with industry, because many companies spend large amounts of time and money training college graduates to do the things they should have learned in college.

Look at the testimonials in support of the WaSP InterAct Curriculum Framework. The people with the jobs to offer your students are stepping up and saying, “We want to hire people with the skills they get from this curriculum.”

Let others know

If you use the materials in the curriculum, let others know. Let the WaSP people know, and offer feedback on the problems and successes you found with the curriculum. It’s a living, changeable framework and your input matters. If you write about your experiences with the curriculum, make sure the WaSP InterAct team knows about it so they can take what you are saying into account.

Let others know who might be interested in teaching with the materials so that the curriculum is adopted in more and more classrooms.

Technorati Tags: WaSP InterAct

Education leads the latest issue of A List Apart

vdebolt — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 16:36:05 +0000

Two of the important members of the WaSP Education Task force who have been hard at work on the WaSP Curriculum Framework (WCF) were featured in this week’s issue of A List Apart.

Brighter Horizons for Web Education is by the WaSP Edu TF head Aarron Walter.

If you’ve interviewed candidates for positions in the web industry, you’ve probably heard firsthand the heartbreaking stories of recent graduates who are woefully unprepared to enter the workforce. When this happens, we usually respond by cursing the school that miseducated the applicant and return to our work, only to relive the experience with every new round of interviews.

No industry can sustain itself if it doesn’t master the art of cultivating new talent—an art that requires close ties between practitioners and educators. Passively watching education struggle to bridge the divide only contributes to the problem.

. . .

In our ongoing fight to establish wide adoption of standards in our profession, those of us involved in The Web Standards Project have begun trying to tackle the education issue. Industry experts and veteran educators on the WaSP Education Task Force are currently working to develop the WaSP Curriculum Framework (WCF), a modular curriculum that can be used to improve existing curricula or serve as the foundation for emerging programs.

Aarron also describes similar programs from Opera, the Information Architecture Institute, IxDA, and Web Directions North.

Elevate Web Design at the University Level by Leslie Jensen-Inman.

About a year ago, I embarked on a journey to discover where we are in web education and where we need to go.

I interviewed thirty-two web design and development leaders. Each of them expressed interest in the formal education of the next generation of web professionals. Most emphasized a challenge common to higher education: technology moves too fast for curriculum to keep up with it.

. . .

I understand these frustrations. We’re not preparing students and that has a lot to do with the educational bureaucracy and institutions. However, educators should have help shouldering the burden. In partnership, web educators and web professionals can be pioneers for change.

Leslie mentions a number of ways web professionals, businesses, and educators can work together for change.

Women in Tech: Shelley Powers

vdebolt — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:04:46 +0000

This is the first of several interviews with women in technology. Today you’ll learn about Shelley Powers. Shelley is perhaps best known as a writer. Her most recent books are Learning JavaScript and Painting the Web. She’s also a programmer and web developer, and she applies a powerful and logical mind to everything she does.

Q: I looked you up on Amazon and found a list of books you’ve written that includes Learning JavaScript, Painting the Web, Adding Ajax, Learning JavaScript: Add Sparkle and Life to Your Web Pages, Unix Power Tools, Practical RDF, Powerbuilder 5 How-To, Developing Asp Components, Dynamic HTML, Dynamic Web Publishing Unleashed, Javascript How-To: The Definitive Javascript Problem-Solver, and Using Perl For Web Programming.

Wow!

How did you get started on a career as a writer? What was your education and background?

A: I’m a late bloomer educationally. I quit high school when I was 15 and joined a religious cult, Children of God. When I came to my senses and left the group, I went from the frying pan to the fire by marrying, at 16, a man who had learning disabilities and resented the fact that I liked to read. We lived in a house in the country and if it weren’t for the fact that the local library would send books out, and allow you to return them in pre-paid envelopes, I would have had very little to read for two years.

. . . Read the full post at BlogHer.

Web Design Education, again

vdebolt — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 01:20:58 +0000

Two new articles of interest related to education and web design. First, from Maryland Media, is Do Web Designers Need Degrees? Lots of comments, be sure to check them, too. The second is Does Higher Education Produce Web Professionalism at Monday by Noon.

First Buzz about the WaSP Curriculum Framework

vdebolt — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:36:05 +0000

I’ve been blathering on about the new WaSP curriculum project for months now in this blog. It isn’t released yet, but WaSP itself has released the first buzz about it. Announcing the WaSP Curriculum Framework.

The framework will include a collection of tools:

* Course overviews
* Recommended course dependencies indicating what students will need to know before beginning each course
* Learning competencies describing what students must master in order to receive a passing grade
* Ideas for assignments and test questions that allow educators to measure a student’s mastery of each competency
* Recommended textbooks and readings, including articles from the Opera Web Standards Curriculum and other reputable sources
* A list of helpful resources, tools, and utilities specific to each course that will help both educators and students

Why is it called a framework? Given the velocity at which Web technology unravels, we recognize that required skill sets can change rapidly, and that the best way to keep this material useful is for the education community to enrich it with their expertise and experiences. In this way, the WaSP Curriculum Framework will be a “living curriculum” that we hope would be a knowledge base of required skills.

The framework will include guidelines to help educators around the world develop assignments and learning modules that address issues specific to their classrooms. These independently developed teaching materials can then be submitted back to the WaSP Curriculum Framework for review and potential inclusion in the project.

WaSP releases curriculum survey results

vdebolt — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:17:39 +0000

Education professionals were asked about what they are doing and what they think should be done in terms of teaching web design courses at the college level. The survey results were released by the WaSP Education Task Force at Curriculum Survey Results.

The WaSP Education Task Force hopes to make the survey available again so that results can be kept current. Keep in mind that Opera just released a web standards curriculum and WaSP is getting ready to do the same. Some of the issues raised by participants of the survey (which was taken several months ago), such as the the lack of appropriate materials and reference materials, may be addressed by these two new curriculum projects.

Useful Links: search Flash, WaSP EduTF on Facebook

vdebolt — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:50:31 +0000

TechCrunch reports that Adobe is providing Google and Yahoo with the technology to search and index Flash files. Flash websites will no longer be invisible to the search engines. Well, that certainly changes things. Now that Flash won’t be the whipping boy of web design, in the same category as table-based layouts, we have a lot of rethinking to do. What do you think this is going to mean to the look and feel of the web?

WaSP Education Task Force decided it needed a Facebook page. Which means that I finally joined Facebook. I’m probably the last Facebook holdout in America. I’m so beyond the high school/college demographic I’ve never been tempted by Facebook. In my world, Facebook has officially become ubiquitous.

Added 7/2/08: Adobe’s FAQ page about searchable SWF files.