Web Design In Education Will Kill The Semantic Web
Most of you will probably know that I hope to work in the web industry as part of my future career. As such, getting a recognized qualification is very important to me. However, one thing that I’m equally as passionate about is pushing the movement towards web standards and semantic markup along. Only recently have I seen just how far the idea of a unified web is away from what our society is teaching in the classroom.
What angers me most is that, in order to get the grades I will need for the job market, I am required to produce a product whilst knowing that it drops the ball on several major areas that I learned on day one of my design journey. For example, we were told that the root location of all websites is ALWAYS index.html. Well, a person only has to install WordPress or Moodle (which, by the way is used by the college in question) to see that such a claim is a bare-faced lie! We were also told that writing HTML from scratch is “the old way” of doing things and that people now use graphical web authoring tools. If the teacher who told us that bollocks knew the first thing about the industry, they would know that this is simply not the case. In actual fact, all respectable web developers would tell you the exact opposite as it helps them to achieve cleaner code.
I guess my point is, we don’t want the future industry being restricted by fundamentally incorrect information. If people can’t do something right, they shouldn’t do it at all.
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With thanks, Tom
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Comment Posting Guidance
For the benefit of every non-spambot visiting, following a recent site restructuring I have some rules with regard to etiquette for comment posters. As well as making a better experience for all, they help to distinguish real people for automatic evil machine spam. Due to this, any comment that fails to follow any one of them will be considered spam and removed as soon as possible.
With thanks, Tom
- Coherent English must be used.
- This form has multiple fields for a reason. Only enter a real name or nickname in the first box i.e. "Boats For Sale" wouldn't make it. Similarly, the "Website" input is a pre-determined place to post one link so there is no need to have them in the body area. This is a common technique used by spammers and marketers and, as such is not allowed.
- Your comment must be directly related to the post to which it is a response. The idea of a post commenting system is to further the conversation that began in the given article. For instance "great post" is not a comment. My contact form can be used for suggestions or general communications.
- Responses to other comments must be civilised.
- No sexual reference or content is allowed.
- Duplicate comments are a no-no.
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Tom, you can already do more for yourself, by yourself, without asking anyone's permission. You have user autonomy. Your frustration (which I myself remember in GCSE IT class back when I did it) highlights a fundamental change in our society. The system can't keep up. More and more we have to make are own decisions. I'd invite you to watch this video and draw your own conclusions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yochai_Benkler_-_On_Autonomy,_Control_and_Cultural_Experience.ogg Daniel
Ive watched a few of your youtube vids now and you seem very switched on. I have not so long ago started working with Drupal 7 and it looks like your well ahead of myself. Having grown up in the UK and done GCSE's myself it seemed that those qualifications were soon forgotten about when you advanced to A-levels and onwards to university. Dont get too hung up on the IT they are teaching you now, your a smart lad I can tell - do the work, get the grades and move on. You will soon find that your options open up and your own home learning comes into play at higher level education. A job in web design down the line could well be you working for your own company my friend, your an inspiring character - keep up the good work.
Hey! I'd had the same problem once. Even here in my country. But I think the problem is not "Web Design In Education" itself - its educationing Web Design by people with skills to turn the computer on/off and just a little more. Like in all other subjects. So we should try to make more experts to become teachers. Even if they do it just once a week traveling from school to school - it would be better than trying teachers to be- come experts in every subject and all of its parts... by the way: nice blog
Agreed mate. I'm currently undertaking a web major and all of the pupils are being "educated" through the Dreamweaver GUI. Previously knowing how to code by hand, that's what I'm sticking to, and resolutely, I'm way ahead of the class. Stick to your guns, you'll emerge as a better designer. I also think that if you don't learn code manually, you won't think outside of the box when it comes to a challenging project. The advantage of your knowledge is that you'll be a versatile designer... And more firms will value you over other people for that reason.
Unfortunately, Tom, it is the exam boards who set the criteria that is then taught and, I agree with you, that they are out of date. Sadly, at GCSE, teachers have very little flexibility in what they teach. Also, for most people, the basic concepts of what makes the www work are just totally over their heads so to keep it simple, index.html is the way it is - you just happen to be miles away from that. Everyone needs to start somewhere! Just keep up the good work with your own site and experimenting with php, css etc. and that will give you the edge in the future.
All web designers should be at least able to write HTML and CSS by hand. It also helps to be able use basic Javascript also. This gives the designer complete control. If someone can do all the above I don't have a problem them using tools to speed up work as long as they know how to fix it if something goes wrong.
I think the problem is related to the fundamental problem of ICT teaching in schools (and whether or not you see web design and the online medium as the domain of ICT or some other technical discipline). I presume that your teachers have come some way in their understanding of web design since I was doing my GCSEs over a decade ago - puplls were taught to create their websites with MS Publisher! Naturally, I was horrified and crafted my own coursework by hand (Notepad and Paint Shop Pro were all that I needed back then).
Hi Tom, Ya, web design education is in the wild west right now. When I was in college in the mid 2000's studying graphic design they barely even taught any web design at Rutgers University. A major US school. When I was leaving they were finally hiring a teacher but the program leaders and the web were as far away as the moon. I'm personally moving away from flash to web standards (you know the reasons why) and am excited for all the possibilities of open source and cms like drupal. I use dreamweaver but more of a visual and code hinting crutch and still hand code everything to make sure it is clean as possible. I'm still learning so maybe one day when my skills are better I will just use a editor with good code hinting/completion. I did use Dreamweaver CS5 to make my first custom Wordpress site. The new Live Code feature really help figure out what the hell was embedded in what php document. Again that was my first site. If Dreamweaver will help me work faster in the future I will use it, if it gets in my way I will throw it in the trash. For me it's all about speed without compromise of clean code or the best web standers. Unfortunately there are some designers that just don't get it, but if they are serious about web design they will come around to the proper way of building sites.
I completely agree; the institutions in "Higher Education" are running for money, not learning. It's why I stopped teaching.
[...] are going to study, there can be some huge downsides to jumping straight in, this was inspired by Tom Rogers article on the subject and my own [...]
Sounds more like you just had a poor teacher/professor. That simply will not always be the case and hopefully it's the exception to the rule.
I agree that the things they teach in college are wrong on so many levels. I wasn't blessed with the interest or motivation to start designing younger and never made any websites until I took college courses. So I'm among those poor souls who learn the wrong way without knowing any better and only until I started having several problems did I find people to tell me what I was doing wrong. Luckily, I did learn by creating HTML from scratch so I didn't rely on Dreamweaver design view to create pages. I only started using Dreamweaver after I already knew what I was doing (somewhat) because it had a handy FTP included. Once I figured out Dreamweaver was causing me serious problems with my code I stopped using it and I was okay because I was doing it before I even got my hands on the program. I feel bad for those who rely on Dreamweaver when they have to give it up and figure everything out for real.
Merrychristmas tom i hope u get the android u wanted!!!!!!there is one thing that happend today that me and my dad r in BIG trouble he blew the transmission on my grandpas truck today so we r screwed and once again merrychristmas to you!!!!!!
I understand where you are coming from, i just finished my "course" at the local campus. i was expecting it to be quite knowledgeable, quite the opposite. They had us designing html4! with tables! (sigh) Instead of using a:hover, they had us code hover scripts with javascript. (The exam and everything!) The closest we got to CSS code was the Dreamweaver prompt boxes. One teacher had no idea what PHP was, while the others teaching ability peaked at $var = "hello world!"; echo $var; I totally agree tom, you enter these courses expecting something worthwhile, but by the end of it all you cant help but question the quality of these courses.
I think that this is the problem with education in general. I worked at a college (IT Desktop Support) for 6 years, and I can tell you that teachers are some of the wackiest people that you'll ever meet. In fairness, sometimes it's the curriculum that that are required to follow, which is usually about 5 or more years out of date. However, I'll have to agree that there is no excuse for not knowing that a web server will look for more than just index.html when searching for the default document to display. Honestly, I'll give you a tip. No one who matters cares about your official education when it comes to web development.. They just want to see your portfolio, and what you can do. From my experience, 'experience' trumps formal education every time!
This post really resonates with me. I attened 2.5 years at a local trade school, ECPI. During those deeply regretted years spent "furthering my education" in web development and design I essentially was forced to un-learn all I was taught. I too was faced with a professor who was adamant that "index.html" was the root document for ALL websites. I found it amusing, yet unconceivably frustrating that when I explained to him that it's entirely web server and configuration dependant (even having linked him pages published in 2002 detailing changing the DirectoryIndex setting on Apache to something other than index.html) he came up with a pitful retort: It's bad practice; which is unbeknowest to me since the ages of static html have been replaced with more advanced technologies such as PHP, .NET, and frameworks like Rails or Django. As for writing from scratch being outdated: I agree but wish it wasn't so. If you look at many open source "contributions" on the net you'll find evidence it was automated to some extent, leaving horribly formatted code that makes Assembly Language look appealing. The best code is hand-written, and anyone who's been in the field for a reasonable amount of time will agree. All I can say is: trudge through it, smile and nod at their lectures, but don't take it as an absolute. Once you're out with your certification or degree, you can lead yourself onto a successful career in the Web Design/Development industry.
I agree with you. Well said Tom.
I agree and have had similar experiences in the classroom. All I can say is they can teach what they want, but if you really know what you're doing, then you'll go farther than the people who aced the classroom material and never learned anything outside of the classroom.
omg i know how mad that must make you. back in high school. i was taking some computer classes, me and my friends had been messing with websites and the related for years. the teacher got to the module on websites and had us make them using Microsoft word, i pretty much cried inside.
Spell checker got you this time: "If people can’t do it write" => right Cheers, Wim
I'm actually finishing up my course on web development and I got told lots of the same stuff. It's lucky I (and most of us) are already self taught before we even take a course, otherwise we would be learning obsolete techniques and bad practices. We even started with table layouts! The teacher said it was easier to get people started with coding, before we finally moved on to CSS. Doing the diploma next year, here's hoping I actually learn something. ~ John
I really agree with your statement here. Some students may think that they learn HTML just because they copied some script and paste them to their own work.
You typed 'write' not 'right'. Very insightful thoughts Tom.
Hi Tom, As a recently retired IT teacher I would like to make some comments on your article. You need to look carefully at the marking criteria to see how you achieve the required grade. In general for this type of work it will not specify the method used to achieve the product because different schools, colleges will have different software available and markers will have limited knowledge of all the possible methods of solution. I have taught classes where some students have used Dreamweaver, others have used wizard/template based software and one guy used Notepad to code HTML. Before retirement and still continuing I am doing an OU course on Web Application Development which demands the use of HTML and CSS. I am fully convinced that this is the way to go and it's more fun! I agree that we all need to converge on Web Standards. Unfortunately as a teacher I did not have the time to take what I was learning into the classroom. Yes, I taught my students that the root was index.html and it may be the case because I don't know exactly what shortcuts the likes of Wordpress take. As someone who rejects graphical web authoring should you not also reject tools such as Wordpress? I think what we need is a balance between using the available tools and using the higher skills. I once remember sorting a problem in Dreamweaver for a student using some HTML but had I known enough I might have sorted it directly in Dreamweaver. (I was very pleased I could sort it with HTML!!) If we look at future industry, my view was that I gave my students a basic start and it was up to them to continually develop and increase their knowledge. As someone setting up their own web design business I am conducting a lot of research into local competition and find that many are still using tables and there is no CSS. I have seen web sites advertising web site design where the main menu was partially displayed , lots of horizontal scrolling and various other basic mistakes. So you need to face the fact that there are lots of people out there not doing it right and part of the reason for this is that they are cheap. If we take a professional approach on this we need to emphasize the importance of search engine optimisation, accessibility and making sure our page looks right on all the major browsers.