Educating the Next Generation of Webheads
Originally published at Durosia.com. You can comment here or there.
Last night's Refresh-DC meeting featured local educator Jeffrey Brown talked a bit about the web design program he runs at Damascus High School and Montgomery County Community College.
One of the big points the talk drove home was that the educational institutions aren't quite sure what to do with all this web stuff. For those of us who've been neck deep in it since there was a Web to be seen, the idea of not knowing can be a bit foreign.
After all, we use it for everything, right?
But how do you teach that? Most of my compatriots have amazingly diverse backgrounds. I come from a liberal arts background with a heavy helping of science and technology. Others were philosophy or art or theater majors. We're all self taught, for the most part... flying by the seat of our pants half the time and getting lucky the other half. When we got our degrees, the Web was only a few years old (if even), not taught about anywhere and yet, we all function quite well in this still wild-west-like industry that's redefining the entire world.
Education is a slow to change industry--like any large beast, it takes time to nudge it into new directions. The Web, by its very nature, changes much more quickly. Bringing the two into sync is no small job. That's what people like Jeffery are doing. Specifically, he's part of Web Standards Project Education Taskforce. They've put together a bit of a curriculum for educators and institutions looking to teach websuff in a more proper way.
Since I'm still flying more by the seat of my pants than most I know--one of the ever-fun bits of being a very non-specific type of "idea" person and nothing easily definable like a programmer or a designer--I'm not fully sure how I can help out.
But I'm sure as hell going to put some thought (and, eventually, action) into it.
Those of you out there with an eye toward the future probably should, too.