Re: Moving forward with web education work

Thanks Prisca for such a wealth of useful feedback. This is exactly the kind of stuff I am after - real solid experience form those on the front line. I am running out of time today, but I will consider this very carefully and get back to you with more asap.

Chris Mills
Open standards evangelist and dev.opera.com editor, Opera Software
Co-chair, web education community group, W3C

* Try Opera: http://www.opera.com
* Learn about the latest open standards technologies and techniques: http://dev.opera.com
* Contribute to web education: http://www.w3.org/community/webed/

On 27 Jan 2012, at 14:40, prisca wrote:

> Hey Chris :)
> 
> echoing others - all I can do is apologise sorry for not replying sooner.... especially after I mentioned  my struggles to you with trying to get involved here....
> sorry about that...
> 
> all this does though is highlight the problem that I have - and many others who are teaching might have the same issues. With the overload of bureaucracy demanded for documenting learner's progress etc now growing more and more each year it seems - this does take time away from everything else.
> 
> I'm delivering teaching for web - and I would love to contribute - but keeping up with the messages via this email group with lots of useful suggestions and comments I found hard and almost impossible, simply due to the sheer amount of emails. I tried to read them all - couldn't find the time, I tried to comment on some of the thoughts brought forward and some of the ideas I had - again, lack of time and keeping track of the comments meant I didn't do that either.
> 
> I love where this is going and can see how brilliant this could be - however - I am getting worried about how suitable some of these materials would be for teaching, especially for entry level students. I can only go by colleagues of mine who are delivering A-Levels, GCSEs and level 1/2 courses - and who are now all asked to deliver web related units.
> I always have to think of Anna Debenham and what she highlighted in her talks, silly units, odd requirements etc...
> 
> Looking at the bits that I managed to keep up with on here - I couldn't see anything that I could forward to them to help them out. All seemed much more related to proper web design/development teaching - all a bit too advanced , perhaps too technically worded for my colleagues to be able to use easily. I'm sure those resources will be brilliant for courses which aim to train up the new cohort of webdesigners/developers - so that's all good.
> 
> However, how about the entry level - the practical approach to teaching people only the very basics - to get nice project brief written to apply those skills, to have teaching material that could be used in the class room - for both adults and younger age groups?
> All I know is that a lot of teaching is really out of date - and that starts with the entry level or more introductory teaching, not only the full on web related courses only.
> 
> 
> Please don't get me wrong - for example, the Web Standards Curriculum is truly fantastic - very useful and a brilliant resource for all, accessible easily etc etc.... I have tried to use it in class - and my students are adults, aiming to work as webdesigners. So I thought it will be perfect - the right target group for this sort of content, writing style and level. 
> But my individual lessons with more visual documentation (often not always) and a more custom presentation, like coloured arrows, highlighted text and plenty of screenshots are the ones my students tend to take to much easier than the brilliant articles on the Web Standards Curriculum ... to my surprise.
> (an example, just to show you what I mean, here's a tutorial on FireFTP I wrote 5 years ago by now...: http://graphiceyedea.co.uk/11/upload-via-ftp-in-firefox-fireftp - very popular with students who seem to refer back to outside of class and cope just fine with solving issues themselves)
> 
> Considering my colleagues and their students who need to do web only as a small part of their courses - all this is even more of an issue....
> 
> 
> Now, I'm not saying I have any answers here — these are just a few thoughts which I meant to commment on much sooner....
> 
> Basically, I'm worried there's lots of time spent creating, collating and producing resources which might be wrong for teaching in the classroom and be more of a reference for more advanced students, rather than a practical solution right now.
> I think we need people who need to teach web to test these as we go along - get feedback during the process and amend/edit to suit.
> 
> 
> I thought that maybe a forum might be a better way for us all to move things forward? Possibly organised into categories by level, filter option by tag for topics? 
> I feel I would be able to manage that better ~ for example, if I write up something for my students anyway - say about typography - I could then just add this to the right category on the forum, get feedback - or share it is as resource.
> 
> As for getting my colleagues some support in their teaching - they might not have time or motivation to be involved directly themselves - but a forum might offer the right platform for them to find useful resources to use immediately, try out and give feedback directly. I imagine lots of good input on wording and illustrative examples.
> 
> 
> I'm not sure if this would be any better at all or not - just a thought....
> 
> Hope this is useful and not just rambling on... :)
> Prisca
> 
> 
> 
> ___________________________________________________
> Prisca Schmarsow ✪ 07969 713 329
> graphiceyedea.co.uk • eyelearn.org • webeyedea.info
> student forum:
> eyelearn.org/forum
> ___________________________________________________
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 13 January 2012 14:21, Chris Mills <cmills@opera.com> wrote:
> Hello all!
> 
> I hope the new year is treating you well.
> 
> Today I wanted to discuss something important with you - moving forward with this whole project, and the best way to do so.
> 
> I think it is becoming clear that the way I have tried to run this so far has not been very successful - people are finding it hard to engage and contribute. Some people have told me this explicitly. So, how best to proceed?
> 
> Broadly what we want out of this is:
> 
> 1. Useful discussions pertaining to web education
> 2. Sharing and development of ideas/methodologies that will be useful to educators and students
> 3. Creation and sharing of learning resources, including tutorials, references and curricula.
> 4. Outreach to as many relevant educators and students as possible, so they can all benefit
> 5. [Add your own, if you think I've missed anything]
> 
> At the moment the tools we have available are mailing lists and a Wiki, pretty much, plus the usual communication tools we use every day. What I would most like to do in the short term is:
> 
> 1. Get people writing/updating/editing/proof reading learning material and curricula
> 2. Get people working on outreach initiatives to spread the world about this material
> 3. Get the non-native-English communities to start working on translations and outreach to their particular communities.
> 
> What do people need to be able to do this more successfully? Do we need different tools? Do I need to start micromanaging a bit more, and handing out more specific tasks and deadlines to people, eg "proof read article x in the next couple of weeks"?
> 
> Let me know what you think everyone.
> 
> thanks! ;-)
> 
> Chris Mills
> Open standards evangelist and dev.opera.com editor, Opera Software
> Co-chair, web education community group, W3C
> 
> * Try Opera: http://www.opera.com
> * Learn about the latest open standards technologies and techniques: http://dev.opera.com
> * Contribute to web education: http://www.w3.org/community/webed/
> 
> 
>