CIW Community - Get caught in the Web!

Now that the school year is up and going and you have students learning about XHTML and creating Web pages you will want students to post those projects somewhere that they may be accessed by you, other students, and possibly others interested in seeing what the students have created. In a perfect world we would assign each student their own domain and host their projects on the Web. Since we do not live in that type of environment there needs to be another way to allow students to post their work, either publicly through the Internet or on a local intranet.

I was working on updating a list of supplemental resources the other day when I came across a link to some videos worth checking out on Google. Several years ago when I was a classroom teacher I would always show the PBS documentary series Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires and Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet to my first time students. The series is a great introduction to this thing we call the personal computer.

I have to say that I am not a big follower of ABC’s Dancing With the Stars (DWTS); however, when I heard that Steve Wozniak (a.k.a. The Woz) was going to be competing I had to wonder just how he would do. Well, if you have not been able to see Steve in his performance check out the YouTube videos below. Some Nerds should just stick with designing computers. Surprisingly enough Steve made it through the first round!

“Hello my name is Stephen and I am a Paperholic.”

I have to say I had a great visit with Nancy Kuzma’s Web Technologies class at Careerline Technology Center in Holland, Michigan last week. I was there to participate in the program’s advisory meeting for program and curriculum review. I also participated with other members of industry in the Advisory Testing, where Nancy’s students have their portfolio’s critiqued, skills tested, and are interviewed by a panel of industry representatives.

“I need a curriculum that teaches soft skills” or “I need to show areas of cross curriculum context in my program”. I have been on the CIW Road Show lately traveling through North Carolina, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Louisiana. These comments have been a general theme with all of the teachers and administrators that I have spoken with during the last couple of months. Teachers and administrators are looking for curriculum that includes content, social skills, and has ties to areas of learning other than just IT.

Greetings from the Atlanta airport! It has been a busy week. I am returning from an orientation session for a CIW Foundations Hybrid Faculty Institute I am teaching for the Louisiana Technical College system. I enjoyed meeting everyone at the LTC Alexandria campus today and look forward to working with everyone as we study and go through the course material.

Having problems coming up with some design projects for your class to work on? Why not take a look at the ideas coming from Google. Ever since 2000 Google has been putting out some very interesting project release announcements on April 1st. These of course are fictitious programs in nature but they are very professionally done and some are very believable. Many of these sites that Google has released could very easily be programs your Web design class generates and works on as Web development projects going through the design processes that we are teaching in the classroom.

What is all of this hype about Skype? Just what is it going to do for me to revolutionize the way I use the Internet?

Well Skype is a peer-to-peer Voice-over-IP telephony network. Basically this means that we use the Internet to place phone calls. Skype advertises “Free Calling on the Internet”. There are several services that Skype offers free including Skype to Skype calling, call transfers to another Skype user, conference calling supporting up to 9-participants, video calling, and instant messaging.

I have been asked several times about running the CIW Associate Design Specialist (ADS) program in a two year academic setting so I thought we could spend a few minutes talking about this. Lets get a little background on the ADS program first.

The ADS program came about due to concerns from the academic business education departments that students who were signing up for Web design classes were having to take the CIW Associate course before they could begin working on design projects.