This document represents the work accomplished developing a beginning level course in web design for the secondary school student, grades 9-12. Our Bellingham School District team consisted of web design teachers Joe McAuliffe of Squalicum High School, Karll Rusch of Bellingham High School, and Don Helling of Sehome High School. The course structure is grounded in the principles of both the industry skill standards of the National Workforce Center for Emerging Technologies (NWCET) and Washington State's Essential Academic Learning Requirements (EALRs). The curriculum was shaped as well by essential hands-on experience in the workplace, and discussions with members of Whatcom County's information technology community.
The high school web design course in the Bellingham Public Schools was initiated at Squalicum High School in 1998 and became a collaborative effort at the three schools beginning in the fall of 2000. Last spring we were fortunate to be accepted in the Whatcom Tech Prep Consortium's (WTPC) Industry Skills Standards/IT Career Pathway project. This project was funded by Washington State's School-to-Work Transition grant through the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI). The grant fund paid for staff development, site visits, internships with business, curriculum design and helped us purchase needed equipment and
We came together with strong computer skills but relatively limited experience teaching web design, as well as varied teaching backgrounds in general (English, Technology, Alternative Ed., etc.). It was clear from the beginning that this curriculum template would be a work in progress. The curriculum would necessarily change with the unknown factors that always seem to crop up when dealing with technology education, and that the three of us would follow the overall structure but tailor the curriculum to our individual teaching strengths. This is the way we expect other teachers to use this document. We hope that the units contained in this document will help you develop your own web design courses based on your individual needs and resources.
We agreed from the start (1) that this would be a project-based curriculum,
(2) that it would be relatively cross-platform -- not linked to a specific software
manufacturer or computer, and (3) that it would include "real-world"
soft skill elements while teaching the basics of designing and creating web
pages. (Although we intend this curriculum to be valid using either Mac or Windows
operating system, we were limited to the use of a Windows-based network when
developing and teaching these units.)
The summer of 2001 gave us the opportunity to participate in one-week internships
in the local IT community. Joe and Don worked with Mindfly, a local web design
firm. Gary Pickering, Rusty Swayne and David Ladiges offered us personal hands-on
instruction in professional web development. They offered us a close-up view
of how important "soft skills" are in the workplace. The constant
communication between employees, as well as with clients reinforced our focus
on the need for these to be included in our project-based curriculum. The actual
projects centered on the use of current database techniques which will be the
next step in our course development for Web Design 2, the second course in the
web design pathway. Karll spent a week with a local similar web design firm,
focusing on using Photoshop for web graphics.
In addition to this opportunity, we were visited by, and were able to visit, representatives of other local businesses. Some of these companies were technology based (such as FiberCloud a state of the art data center that hosts a number of web sites and company information databases), while some were companies with a web presence (The Port of Bellingham for instance). These visits continued to reinforce the aspects of the course that we had deemed most important. The message we heard over and over, was that communication, organization and other soft skills were as important, if not more important, than knowing how to use the technology. In addition to the general questions, there were a few specific questions that were answered for us in the internships and community workplace visits. The most important was where we should place our web page creation emphasis, WYSIWYG programs (such as Adobe's GoLive or Macromedia's DreamWeaver) or text-based coding. The consensus is that you need some of both. The reality in smaller web design firms was that most used a combination of programs such as the Macromedia product HomeSite (basic coding) and DreamWeaver (WYSIWYG). Most employers felt that a basic understanding of HTML code in a simple text-editor was important to understand what underlies WYSIWYG editing and in order to work on problems that go beyond the scope of these programs.
Our curriculum is divided into six units, but please note that they should not necessarily be approached in a consecutive manner. For instance, Unit 2 that outlines basic HTML coding should probably be done along with Unit 1 that covers basic design principles. We leave this up to the individual instructor's judgment and time constraints.
Additional resources the three of us have used to supplement and reinforce our curriculum include guest speakers from the local IT community and visits to local IT businesses. These visits fit nicely with the pathway focus of our curriculum as well as introduce students to the real world of the IT workplace and related employment opportunities.
The specific links between this curriculum and the NWCET's industry skill as well as Washington State OSPI's EALRs should be clear in the curriculum unit and module overviews. As it relates to these two documents, our focus in this course was on improving communication skills as well as mastering technical skills.
We would like to thank Linda Cowan, Laurie Stephan, and all of our classmates and business partners for the help they gave us developing this curriculum.
As this is a "work-in-progress" we would welcome feedback and suggestions for any aspect of this curriculum. Please contact any or all of us at the following email addresses:
Dhelling@bham.wednet.edu
Krusch@bham.wednet.edu
Jmcaulif@bham.wednet.edu
We sincerely hope that this curriculum will be useful for those serious about implementing a web design curriculum based in workplace skill standards and practices. General permission is granted to educators to download and/or photocopy material from this curriculum for non-commercial instructional or scholarly use. Permission must be sought from Linda Cowan in order to charge for photocopies, to quote material in advertising, or to reprint substantial portions of this document in other publications. Credit should always be given to the source of the photocopies or quotes by citing a complete reference.
Don Helling
Joe McAuliffe
Karll Rusch
Linda Cowan, Director
Whatcom County Tech Prep Consortium
3028 Lindbergh Ave.
Bellingham, WA 98225
360-738-0221
lcowan@btc.ctc.edu
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