

I Want To Teach Web Design For Free - jenius
http://jenius.me/free

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acangiano
Have you considered teaching online with a service like Udemy.com? You'd
certainly reach a broader audience.

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shahedkhan30
Yes, I would love to be one of your students, if you would teach online.
Brooklyn is a good choice, but if you teach online, you'll reach a larger
audience.

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jenius
Hey guys - thanks for all your support and comments. I would be happy to
broadcast the class online, but would still like to have people actually there
for it. I'll see if I can record it and post after, or stream live. Thanks for
your suggestions, and shoot me an email if you want me to keep you updated!

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div
Great idea.

I'm from Europe, but I'd love it if you could stream these sessions too.

Maybe look into streaming via justin.tv or something ?

VOD's would be pretty sweet as well.

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jk215
Its awesome that you would take the time out to set up some free classes but I
think you would need to move some things around in this syllabus.

Basics of Graphic Design - Great starting point. No arguments here.

Learning HTML (html5) only - I dont agree with this. HTML5 is not that widely
adopted yet to be a sole basis of HTML learning. It often still requires JS
just to make it render correctly across all browsers. Using the HTML5 doctype
and teaching HTML5 as what-is-to-come is great, but it shouldnt be the basis.
Especially if you are looking to teach cross-browser compatibility and best
practices.

Javascript/JQuery - Sounds about right.

Databases / MVC / RoR - This is where you kind of blur the line between
teaching "Web Design" and "Web Development". This should be an optional split.
If you want to continue learning the development side you go this route, if
they want to stay design side, go a different route. There is really no reason
for a designer to know about how MVC works.

Deployment - The basics of deployment would be great for everyone but advanced
RoR, Django style deployments shouldnt be apart of a normal course.

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jenius
Thanks for your intelligent and thoughtful review. To respond:

I am going to stick with html5. I personally support progressiveness in
design, and that means if someone is using IE6 and/or no javascript, I do not
support this (and neither does google, wordpress, and a host of other large
companies). As long as you have javascript turned on, the simple inclusion of
modernizr makes html5 100% functional. I think it would be a best practices
fail NOT to teach html5. I always have coded in html5, and so has the web
agency I work at, and anyone else I know in web dev.

On the dev, you're totally right, but I disagree with the statement "There is
really no reason for a designer to know about how MVC works". The more a
designer knows about development, the better they will be to work with. I
don't think there should be a split between design and development, it's good
to dabble in both. Of course, everything is optional - if someone was very
stubborn about not knowing anything about dev, they could skip the class.

I will be covering quick basic RoR deployment through Heroku, not advanced
rails deploys. That would be for a later course ; )

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eropple
"Progressiveness in design" only works when people are actually able to view
it correctly. Given the fluctuating state of HTML5 at present, I'm reasonably
sure you're just introducing additional complexity and points of failure
unless you are teaching exhaustively only the exact features that work
correctly, everywhere. This is not a particularly large set.

Now, I'd say something very different if HTML5 actually worked correctly
everywhere, or even most places. But here's the thing--indoctrinating people
into a JavaScript dependency like modernizr to fuel your desire to use a
standard that isn't completely implemented anywhere is, frankly, terrible: a
much more important lesson to drive home is "look, use progressive
enhancement," not "look, HTML5 is awesome!", and making modernizr a dependency
is the exact opposite of smart. Yes, your "web agency" might do this--but that
doesn't make them very bright, either.

It's rule #1 of responsive web design: _start with the simplest base case, and
progressively enhance from there_. If you want to really teach people how to
benefit themselves by being able to write this stuff, I'd strongly recommend
starting there--not with the high-end "look at my buzzwords and adopt them."
Simple is good--really.

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jenius
I still could not disagree more strongly. We're producing sites and apps for
some of the biggest companies out there in html5. No joke, google.com,
yahoo.com, and facebook.com (those were the first and only 3 I checked) are
coded in html5. You are just behind the times... sorry! html5 is where it's
at, and if you haven't adopted it yet, you are disagreeing with all of the top
web coders in the industry. Start checking the doctypes and get with the
program : )

I agree that simple is good, but you are just wrong on the html5... sorry : /

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eropple
I am _well_ with the program--I'm not the one advocating the use of modernizr
or other hacks instead of building HTML that actually works on its own merits.
The "HTML5" used by Facebook et al. is a very, very limited subset. The
overwhelming majority of their work is valid HTML4! Your argument to authority
is foolish.

HTML5 is a perfectly good tool, but relying on it and a _JavaScript library_
to smooth it over because _it doesn't fully exist yet_ is crazy. If you are
not writing a web application--an _application_ , not a "website"--and it
breaks because someone has JavaScript off, _you screwed up_. I know that's a
foreign concept to somebody inculcated into the bizarre little world of Ruby,
but you're throwing simplicity out for buzzwords.

For better or for worse (and believe me, I am strongly of the opinion that it
is worse), IE is not dead. These people you presume to teach are not
'opinionated' towards whether people using IE et al. should be marginalized
and made second-class citizens. You, however, presume to make a decision for
them that they have to make for themselves. And that's not right.

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jenius
It's what happens with any teacher you get. Everyone has a way that they do
things and their own opinions, and my opinion is use html5, always. Just so
happens that this is also the opinion of the majority of web devs.

To be fair, you are right though - I should at very least educate people about
this before teaching it. I will make sure to let my students know that if they
would like to decrease the quality of their products based on 2% of people
(that's data from 2007 as well, likely has gone significantly down) who browse
with javascript off, then they should not use any html5 tags. Fair enough?

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roadnottaken
What's your audience? In my experience it's easy to teach someone how to build
a simple website, but much harder to teach things like file-transferring,
hosting, image formats, etc. However your topics seemed more-advanced than the
basics, so I wonder who your students would be?

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shrikant
Completely agree. Way back in the day (late 90s) I decided to go hipster and
hand-code my own static site in Notepad ( _"Suck it, Allaire HomeSite and
HoTMeTaL!"_ ), and put it up for all the world to see.

I didn't dig around too much into what would be needed - after all, I had
taught myself HTML and relative paths! After a week of "Edit, Ctrl+S, Alt+Tab,
F5, Repeat", I was finally happy with the (now shitty, then awesome) finished
product. And then realised I had no clue how to get it up on _any_ website,
much less my own.

That was when I truly learnt how _anything_ ought to be learnt (end-to-end).
And also that I probably wasn't as smart as I thought :(

TL;DR: created website without knowing how websites really work.

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jenius
Hey guys, like I mentioned in the summary of the class, I will be completely
covering deployment, including how to upload and deploy a full site both in
rails and for static files. Cheers!

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tommi
With "an hour or so every week or two" your class will take years.

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3pt14159
I assume that there will be homework. You can't really learn without doing.

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jenius
There would be homework. But it won't take years - there are very quick and
simple ways to deploy for both rails and static. It takes me no more than 30
minutes to get any website from dev to online. That's what the class is for
though -- if you want to find out how, come ; )

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tommi
I appreciate your idea and effort, but here's a bleak picture of how it could
go.

1\. week: everybody is into it. Some even have little background on the
subject, some are complete newbies. You give little bit of homework.

2\. week: you start really doing something. Some fall behind and didn't do
their homework. Other's have progressed well, somebody is even arguing with
you how it should be done.

3\. week: class is divided. Some have really picked up the pace, some are
following your plan and most of your time is taken up the struggling newbie.

etc.

All I'm saying here is, that if you go ahead with then you can help many but
you'll need to be prepared. People learn complex stuff at a different pace.
From what I've seen, teaching and computers don't go very well together.
Workshops are bit better. Give people resources to learn from and those are
interested will learn.

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jenius
You can say this about any class. I know everyone learns at a different pace,
this is just a truth of life. This is not going to be a small class that
involves tons of personal attention lavished on everyone - this is going to be
an overview class. If someone is struggling and wants extra personal tutoring,
they can hire me for that separately, but I'm going to generally keep it
moving.

If someone comes to the class that is not interested, they will be left behind
- that's just how it is. Remember, this is a free class - nobody is paying me
for this, so there's no complaining. If someone is interested, they will
learn. If not, they will drop.

The homework will be very little, and will be mostly based on projects. Each
person will have an individual project they are working on - if they choose
something they are excited about, hopefully this will keep them going.

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cidermonk3y
If it were me I would leave the teaching of Javascript and jQuery to later on
after you've helped them build an application that works (i.e. after all the
backend stuff is hooked up). I hope you find somewhere to get set up :)

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jenius
It won't be anything too intense, just a couple of front-end tweaks to get
peoples' feet wet and show them the power that jquery has. If all goes well, I
could cover it more in depth in a later class.

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trin_
" best practices"

like using fonts that look rubbish on anything but OSX?

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SamColes
Anyone have a screenshot on OSX for comparison? I'm on Windows and I think the
font looks fine...

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rlm
With javascript enabled: <http://cl.ly/0Q263x2u1t2N1d3l1B3f> With javascript
disabled: <http://cl.ly/3g1e0P3Y1b2X332B0Q0v>

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lzm
It's basically unreadable on Windows: <http://i.imgur.com/qukor.png>

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jenius
Hey all - sorry about the font problems on Windows. This is just a one page
site, and I'm using a font straight from the Google Web Fonts directory. I
only have a mac at home, so that was how I tested it. I will certainly be more
careful next time, and with a larger site would absolutely test on all
browsers and operating systems.

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Hisoka
What causes this issue? I want to know in the future to avoid something like
this? Is it because you use custom ttfs or something?

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jenius
The issue was caused by a webkit font rendering fix. Make sure to remove all
text-stroke and text-shadow declarations for windows - these thin out the font
and improve rendering in osx, but ruin it for windows (no surprise)

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rockarage
I will recommend Wix Lounge, it's a free workspace that also has tech and
design workshop, your goal fits well with what they do. See:

<http://www.wixlounge.com/> [http://blog.wix.com/2011/06/the-wix-lounge-nycs-
hot-spot-for...](http://blog.wix.com/2011/06/the-wix-lounge-nycs-hot-spot-for-
your-events/)

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duopixel
There are plenty of co-working spaces in NYC, I'm sure if you get in touch the
would be thrilled to lend you a teaching space in exchange for easy access to
the course.

[http://wiki.coworking.info/w/page/16583629/CoworkingNewYorkC...](http://wiki.coworking.info/w/page/16583629/CoworkingNewYorkCity)

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navs
I'd love if someone did something similar to this in the Auckland (New
Zealand) area.

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vladsanchez
JeffAcademy.com... Clear enough? You have a golden opportunity! Good luck! =D

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jenius
hahaha maybe if this first class is successful :-P

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pitdesi
Try <http://www.generalassemb.ly/> They have a nice space and this would be a
great way for them to reach out to the community.

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jenius
A friend just suggested them to me this morning! I definitely will be in
touch, very likely it will be held there : ) Thanks!

