Blah Blah Blah

Today I had what I thought was a really good class with the teaching “side project” I do (as opposed to my main teaching gig), helping graphic design/illustration students to get into web design. First we had six group presentations, in which students presented their analysis and critique of a variety of websites—everything from a blog to ikea.com. That went great: lots of great insights, I got to expand on their ideas, questions from fellow students, etc.

Then I gave the class a choice of what to do with the rest of the time: between reviewing basic Dreamweaver skills, or asking me questions about web design, web development, the web design industry, design and technology trends, their future in web design, whatever. They chose the latter, and we spent another hour of picking my brain. They came up with lots of good questions, and the discussion was very wide-ranging and productive.

At one point a student asked what would be the best things for their group to focus on—an excellent question that I was happy to answer, but first I said that I saw their group as comprising three types of student:

1. Students who want to get through the web design courses, but want nothing to do with web design after graduation.


2. Students who would like to be involved in web design, but only in the sense of user experience and visual design and want nothing to do with web development at all.


3. Students who want to do web design, and are also interested in becoming competent at front end web development (HTML, CSS and possibly JavaScript).

I talked about the implications of all three directions in terms of where to place their efforts. In the end, I came away happy that the class went so well.

After things wrapped up, I sorted out stuff at my office, and then walked to my car. As I approached the parking lot, I realized I was walking behind two of the students from the class. She was talking on her cellphone, saying (in a weary voice), “We just talked about websites for two hours, blah blah blah, then we talked about web design for another hour, that’s all…” In the middle of this, her companion turns his head and sees me and says in his loudest outdoor voice, “Hey, there’s Matt!” I have a big grin on my face, and say, “Hey guys!” as I see a grimace cross her face while she changes the subject.

Classic! I think she might belong to group number 1 above. Fair enough!