Where are the other Mr. Browns and How Can I Help?
This morning I had the great privilege of speaking to a room full of students at Damascus High School, somewhere out in Maryland, well past my normal geographical boundaries. These folks were taking an Advanced Web Tools class with Mr. Jeff Brown, and they weren’t getting your average high school web class. Jeff, along with his colleagues Jeff Hanson, Barbara Barry, Brian Wall, Nancy Kemp and Cheryl Wall, teach a very relevant applied IT curriculum. As I got to know the class, I couldn’t help but admire how Jeff teaches his web students the things that we’d all hope he would — software-independent and standards-based best practices for communicating online.
I talked for a little bit about treating the web as an interface (rather than a canvas), and when and how to break the rules (like when markup validation really matters, etc). The students asked some good questions, and generally knew the answers to my questions, which was very impressive. Most of them had read A List Apart, they all knew XHTML’s basic rules, they talked about the separation of presentation from content, and they use JQuery to do their interactions. This was no Dreamweaver class.
Students doing great work
Above all, it seems like Jeff gives his students the freedom to do projects that touch on their weaknesses, but also play to their strengths. In the end, you have a few dozen students who are not only engaged, but have a feeling (if not legit experience) for how to do quality work on the web. Even if they never work directly on the web, they’ll have a feeling for the value of quality work if they’re ever hiring a web designer or development shop in the future. Either way you slice it, it creates greater demand for producing good quality products online, which can’t be bad.
At the other side of the building, when I was meeting colleague Jeff Hanson, his class was learning about the advantages and disadvantages of allowing your system to tap into its swap-based virtual memory. Students were asking him about I/O throughput and other things I never thought I’d hear in a public high school.
Of Course
There’s always a question about whether or not this kind of thing should in fact be taught in a high school. And of course, English, math, history, and the rest of the liberal arts are legitimately more important to a high school diploma than computer work is, in my opinion. But every school has electives, and this is a fantastic program to allow interested students to learn, early-on, how to create things on the web. If every school had this type of program alongside art, music, and home ec., or allowed students to take the more sophisticated classes in lieu of calculus (honestly, I haven’t had to integrate since my last math course), that would be fantastic.
So who else does this?
As I was leaving, Jeff Brown asked me if I knew of other programs in the area that are doing the same type of thing. I didn’t, and he didn’t seem to know about too many himself. Are there other schools in the DC region that are trying a curriculum like this?
If not, how can we change this? I was very involved with my school district when I was back in Pennsylvania, but I haven’t the foggiest clue about how it works down this way. It would be great to get secondary school web instructors together, not just to share ideas among each other, but to share ideas with and learn from others who are working in the industry. It would be great to develop the skeleton of a common curriculum (which, I think, Jeff and his colleagues have done a great job of producing so far).
And how can I help?
But if so, I want to help out. That could mean talking to a class like I did at Damascus today, helping to work on a curriculum, or maybe convincing Brian to host a field trip to see what we do at Viget. Or anything else I haven’t thought about.
Wow, I didn’t realize this type of study was happening at any high school. Encouraging on a number of levels. I’d be interested in hearing more behind-the-scenes info on how Damascus and Jeff dreamed up and integrated this curriculum (and how much support or resistance was involved).
It’s fantastic that high schools are teaching applied web science. I have a few teacher friends … I’ll ask around. If I hear of anything, I’ll post back.
I’d be interested in chatting with any of the student’s in Jeff Brown’s class about a remote summer internship for our web app. It’d be unpaid, and there wouldn’t be stock options in the offering (we don’t really even have those), but the students would get to own parts of the project, and we’d find things that were of interest to them. If any of them are interested, they can shoot me a note at charlie at pearbudget.com.
Convinced! Schedule away — I’d love to have them come by the Lab. Sounds like an inspiring bunch.
Thank you so much for your words Jackson. A field trip sounds great! Whom should I coordinate with?
As said before the kids really benefited from your discussion. So thank you one last time.
How can we continue to network? I want to connect with as many other professionals as possible. I’m hoping Brian Wall and I can make the next refresh.
Hi,
We are planning on implementing the web curriculum Jeff is working on at our school, Springbrook High School, next year.
He has done some great things, and I am very fortunate to be teaching in the same county as Jeff.
I am really interested in getting involved with some networking!!!
Congrats Jeff
@Jeff: I’ll shoot you some info.
@Zac: Awesome! You’ll definitely have to keep us posted and let us know how it goes.
@Jeff and @Zac: Maybe it makes sense to try to get a quarterly meet-up for web design teachers in the Capitol area going. There are at least three of you who would show up so far ;) I’m sure some of us without teaching certificates would be more than happy to help out too. I’d bet you could get a list of relevant faculty from each of the county school systems in the area…
Of course, that would be in addition to coming to Refresh ;)
It’s really great that you’re bringing up this dialogue, Jackson. I was lucky enough to learn some very applicable development skills while I was in high school, and I generally feel a lot of good information never reaches secondary or even collegiate programs…as regards to what’s happening in the real world.
But more importantly, students need to be inspired and see why technology education can really give them a leg up. Technology is one of the few areas where a little push can give people from not-the-best backgrounds a real opportunity. While Montgomery County will benefit from this, there are a lot of places where even Dreamweaver or FrontPage (let alone web standards) would be a huge step in the right direction.
A good place to learn more about curriculi being taught and options for professionals to participate is Maryland Achievement Counts. I’ve participated for a few years and found it both rewarding and enlightening.
Keep up the good work and let me know if I can help!
Jackson, this was really great to read. Many colleges should be so lucky as to have something like this. I imagine even simply understanding the material in Mr. Brown’s course would give them a huge leg up in many other fields.
In Fairfax County Public schools, they have a program called the Chantilly Academy, teaching technical courses that fall outside of the regular curriculum. Students are bused in from other schools around the county. About 10 years ago, I took a video production course. Now, one of my buddies teaches an industrial design course. I don’t believe they have a web design and development class, but I am sure it would be popular.