Worst Professor Ever

The third in a series on Getting Out of Academic Dodge. Last installment talked about how to get in the right state of mind. Today we talk about the nitty-gritty of learning some new skills.

So you’re trying to get outta dodge, or you’ve decided to get 21st-century on your job search, or you just need to learn the skills your 12-year-old students already know. Even if you’re just planning on freelance writing, you really should know some web design basics (HTML, CSS, and a lil’ something about Adobe products). I’ve been to a few media conferences, and multimedia content (words + web formatting + images + videos) is really in demand.

The good news? These days, learning can be done (as the ad tells us) in your pajamas, viz. lying around in bed or on the couch, watching tutorials, passively absorbing information — just like your students. Aaaah.

Having to a too-demanding job, logging classroom hours, and not getting paid enough,  I was quite the connoisseur of free, non-classroom learning. But my unwillingness to pay sometimes cost me a great deal in convenience and standards. Part of my goal here is to share my hindsight with you. This post is just one person’s extremely subjective list of stuff that worked; as such, it’s going to reflect my personal preferences (e.g. I work on a Mac). Oh, and just to be clear, this is bona fide — I’m not getting any money to recommend one product over another.

A Good Question for Those in Transition: You’re Certifiable But Should You Get Certified?

When I first thought about leaving my job, I wondered if it would be worth the investment to get an online associate’s degree in web design, or web mastery, or paralegal, or some other “real world” skill. Personally, I know when I know something so I didn’t really care about the piece of paper, but I figured employers might not feel so confident without a degree. In the end, it was money that decided it. I couldn’t stomach spending a few thousand dollars (at least) to get yet another degree. Then, on the advice of my realtor, I opted to spend my tax refund on a few buyer-friendly home improvements instead of online learning. This turned out to be a better decision all around.

But I eventually, I also decided I was willing to spend a reasonable amount of money on retraining, and I’ll tell you, I wish I’d made that decision sooner.

Free, Free-er, Free-est

As a former teacher, I have incredibly high standards, and I hate paying for poor instruction. But at this point in my life I do believe in paying for convenience and quality. So my strategy was to try to do things free, if possible, but to spend selectively on worthwhile investments.

The good news is that you can absolutely learn for free. One friend taught herself HTML and Flash using video tutorials from YouTube, and I myself have used this method to for some Photoshop techniques. The bad news is, you’re often getting what you pay for — no-frills lessons which can be frustrating for true beginners. But, as I detail below, you can definitely get a reliable start in HTML and CSS for free.

There’s also the W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium) which is the big daddy authority on all web matters. As an organization, they are admirably devoted to open learning, offering website design lessons in their “school.” The downside is that the lessons are generally authored by programmers, who tend to approach things like math and/or a scientific taxonomy. As a language-style learner I didn’t find their lessons satisfactory for for absolute beginners, despite some very cool “learn by doing” pages. But they’re constantly updating — so you may as well check out the school and its tutorials on HTML and CSS.

Speaking of the W3C, another reason to participate in organized learning (rather than doing things the Wild West way) is so you can be “standards compliant.” I’m anti-authoritarian by nature, trust me, but if you plan on working with other people, you’ll need to know what web standards are and why they’re in place.

If you’re willing to lay out a little cash, books are a good option — but buyer beware, if they are written by computer savants, they too can contain frustrating taxonomies. Don’t buy without flipping through first, scanning for human-friendly text.

My most expensive investment (well, okay, it was a gift I asked for, but still) was a yearly subscription to Lynda.com: $250 per year may seem expensive, but it was the cost of a single Dreamweaver course at my local community college. For that $250, I have access to literally thousands of tutorials, from remedial to advanced, on all sorts of stuff. The teaching quality is excellent, and the lessons are broken up into 2-10 minute chunks so you really can learn at your own pace — and, using your laptop, in bed. Yay.

One caveat: I chose the second-most-expensive membership, which doesn’t include the exercise files the instructors are using. You may prefer to get these, which will cost another $125 a year. But honestly, I’d still say $375 is still a cost-effective investment in your future. And if you’re not sure, you can buy a monthly membership ($25-$37) to try it out first. My favorite part? When you finish a course you get a certificate, so you’ve got something to show for it.

Speaking of money, you may as well bite the bullet and get your Adobe products, software, etc. while you’re still teaching/being an academic/suffering through grad school — that educators’ discount is a godsend.

Knowing Where You’re Going: Web Design vs. Development

As I started to plan my way out, I did informational interviews with people in my target fields. As I found out, web design is primarily visual, arranging elements on a page; development is more about making sites interact with customers, designing “apps” (I’m just never going to like that word) and requires more actual programming. To put it bluntly, design is considered the “fluffier” of the two, and pays less. When I would ask people about combining good design and user interactivity they’d usually laugh at me and tell me that only Apple did that — see, this is why they need more holistic thinkers in this field!

Anyway, there is difference in the kind of skills you’ll need to acquire for design and development. But for whatever you’re doing on the web, you start with HTML, CSS, and Javascript.

Now, I’m just going to stop right here to note that Javascript, in my professional-educator opinion, shouldn’t be casually lumped in with CSS and HTML. Yes, this is the official trinity of web design, but Javascript is real programming, and harder to learn. So it’s not just some easy leap from HTML/CSS.

Because of that, I’m covering the fluffy design stuff (HTML, CSS, and Adobe product knowledge) here. In the next post I’ll talk about Java, Javascript, and why you should think about getting into development at all.

Getting the Right Text Editor

No matter what you’re doing, you’ll have to know how to code, and most lessons will have you start from scratch by writing your own  (thumbs up on this as a good language-learning practice). But a very important note: you CANNOT use Word for this stuff. You need a text editor that isn’t going to interfere (i.e. try to add its own formatting to the code you write) so something primitive like TextEdit is going to be your best bet.

I originally used BBEdit Lite, a free text editor from BareBones, though it looks like TextWrangler is their current free product. In hindsight, I’ll tell you that $50 (again, the EDUCATOR price) was a steal for the full version of BBEdit, which you can also try for free. BBEdit is actually designed for writing code and gives you little bonuses like line numbers and color coding — remember, you’re paying for convenience, and as they say on their product website, “It doesn’t suck.” My kind of people.

Web Design Basics: HTML, CSS and Adobe

HTML and CSS aren’t actually computer programming languages, they just format how text and images appear on a web browser. Basically, you just write stuff in your text editor then open it in your browser and voilà, you’ve got a webpage. Honestly, I think this is something that most people will be able to get, and  I don’t find it as complicated or unintuitive as, say, arguing with new software I’ve bought.

What I first used were free web courses at About.com:  HTML here, CSS here. There’s also a nice general “learn web design” page here. The quality of the lessons is generally pretty good, but there’s no way to ask questions which is a little frustrating.

I also used, and highly recommend, Dave Taylor’s books. The most up-to-date being Creating Cool Websites. (I used Creating Cool HTML 4.0, which is also good, but you may as well go with what’s current.) Taylor’s one of those rare programming dudes who can write engaging, helpful prose, and he walks you through how the web works, how to code HTML, CSS (and now I guess  XML — gotta get that new book!) and how to upload/download.

Adobe products are part and parcel of web design and multimedia web content. Dreamweaver is the standard tool for designing websites, and Photoshop and Flash are a must.  Now, Adobe products are powerful, but they’re absolutely not intuitive — this is actually how I got hooked on Lynda.com. When I bought my Adobe Creative Suite package (again, educator price rocks!) they offered me a free month’s subscription, and boy was I glad to have it. The “Essentials” tutorial series is meant for absolute beginners, and it’s just great. Also, if you’re checking out Lynda tutorials anyway, there are HTML and CSS lessons. James Williamson is one of my favorite web design instructors, combining a mellifluous voice with a pragmatic approach to design and web standards.

There may be good Adobe and CSS books out there, but I don’t know of them — suggestions certainly welcome!  Personally, when it got past basic HTML and CSS,  I found the tutorials much more useful and comprehensive than the DIY stuff I’d been doing. But I’m sure it’s different for everyone.

Honestly, the hardest thing about learning this stuff was finding the time. As with anything else, you have to commit to a certain amount per day, or evening, or whatever. But once you get the basics down, playing around with code or Photoshop is something you can practice while watching TV, and I found it a fun break from grading papers. And of course, for those bloggers out there, you can just switch to the “HTML” mode to play with your knew knowledge.

I hope this has been helpful, and I welcome people’s own stories of how they bootstrapped their knowledge, or other recommendations for good, free/cheap learning resources.

Tags: about.com, affordable, cheap, CSS, Dreamweaver, free, HTML, Javascript, learn web design, Lynda.com