I learned last year that many of my students come to my design classes with little experience in working with computers. This year, I’ll be giving them a crash course on computer skills basics. I hope they’ll be excited with their newfound power. Some of the text if specific to our lab, but most of it will work on any Windows computer. I’m still writing a lot of it. It will be more filled out in the next two weeks.

For right now, design teachers can get an idea of the kinds of topics you really need to preteach for computer noobs.

Basic Computer Skills
* Windows XP Basics
* Using a Web Browser
* Keyboard Shortcuts
* Managing Files and Folders
* Using Microsoft Word
* Navigating the Student Server

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Nudibranchs are kind of like sea slugs. Unlike their bland land-lubber cousins, nudibranchs can be very vividly colored. Colourlovers.com has a nice set of photos of nudibranchs and their corresponding color schemes (click on the color chart to get a page with the Hex and RGB numbers for each color).

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Taking an idea from a veteran teacher, I developed a PowerPoint presentation for my syllabus this coming year. The syllabus in written form is about 8 pages. Instead of printing a copy for every student, I have it on the class website for reference.

On the first day of school, I’m going to show the syllabus PowerPoint and then give the kids a quiz. I think it might be more effective than just reviewing the syllabus in paper form. I added silly clip art to keep the slides visually interesting.

Below are four sample pages from the PowerPoint presentation. Here is the slide presentation in PDF format (1.9MB). If you want the original PowerPoint file ready for you to adapt for your own needs, email me see below.

UPDATE 8/4/08
Due to popular demand, I am making the PowerPoint version available online.
syllabus_08-09.ppt [6MB]

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I made some interface posters of the software I teach: Photoshop CS3, Illustrator CS3 and Dreamweaver MX 2004. I thought I’d share them here. The originals are 32″ across by 24″ down. I’ll be using our large-format color printer at the school to print them and then I’ll find a laminator somewhere.

These PDFs are letter sized. Please email me if you’d like PDFs for the full 32×24 size.

Click on an image to view/download the PDF:

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I just purchased a copy of Design Language by Tim McCreight. Check out the content sample.

I got a bolt of inspiration stemming from the content of this book and the nature of discussion question posed by my online graduate art teachers. This idea is in its rough infancy stage:

• Each student has a response notebook. He or she may leave notebooks in the class so they are not lost.
• Each week introduces a new vocabulary term from the book, and I write it on the white board along with a definition. It stays up all week. It may include an illustration if appropriate. This can be repeated on the class website.
• Along with the vocabulary term comes a question that requires critical thinking and the student’s own background and point of view.
• Each Monday, students have ten or so minutes to write the vocabulary term, definition, and their response in the notebook. They can take additional time during the week to complete their answer. Perhaps I can have a follow-up question later in the week.
• I check the notebooks each Friday, or once a month.

Example

Term: Aesthetics
Definition: 1. the criticism of taste; 2. the sense of the beautiful; 3. having a love of beauty; 4. (plural) a branch of philosophy that provides a theory of beauty in the fine arts
Question: What makes something “beautiful”? Give an example from your own experience.

I know this is not groundbreaking, but for some reason I have not done it before.

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