Der kører en interessant debat om, hvorvidt man skal bruge Dreamweaver i undervisningen af journalister (Mindy McAdams har også blogget om det).
Interessant i denne debat er dog dette blogindlæg af Mark Comerford, hvor han hellere vil tale underliggende struktur i stedet for værktøjer:
[…] the problem is not Dreamweaver per se but the way we tend to concentrate on particular pieces of software instead of the underlying structures the software addresses.
Han kalder det “red button”:
We teach Red Button classes. Take a monkey and teach him that pushing a big red button gets him a banana and you soon have a happy monkey.
After a while take him to a banana warehouse. Poor monkey goes hungry. No red button to push. Unhappy monkey.
What we all to often do is teach our students how to use a particular piece of software – which red button to press.
They then go out into the real world to discover that the company they have come to has a blue button. Unhappy student.
Og her kommer konklusionen:
We need to teach the underlying concepts, the logical structures, the why more than the how. What a Content Management System is and why it is. Once they understand that then it will be (relatively) easy for them to find the right button to push, or to explain to the button pusher what they need.
Jeg er meget enig. På Journalisthøjskolen blev vi undervist meget i værktøjer, for eksempel Flash (som jeg tidligere har blogget om). Selvfølgelig blev vi undervist i storytelling-teknikker, men vi fik ikke nogen undervisning i den underliggende struktur, for eksempel hvordan hjemmeside-dokumenter er opbygget.
Content Management Systemer fik vi ingen undervisning i, jeg valgte at lave mit projekt i WordPress (dansk) og vores AGFokus-nyhedssite (hvor vi fulgte AGF i en uge) var også i WordPress, fordi en anden studerende og jeg anbefalede det.
