The Traditional Website is Dead
A recent post by the amazing Jeffery Zeldman lead me to discover WaSP’s Web Standards Curriculum, and I was so excited to see what great topics they were proposing, I started to think why. And here it is, the traditional website is dead. The days of a personal or business’ brochure style website are long gone, replaced by RIA’s and robust web applications. Users expect an experience, not some plain ordinary website with an address and some pictures. They want to comment, watch videos, and get your RSS feed, and if you don’t offer those things, they often are not interested because you appear outdated. This is where college’s are getting it wrong.
If a person signs up for a web design/development course, it’s not because they want to create crappy outdated websites. They want to create stunning web experiences! They want to create the coolest iPhone application or the next must have web app. At the very least, they want to work on cutting edge websites, and sadly the current state of college programs teaching these things is dismal at best.
This is where the WaSP curriculum comes into play. They are creating an outstanding program outline that colleges can implement fully or partially. The kicker is that they are going to update it! From the way I understand it, WaSP fully intends to update this regularly with what they feel needs to be taught. Any institution that teaches web design/development needs to look at this. It might just make your program the best one around.
Comments
By Scott Radcliff on 07/12/2009
Thanks. The future of websites/applications will be interesting for sure.
By Social Media Optimization on 08/05/2009
I understand it,WaSP fully intends to update this regularly with what they feel needs to be taught.
By The Golem on 07/11/2009
Couldn’t agree more. I think the use of the web is being revolutionised, and any business which wants to survive, especially in today’s economic climate needs to be considering getting with the game.
Nice article.