Whew… New Class Blogs are Up (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog)
The first week of classes is over, and the university modem pool, which was down for about a month, is finally back up. So I can finally return to my habit of blogging a bit after I’ve put the kids to bed.
My big project of late has, of course, been getting ready for my new slate of classes.
I’m using Elizabeth Lawley’s impressive Moveable Type templates in Writing for the Internet, American Lit I (1800-1915), and Seminar in Thinking and Writing.
I made a few changes to the template, most of which are minor, but a few of which are worth mentioning.
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Bobby, I'll continue to use Dreamweaver in order to maintain my stand-alone handouts. While I don't use all of Dreamweaver's features, it's a powerful editing tool for web designers who want to work with JavaScript, Java, and layered templates. MT is a bit slow if you want to make multiple, significant changes across many pages, copying and editing as you go. I will occasionally use Dreamweaver's WYSIWYG editor to format blog entries, and then copy and paste the HTML into an MT window.
I don't update my instructional handouts on a regular basis, and in fact they are written specifically so they will be useful in other classes (whether or not I am the teacher), so MT's tools for sorting and organizing according to date wouldn't be useful. On the other hand, it was a pain to have to update the link pointing to the day's current class on each of my websites; it was also too easy for me to post a lengthy description of an assignmnent in one space, but not mark the due date in the calendar view. Other times, I would put a lengthy update in the calendar view, but a student who printed out or bookmarked the stand-alone page describing the assignment would sometimes miss the update. With MT, it's easy to file the same entry under multiple headings, so that if I want a particular bit of text to appear in the syllabus, in the calendar view, and on a list of "due dates," I can do that.
Still, if I want to play with CSS or work on a new design, I'll use a design tool like Dreamweaver. MT isn't optimized for that kind of heavy work.
Dennis, I noticed the changes to your curriculum pages using MT instead of Dreamweaver. I wondered if you believe MT is taking something away from Dreamweaver as a web page design tool. I know I will use MT when my turn for a blog comes around, but if I did, why would I use Dreamweaver at all then?