Teaching University Course
November 14, 2009
![[UTD]](http://randyhoyt.com/wp-content/images/utd-logo.gif "[UTD]"){kind=logo}
I have been talking with some of the guys at the Emerging Media and Communications (EMAC) program at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) since this past summer, and I am happy to announce that I will be teaching a university course on internet technologies in the spring semester. I’ll post links to my course web site and anything else official when it is available, but here’s a brief (tentative) description:
As the web continues to grow in size and popularity, more and more professions require a basic understanding of the core technologies behind the internet. This course will provide undergraduate students with a working knowledge of HTML, CSS, domain registration, web hosting, JavaScript, server-side scripting, FTP, and more. We will look at how these technologies are encapsulated into content management systems, spending considerable time working with WordPress as an example. It is becoming increasingly important for individuals to take control of how they are portrayed online, and this course will explore how individuals can use these tools to do that. The course will include discussion of popular hosted publishing tools and social networking sites, as well, looking at how they contribute to an overall online presence. The final project will include developing a functional web site using the concepts and the technologies discussed throughout the course.
(For my Sooner friends, I want to assure you that UTD has no relationship to UT in Austin. It is completely independent — just like University of California and UCLA are independent — and UTD has its own, non-Longhorn mascot. So everything is good there.)
UPDATES
- 11/18/2009: Paul Boag’s book Website Owners Manual came out last week, a book I had been anxiously awaiting. I downloaded the PDF version, and I will definitely be using it as the textbook for my course.
- 11/29/2009: There’s now an entry for my course in the official UTD online coursebook: I’m affectionately known as “-Staff-” right now in the listing.
- 12/02/2009: I have started my course web site: ATEC 3361 / Spring 2010. I need to add quite a lot of content before January 1, but I think it’s taking shape.