On the way to Buffalo yesterday, this conversation took place in our car. (Context: I was grading student websites on the trip while my husband drove...yay Verizon broadband card!)
Lane: Why aren't your students using Flash on their websites?
Me: Because I don't let them use Flash in this class. The focus is on HTML and CSS techniques. They study Flash in other classes.
Lane: That's stupid. Why do you discriminate against Flash?
Me: (exasperated) I don't discriminate against it, it's just not appropriate in this class.
Gerald: (fanning flames) Admit it, you're discriminating!
Me: No, I'm not. Flash gets "separate but equal" treatment.
Lane: We already know that doesn't work. Just watch--pretty soon there'll be an "Actionscript vs. Board of Education" lawsuit!
Totally hilarious. You see what happens when two witty parents collaborate in raising an intelligent child...
Flash gets separate but equal treatment to our holy HTML amd CSS? Say it ain't so!
I am really glad to read of an educational course treating HTML and CSS so well. Too many courses stick you with Dreamweaver and Flash and then give you a certificate saying "Legally Allowed To Make Websites."
Mom--yeah, I hear both of our senses of humor in him more every day :)
Paul--I don't teach Flash at all, and in our web classes we require students to learn to hand-code their HTML and CSS. I point out to them that when they start writing code to dynamically generate web pages, they'll need to know what the web page code looks like. It's not like you can tell the PHP script to launch Dreamweaver and build the page...
Now that I'm teaching Webmaster skills to Boy Scouts, I find I fall squarely in the pure HTML/CSS camp. But every day I walk that fine line between teaching what I call "real world skills" and feeling like I'm stifling their creativity in someway. My shtick has been that they need the historical perspective - walk before you run ...thing. But that's what my Dad said when he tried to teach me how to drive a stick shift. (Which I promptly burned out. That taught him!)