Adobe Dreamweaver I Home Page

Section Instructor: Kathlynn Spencer    kspencer@vcccd.edu

Adobe Dreamweaver is the number one application used to create web pages both static and interactive. The goal of this course is to help you learn Dreamweaver's tools and begin to explore the literally tons of possibilities for building web pages and adding interaction with web clients to a website. Skills will include: page building, applying Cascading Style Sheets, working with images and text to craft page layouts, creation of interactive pages, Ajax/Spry integration, form creation, insertion of multimedia into pages/site and publishing to the web. The method we will use is a website we will build from start-to-finish, including site map and navigation building, button making, output, optimization, and testing.

Software: Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 or CS4 software.  The course will be offered in two "tracts" --  CS5 for those who have purchased the new release of AND CS4 the prior release.  

Class Participation will be 40% of your grade. Why? Online courses have the same requirement for participation in classes as traditional courses do. The major difference is that the participation happens within an online environment. This means you can access and do your work at any time of the day However, there are contact requirements that you will have to meet. Every week a discussion topic (or two) will be posted to the discussion section of the class. You are required to post on the discussion threads at least 3 times each week. Please make sure to post as early in the week as you can.

What I've found to be true is that we have some really interesting threads develop where students learn as much from "talking" to one another that way as we would if we were in a face-to-face class I recommend that you set up a regular time to log into the class (it can be at lunch or at 2 am --whatever fits your schedule). Why? Because it is very easy to get behind ("oh, I can catch up."). Believe me, it is not. For the fall session, you will spend three to five hours a week between reading, posting to the discussion threads and working on your own Dreamweaver projects. Again, the advantage is that you can do this when your schedule allows but make sure that you give yourself that block of time to work with the program and the tools you can pick up here.

So, why am I going into all this?  In addition to the 40% of the grade in Class Participation, there will be 3 "projects" spaced across the 17 week semester each of which will be worth 20% of your grade for a total of 60% in project grades for the class.

17 weeks, 3 discussion posts per week for a total of 51 discussion posts for a total of 40% of the grade in the discussions. (For those of you who are mathematically inclined it is a shade over 2.4% per week for discussions)

Simply put your grade will be composed of 60% from the projects and 40% from class participation.  If you turn in all the projects but don't join our discussion threads, you grade will be 60% of 100% ---  that's a C.   The importance of participation cannot be any better emphasized!   

The tools I'm going to use and why:  I will be creating videos for you to watch (and download for personal use after the class).  These will help you walk through the steps as outlined and I can add things that the book does not cover.

For the Fall 2010 Semester both of my classes (Dreamweaver  and Photoshop ) will be in Desire2Learn.   The course will "unlock" on the Monday of the first week of class.   For those of you on the waitlist, I will be able to send you (in order as you are posted on the list) the codes you will need to register. PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING INSTRUCTION from our College's Registrar to make sure that you can go through the process of getting from the Wait List into class as smoothly as possible.

" Students will need to drop themselves off of the waitlist first and then enroll in the course using their Add Authorization Code."

If you don't do that I am not sure just what the system will do with your registration/code.  If you have any questions about the how of doing this PLEASE contact the Admissions & Records Office at 986-5810!