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What is texo textura?
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What is texo textura?
[what]
[why]
[who]
[secret origins]
The Grief Sessions
[explanation]
[myths]
[bad habits]
[obstacles]
Texo textura, is a Web site devoted to Web pedagogy: the teaching of Web programming and design.
This site is based on a few simple premises:
It is a discipline the draws on computer science, and information systems, and graphic design, and a host of other topics, but it is not a supplement to nor subordinate to any of them. Instead it is a synthesis that is qualitatively different then the sum of its parts. It has become a field too vast for any one person to be an expert in all of it. And it is a field that is not well served by other displines that take it under their wing and treat it as a "oh, and we also teach" topic.
Web design is not a small, but interesting subtopic of either computer programming fields or grpahic design fields. Rather, it is its own amalgam of a variety of topics. If Web design has any specific parent, it should be information design. After all, most of the Web is about the representation of large scale information systems.
Currently, Web design tends to be taught by instructors or departments that push a certain focus at the cost of other critical components in the field. Students are left to cobble together skills sets from across the disciplines in order to be well-rounded Web designers.
There is nothing wrong with crossing disciplines. It is the cobbling together that is the problem. Web design programs must openly cross department lines and be actively cross-disciplinary. The challenge to creating a robust program is getting departments to work together.
This is not without precedent. Many schools have programs run by faculty from across departments. Good examples are the Science and Technology Studies programs at Cornell and MIT. Both very robust and prestigious programs.
This is the problem that needs to be solved. And this Web site is a forum for doing so.
When major textbooks have glaring coding errors, that is a problem.
When textbook code is severely outdated, that is a problem.
When instructors and textbook writers think that the entirely of half a dozen programming languages and as many years of study in design theory can be crammed into a single 400 page textbook that is also a problem.
We need alternatives.
This Web site is focused on the discussion of a collection of integrated topics and how best to build curricula around them:
It is hoped that, as the site exppands, it will grow to cover more abstract issues of pedagogical theory as it relates to Web design, but the teaching of Web design isn't even past the basics yet. so we are not yet in a position to discuss its improvement.