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What is texo textura?
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Why is texo textura?

Interestingly, I find a great deal of talk on the Web about using the Web and other interactive technologies for pedagogy, but very little discussion of the pedagogy of Web design and programming itself.

Because of this there seems to be a greaty deal of instruction in Web related technologies that is mediocre at best, and a great deal of Web-based resources that are poorly conceived and poorly executed.

Most of what is out there seems to be focused on teaching to older standards, if any standards at all, and do a better job of teaching what is standard in industry versus industry standards. Don't know about everyone else, but when I was in school, spaghetti code and goto statements were still standard in industry. But I would not have passed a single course making use of those models, nor would I have gotten a job with them. Why are people under the misapprehension that Web design is somehow different?

• 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• When textbook code is severely outdated, that is a problem.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 entirety 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 a problem.
• When academic online resources are entirely inaccessible except with the most recent version of MSIE on the most recent version of Windows, that is a problem.
• When questions about content accessiblity draw blank stares from academic resource vendors, and the mention of WAI and Section 508 cause said vendors to look at you like you have two heads, that is a serious problem.

This Web site seeks to remedy this problem by providing a forum for best practices in Web pedagogy. We can't teach best-practices in Web design and programming if we have not developed our own best practices of instruction thereof.

This is not to say that there anen't any good programs out there. And it is most certainly not to say that the resources for constructing good programs are not already out there. It is merely to point out that there is a problem. More than anything this problem probably originates from business as usual in the face of the new. New things require new approaches.

So why texo textura?

The name texo textura is from Latin.

The verb texo refers to the process of spinning or weaving complex patterns, either in fabric or in the form of the written word.

The noun textura refers to complex patterns, once again either created in visual (textile) or textual form. It also refers to the process of creating said complex patterns.

Thus we can think of texo textura as the weaving of complex visual and/or textual forms. Complex interrelationships mapped out and made concrete.

Though a bit redundant and in the first person, it is more euphoneous than other conjugations or either of its parts. So, it works.

These words come from the same root that gives us textiles, texture, and text. The Latin language did not differentiate between weaving words and weaving visual forms. The Web is leading us to rediscover this unity of communications forms and find new ways to bind them together and work with them.

On a more mundane note, webagogy and webology were also taken and both already coined to mean "Web-based pedagogy". Even though both terms clearly mean "study of the Web" rather than "study by way of the Web", it seemed best not to start a range war. (Besides, the author's other half has a particular ken against neologisms.)