Heading back to class

Word got to me that University of New Mexico Continuing Ed needed someone to teach some Dreamweaver classes. Well, I can do that. I talked to the good folks at UNMCE and agreed to take on some of them. I haven’t been in a classroom in a while. I figure it will be good for me to get back in touch with the beginner’s mind with regard to Dreamweaver. It may even be fun.

They handed me a syllabus and a description of what they want taught. I spotted the word frames. Frames. Really? Well, it seems  one of the UNM websites students are required to use is done in frames. Go figure. They handed me a book: Dreamweaver CS4 Visual Quickstart Guide by Tom Negrino and Dori Smith. Okay. I can work with that – know it well. There’s no money for CS5, so the software is CS4. That’s okay with me, too. I can’t afford to buy CS5 either. (That explains my remarkable silence on the topic of Dreamweaver CS5, something I would most certainly be talking about if I owned it.)

I go to a kickoff meeting and get to meet the other instructors in the Digital Arts area. I’m wowed by the impressive credentials and enthusiasm of this group of people. Web developers, photographers, filmmakers, designers and cinematographers—all with pretty cool day jobs. I meet the other people teaching Dreamweaver and other web design topics and conclude that they are true pros.

Then I find out about the forms and the time tracking and the paperwork and the requests for copies and the three separate online university systems that must be used to do my work and how to make the projector work when you switch between Windows and Mac OS on the instructor’s computer. And, I’m thinking, I’m going back into an institutional environment with all the attendant red tape and aggravation. I’ve lost my mind.

That’s okay, too.

Because there will be students in front of computers at the end of the process, and they will want to learn about Dreamweaver. That part will be fun.