Tech Training

I've been a little too busy to post lately, what with the brouhaha over homeschooling here in California, on top of all our usual projects. I've been writing letters to legislators and emails to our homeschool group and concerned homeschool friends in other states, etc. I hope this will blow over soon as it is a very icky experience.

But back to something really important -- trying to help facilitate my daughter's learning. We have several fantastic irons in the fire right now, more than I can touch on just now. So I'll just mention one aspect, Miss C's urgent need to know everything about Web publishing *right now.*

She already publishes a fantastic zine using InDesign, posted to a blog-based Web site. I won't link to it here as she uses her real name. But now she really wants to know Dreamweaver better, beyond just messing around with it on her own (in my opinion, the best way to learn any software).

We signed her up for an ID Tech camp in June, in which she'll be working with Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and Flash. But that's a long way away, so we have put Dreamweaver into our daily schedule of "homeschooling," the work we do at home during the day when we're not out gadding about or on a field trip. (Homework at night? What is that, pray tell?)

I gave her an overview of Dreamweaver, and then asked her to go through the Lynda.com video tutorials (trying to buy myself some time to finish up other projects). Boom, just like that, she is done with them. Okay. She's started a development site for practice, and already it is more complex than what I would have started her with. "I'm trying to get the hang of these navigator menu bars," she said. Okay, no need to spend too much time on the basics when you could get right into that.

I love how quick she is but it makes everything so intense. The idea that I, as the "teacher," can give her something to work on for a while, so I can do lesson plans or schedule our next attendance at a play or something, is a joke. She goes so fast and skips over things but knows them anyway. I will be on my toes for this next phase, until she surpasses me, the person who's been building Web sites for 13 years, and then I really hope she will show me some cool things she discovers.