Monday, December 19, 2011

#ThinkKit11 Day 19: New tricks for this old dog ...

Let's not beat around the bush today ... lock-n-load:

Monday, Dec 19: Something New
Knitting, a new language, underwater basketweaving... what new things did you learn this year?

When I was about to begin my first semester in graduate school for Masters Degree #1, I went to the bookstore to sock down $200 on 3 books (*ouch*). Walking out, I looked at the plastic bag, and it had a quote on it:

Education is a social process; education is growth; education is not preparation for life but is life itself.” - John Dewey

Whoa. Deep stuff right there. But what he said makes sense, in some fashion. Human beings have an innate sense of curiosity. We're born with it, we grow up with it during school, we expound on it during our college days, and we (hopefully) make use of it in our professional and personal lives. It's when we stop being curious and learning new things that we start to age.

I've always said grad school was more fun than undegrad, because the topics you start delving into are more focused and more in line with topics you're really wanting to learn, not what you're required to learn. This year was no exception. During the spring, I took an "Information Architecture for the Web" course, which was taught under the IU School of Library and Information Sciences (SLIS). I have made web sites now for over 15 years, but even in this one course, I gained a TON from it.  For example:
  • I learned how to use lightboxes, which was a first for me. Since I wasn't afraid about reading Javascript, I could customize it a little bit. But don't ask me to write new Javascript - I can mostly read it, I can modify it, but creating it new - I'm not so sharp.
  • While I know of CSS, there's so much more I learned in this class. Now, I find myself wanting to open up books and examples of CSS design, not necessarily on how to do it, but what is right and wrong with certain designs for certain industries.
  • Ever heard of Dublin Core? I hadn't until this class. NOW - I use Dublin Core information in conjunction with Metadata. It just feels right now.
Now, all of this information is well and good, but you've gotta be able to use it properly in order to really understand it, right? We were given a final project to roll everything we had learned in the class into a single web site for a photographer in Crawfordsville, whom has been wanting a new web site for several months. Each of the students were to go off on their own branches and make the web site. While each site would be used for their final project grade, each of the submitted sites would be reviewed by the photographer, and one site would become her new site. I figured I would have a little advantage in the class, but there plenty of creative people in class.  In the end, the photographer selected my site as her new web site! With a couple minor tweaks at her request - VOILA - she had her site, and I couldn't have been happier for her (and for being able to stretch myself in a passion of mine - web design).

Life is all about exploration. However, the greatest exploration is the exploration of one's own mind. Dewey is right: Education really isn't preparation for life. If it is, we're in a world of hurt. Education is life itself, because we should never turn down an opportunity to learn something new and explore. Keep exploring what you can learn about - you might surprise yourself!

Links of Interest:
FancyBox: http://fancybox.net/
Dublin Core (from Stanford University): http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/soap/toolbox/dublincore

Shamless plug for the web site I created this Spring:
Portraits by Natalie Gomez:  http://portraitsbynataliegomez.com/

Let me know what you think about these sites!

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