Notes toward a curriculum...(in very rough form).

Basic

Based on my experience in previous courses, I know that there will be some students who will need to develop basic computer skills and a solid understanding of how the Internet works.

Concepts

Basic concepts and relevants skills

XML, HTML & CSS

Students should understand how HTML works, and the relationship that exists between HTML and CSS. They should be able to hand-code basic HTML pages and trouble shoot display issues.

Web authoring: blogs and wikis

Advanced

There are at least two courses that cover advanced topics - programming and databases.

Programming (Python, PHP, Javascript)

The coverage of Python will be focused on relevant aspects of the programming language. In the previous course I taught, I found it worked best when I provided them with simpler interfaces to commonly used modules. Since the course focuses on those aspects of programming most relevant to journalism, then this kind of thing is more possible. While the simplifications I provided in the original class were rather modest, I think that a more comprehensive framework could be developed that would empower them to do very interesting things.

Out of necessity, some more advanced topics will be introduced.

Databases (SQL) & Frameworks (django)