Longing for a break

I’ve been asked by a client of mine to write a training course for them in using Dreamweaver CS3, the package I recommended they use to maintain the site I developed for them.  I’m up for the challenge, but in accepting this I am now stuck with the challenges of writing an entry level course that provides them with enough detail that they can begin to maintain their site, as well as serving as a resource for them when someone else in the future possibly takes over the site.

I last write a course for staff at my university in 2005, one that ended up proving highly successful, attracting a lot of staff with either an interesting developing their own website, or those now facing website maintenance duties within their area.  I worked back then with out professional development team to produce a course that runs approximately 1.5 days and covered things such as copyright, issues in web development (eg get permission to deep link), image manipulation, formatting of text and tables, and the use of corporate templates to build pages.  I was astounded back then when I taught the first class, training the trainer at the same time, and the class was asked to determine sites that were compliant with corporate style requirements – they came back with so many examples of non-compliance, so stoked!

As a part of that course I set them homework between classes, with homework from the second class requiring them to develop themselves a 2 web page CV that featured their photograph and one that visually represented them.  Some came back looking like technicolour yawn (aka screen VOMIT!), some more expectedly were plain but achieving the requirements, and the odd one that surprised me and exceeded expectations.

Back then we had considered developing additional, higher level courses for those having completed this course, or with previous experience.  That never eventuated, and within our new web direction at the university it is no longer directly relevant.

So back to this course I am developing for my client.  The course to be developed with be far smaller, and certainly no homework, but still needs to leave them with sufficient skills that they can continue to maintain their site.  Something that I will need to include in this course, that wasn’t available back in 2005, is maintaining their sites use of Spry menus.  I chose to implement these menus for their o/s like delay in closing, something traditional css only pop-up menus lack, the down side is their maintenance within the site itself, not as easily edited as say, text.

I am committed to delivering my training session on August 1st, so not long to ensure I get this done.  As someone who’s forever perfecting what he writes (you should see me writing an email some times) I am going to have to ensure I crack the whip should I notice myself doing so.  That being said, I quite enjoy the writing challenge, I’ve always wanted to write a fiction novel, sci-fi based, but I just lack sufficient imagination required to produce such a piece.  I’ve always wondered where people like J. K. Rowling manage to take their ideas, formulate them into the world of their story, building the characters to sufficient depth that the stories seemingly write themselves.

Cracking the whip now!!