Mark DuBois Weblog

While returning from the WOW/ SkillsUSA web design contest in Springfield, Jonathan and I stopped for dinner. I spotted this sign. I guess I just have a different view of the world. However, can someone please tell me what is so stinkin special about Saturday?

We just concluded the 10 annual WOW web design contest in Springfield, Illinois (and winners were announced today). Everyone who participated in this contest has demonstrated their willingness to step up to challenges and do more than just attend. You are all to be congratulated for trying. The judges had to make some decisions and arrived at the winners after reviewing all the challenges from a number of different facets (there were literally hundreds of different points which had to be evaluated for each of the challenges). Many thanks to Lynda.com for providing the prizes to the first place winners (months of access to their vast library of training materials).

Congratulations to the first place winners at the WOW Web Design contest held at SkillsUSA in Springfield, Illinois on Apr. 16, 2010.

• Secondary – Christopher and Nicholas (Maine Township High School South)
• Post-Secondary – Matt Scachette and Kevin Burke (Illinois Central College)

As an aside, students from Illinois Central College have now won first place in this contest every year for the past decade.

This contest focuses on completing various challenges related to established web standards and web accessibility. Students had 6 hours to complete various tasks. They had to demonstrate professionalism, team work, and various business skills in addition to having a solid knowledge of HTML and CSS.Everyone who participated indicated they enjoyed the experience and the challenge and had fun.

I plan to post some additional comments to provide feedback to all the participants later this weekend (have to get caught up on a mountain of email now).

The next stop for me in this contest cycle is the national contest in Kansas City in June. I am already looking  forward to it.

I supervised the Illinois WOW/ SkillsUSA web design contest in Springfield on April 16. Many, many thanks to Jonathan Worent for his help with this contest. Jonathan – it would be much more difficult without you. I am most appreciative of you taking time from your day job as owner of Inspired Bytes to judge the contest today.. Also, thanks to Shari Tripp for her help in reviewing the contest materials. Both Shari and Jonathan offered a number of improvements to this contest. Although the contest is still underway, here are a few observations (both what has been observed this year as well as insights from previous years).

First and foremost, everyone should follow instructions. The contest is designed with a very specific set of challenges and those are the challenges which should be addressed. Ask questions. Think of the contest supervisor and judge as the client. They can provide insights into the challenges. Some of the questions posed were excellent. However, I would have expected more. Also make certain you document the scaffolding process. Take notes on the printed version of the contest that was provided. This helps the judges see that you are actively and critically thinking about the contest and deciding how to break it into smaller chunks which can be addressed individually.

From a technical perspective, make certain to save your work. Save often. We called teams for interviews and noted that many did not save their work when they were interviewed. It is also a good idea to make certain to not have any “untitled document” titles and to include necessary meta information to help with search engine spiders. Lastly, don’t forget to include comments in your HTML and CSS.

As everyone saw, we emphasized HTML and CSS knowledge this year. Adherence to web standards and a good understanding of accessibility issues will go a long way to generating successful pages for each of the challenges.

I hope to be able to post a few more comments after the competition has ended. From our perspective, it looks like everyone enjoyed the competition and is rising to the challenges. Congratulations to all who competed. You are a model for your peers. You stepped up and took a risk to improve your knowledge and test your skills. Well done. Although there can only be one first place winner in each contest (secondary and post-secondary), you all should be proud of your accomplishments today.

Lastly, many, many thanks to the sponsors of our contest – Lynda.com and the World Organization of Webmasters. You rock.

MAPS (Mid-America Paleontological Society) held their annual fossil show and sale in Macomb, IL on March 26 – 28, 2010. I was able to take a number of photos of various fossils. There were not as many insect fossils this year so I did not purchase as much as I had hoped. Here are a few photos that might be of interest to viewers. Don’t forget you can follow the link to Flickr and view these as a slide show (or read their descriptions).

In honor of today, April 1, 2010, I thought it appropriate to include a few words of sage advice. First of all, be carefujl what you ask for – you might get it. Next, make certain you fully understand the implications of the day. I do hope everyone has a wonderful April 1 today. If you get the chance, don’t forget to visit Google (http://www.google.com) today – they have a new logo and a new corporate name. I can finally break my non-disclosure agreement about this. It has been way too long in the making, but they finally agreed to my suggestion they needed to improve upon their image. And, of course, take everything you read with a grain of salt.

These are a few of the photos I took during my recent spring break trip to visit our family in Montana. Had a great visit with everyone and had some wonderful times with our grandsons. I even got a chance to collect some fossil insects and leaves near Drummond. I typically don’t share family photos (only landscapes). Thought you might enjoy some of these. You can follow the link to flickr and view a slide show if desired.

For those who are curious, I obtained a Lynda.com account one year ago tomorrow. I just finished viewing some training this morning and have therefore finished one year of training. I have found this to be an invaluable resource. The fact that it is available to meet my schedule is most appreciated. The fact that there is a wealth of information available at my fingertips is also greatly appreciated. Those who are interested in some numbers – here are the statistics.

• 82 courses completed (3 more in progress at the moment)
• 3,945 individual movies viewed (equates to 10.8 movies per day on average for the entire year)
• 291.41 hours of video viewed (36.4 days at 8 hours per day, but who works just 8 hours anymore – which translates to an average of 47 minutes per day)

Although a number of courses focused on Adobe technologies, many also focused on other areas. What I found most helpful was not only reviewing and honing my skills as I reviewed and worked through various examples, but also seeing how others teach these technologies. I have tried to employ some of these concepts into the classes I teach as well as some of the approaches to covering these technologies.

It is hard work keeping up with technologies and this is one resource that I plan to continue utilizing. As I mention to students from time to time, it is important to keep learning. Technologies employed with web systems continue to change rapidly. While nearly 4,000 individual movies may seem like a mountain, it was done one small step at a time (only 10 movies per day at a cost of less than an hour per day on average).

Full disclosure – I am a member of the Lynda.com advisory board (and have been since October, 2009). I would have used these resources regardless of my affiliation.

If you are curious about the courses I have completed, you can follow the link below (will open in a new window/ tab).