Home learning courses - experiences?

matobo

matobo

Member
I am on the verge of committing myself to doing home learning in an accredited Adobe Dreamweaver and Adobe Flash course for the next couple of years. In essence I am a self taught web designer that would never sell her services as a professional, due to confidence issues - although I do own a few sites of my own and have done a few freebies and cheapies for friends on the sideline in that time.

Post redundancy doing magazine design about 4 years ago... I walked into my local library and walked out with a manual and taught myself Dreamweaver following the course manual page by page. Now I am at the stage where I am competent in dabbling with Dreamweaver (design view and amending code manually) - but still not a comfortable with telling the world that I can rock their socks off. I have Flash on my computer, but have never ever opened it.

I don't have a problem with committing time management to doing the course (being a freelancer with regular deadlines prepares one for that) - I will also have to accept the fact that the student version of CS4 supplied by them is PC-only and I will have to adapt to moving away from my CS3 on my beloved mac... (going backwards like this after about 15 years on a mac may kill me... :icon_Wall:)

This course was recommended as an associate of reed.co.uk from an email received - Adobe Dreamweaver Courses | Adobe Flash Courses | Adobe Dreamweaver and Flash Certificate in Web Design - all done with a personal tutor on hand...

Does anyone have any experience with them at all?

The dude is coming to convince me tomorrow morning (September start date) and I need to get my head and my ducks in a row beforehand.
 
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have seen this course before and thought about doing it myself, keeping my open for answers to your question - hope you don't mind me piggy-backing on this one!!
 
No worries Ozwaldo ;0) I took the plunge in the midst of my mid-life crisis and decided to go for it - so I will probably have opinions of my own soon.

The course is through the home learning college with their resources and tutor assistence (they give you 3 years to complete it at your own pace, but it can be done in 6-12 months with commitment), all the final exams are actually done at your nearest local Adobe training center for their accredited certificate relating to the software programmes, which suits me - as Adobe are reknowned for being of a high standard and it certainly adds value to a CV. I may not be getting a degree or anything fancy at the end of it, but I am actively working on self improvement in the interim (which is a step in the right direction for me and my mid-life crisis).
 
Can I just mention these guys: CreativeTechs Tips » Webinar

It may not fit in exactly (some of the classes can be basic) but if you want some interaction with other people to ask question's it is totally worth a look. They do free webinar's and you interact globally through the interface to ask question's during the live class. You can then use TweetChat to speak with other people online instantly.

I recommend theses guys because it's free (you can download a copy of the class and Q/A for $15/$50) it's current information and you have the people around the world participating and helping too.
 
What is it you want to learn exactly? Coding? Theres far chaeper ways to learn than paying £4000 for a course. I can teach you through Skype and Teamviewer 4 if your that interested...? Depending on your knowledge of coding which I would test you on would also depend on the price. What I will say is that I never charge over £8 an hour and could teach you coding in a matter of months. Not years. If your interested let me know ok.

The thing is with Dreamweaver cousrses they teach you stuff that isn't W3C Complient so you would end up getting into bad habits. I could make you a basic layout now with a 2 or 3 column page within 10 minutes. Its so easy. I can also provide you with links for you to read. 80% of web developers on the net have NO certificates to prove there all they say they are.

What I would be worried about is that this course would teach you how to make websites with <tables> tags and thats a No No.

All my training would be good semantic XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS complient. I can teach you in Dreamweaver but code view only.

Also I will teach cross browser compatibility so that your websites work in ALL major browsers ranging from IE5 to IE8 and Firefox and Safari and Google Chrome and the rest of the BIG browsers.

I've already taught 7 people who are now earning good money from my lessons.

All you need is Skype and Teamviewer 4 and the lessons could start straight away. Even if you only wanted 2 hours a week you will still learn more in that 2 hours than what that course can teach you in a month. The choice is your.

Anyway if your interested then please PM me.

Do you know what this is?

HTML
Code: 
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Test One</title>
</head>
<body>
           

<div id="header"></div>           
<div id="menu"></div> 
<div id="wrapper">            
<div id="main"></div> 
<div id="right"></div> 
</div> <!--Wrapper-->                   
<div id="footer"> </div> 
 
</body>
</html>

CSS
Code: 
<style type="text/css"> 
<!--
* {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
body {
}
#header {
margin: 0 auto;
width: 960px;
height: 200px;
}
#menu {                        
margin: 0 auto;
width: 960px;
height: 50px;
}
#wrapper {
margin: 0 auto;
width: 960px;
height: 600px;
}
#main {
float: left;
width: 660px;
height: 400px;
}
#right {
float: right;
width: 300px;
height: 400px;
}
#footer {
margin: 0 auto;
width: 960px;
height: 50px;
}
-->
</style>

This is a basic 2 column layout with main content area to the left and small link column to the right.

Learning coding is so easy. I would always advise against going to these over expensive con places to learn what you can learn yourself.

Everything I learnt I taught myself. Its to easy to fork out loads of cash for nothing.

If your interested then like I've said PM me OK :icon_thumbup:
 
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Thanks Wrams - I am afraid I couldn't afford £8 an hour tutoring by any stretch of the imagination (mortgage comes first). The course costs about £2 a day over the next 24 months and I am looking forward to it.

I know enough about W3C compliancy to validate my work and I can fiddle with CSS, but I'm not able to create it from scratch myself. I know Dreamweaver has it's limitations, but I also now that using it as a base to work on top of, with my own self-taught knowledge, is putting me on the right path.

PS: of course we could scratch the £8 an hour charge, if you taught me how to code and I taught you how to use illustrator as per another thread of yours - but it could get a bit hectic ;)
 
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Hi. Yea I can teach you the basics and teach you how to create a website from scratch using just notepad if need be. I will however teach in DreamWeaver but code view. I only ever switch to website view to get a general idea of what it will look like. The thing is a website can look fantastic in DW but once you put it online its horrible.

These are a few add ons for firefox that are a must have for any web developer:

Web Developer 1.1.8
Html Validator 0.8.5.8 << Make sure you select Parse and NOT html when prompted OK...
ColorZilla 2.0.2

Just Copy/Paste into firefox add on search bar.


Also stand alone software like this:

IE Tester

This software tests all IE browsers from IE5 to IE8.

Anymore questions just ask or PM me OK
 
Just been reading your post from 3 years ago, re: adobe Dreamweaver / Flash home learning course. Im now about to sign up for the same course myself and wondered if you recommended it or not now, i assume, you have completed it. My ambitions are as big now as i guess yours were back then so some feedback from somebody like yourself about this course would really be appreciated. Did the course bring you any success and what are you doing career wise now? Thanks, Simon.
 
SimonA said:
Just been reading your post from 3 years ago, re: adobe Dreamweaver / Flash home learning course. Im now about to sign up for the same course myself and wondered if you recommended it or not now, i assume, you have completed it. My ambitions are as big now as i guess yours were back then so some feedback from somebody like yourself about this course would really be appreciated. Did the course bring you any success and what are you doing career wise now? Thanks, Simon.
Click to expand...

In all honesty, without having done the course, I wouldn't have necessarily thought Dreamweaver and/or Flash is really the way forward today. Flash seems to be on a gradual decline and your web development will be much better and cleaner if you were to focus on learning the languages as opposed to learning how to use Dreamweaver - it's generally better to steer clear of software like that.

My suggestion would be to start with HTML, then move onto CSS and, from there, start to look more into PHP and SQL etc to add dynamism to your sites. W3Schools Online Web Tutorials is a good place to start.
 
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