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Online Web Design Schools


DizzyDan

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I have been looking into web design school locally but I haven’t been able to find anything local offering a degree in 'Web Design', its eitehr graphic arts that touches upon web or computer information blah blah blah. Any school that offered such was way to far for a commute and to hold my full time job as is. I cant afford to stop work, so I have been looking into online schooling. Does anyone have any input on a reputable school. The more research I do I feel it is kind of for lack of a better word, Shady. I don’t want to just throw $$ into something that ends up being a scam. Also I would want to make sure I am getting a good enough education on the subject via online. I know i have learnd a lot on my own via the internet this site and even this forum.Have any of you received an online degree? Know of a reputable online school for web design?Any other input would be great.Thanks,

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W3Schools itself is a good school, and it even has certificates... the problem with any certificate (W3Schools included) is whether an employer will take them into account. Clients (freelancer style) usually take notice of the portfolio, since it's a safer way to judge your style (in both design and features sence), and employers usually do their own internal exams, on which you go after stuffing your resume with enough languages and/or buzzwords. The only exception is government jobs, which usually expect formal education in IT and/or graphic design from nationally recognized colleges or universities.So... it really depends on what kind of thing you're after. Personally, I think that self education (primarly), combined with formal physical education is the best approach, followed by pure self education online and/or books (depending on your taste). All of the information you need is there - online, at the sources (references, manuals, tutorials). It's just a matter of you having the patience to read and try all of it (or rather, all of the "language" parts; it's OK to just skim over references).The only exception to the "the information you need is there" thing is bugs, both browser and server side ones. For browser bugs, there are usually non official, but still recognized references, like those in W3Schools or Sitepoint, that show browser support and/or document any known bugs. For PHP, beyond PHP's bug database, there's no such thing, and there's no real need for it either, because you can usually upgrade PHP if there's fix, and forget about it. Similar for ASP.NET and other technologies (with the only difference that it may take them longer to release a fixed version, or they might just document the bug instead).

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I do agree with you totally, i have been researching on my own came across this site which is one of if not the best one i ran into amoung a few other good ones. And this forum is just the best for a real time personal answer with very generous folks like yourself, which its better than a teacher its like 1000 teachers. I just feel that having that degree gives you a bit more leverage over others, although your portfolio is the ultimate desicion maker something dwells inside of me thinking a portfolio will be over looked because therere is no degree to back it up. Could i be over thinking it? Yes, haha but i may be getting ahead of myself. I do feel that a person learns better when searching for what they want to learn then when someone tells them what to learn. ######, I have a friend who is in his 3rd year of college for graphic arts/web design and i am helping him with his porfolio its crazy what he doesnt know. but that could be him not the school. Thanks Beon!

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Well yeah, the portfolio is indeed overlooked... by employers and governments. But if they aren't the kind of people you want to please - if you prefer to work with clients on a job-to-job basis - then the portfolio is your ultimate weapon. There's no universal formula for everybody - different people look for different things.A formal physical education is better than self education in that it forces control over you - it forces you to take in the thing at a universally acceptable pace, but not slower. This may sound like a bad thing, and is indeed such for some people, but for the most part, this eliminates the possiblity of you not understanding something due to "lack of time" (i.e. controlling yourself into other things), and more importantly - it lets you ask questions immediatly and get a response immediatly (assuming the teacher knows the answer), which in turn leads to an even more rapid understanding of the stuff. Not to mention that it may force you into learning about stuff that didn't seemed like useful to you at first (e.g. I only started learned about C# in university, though I've kept learning more about it myself since then; I'm now 3rd year in IT).But yeah... scrathing that as an option in your case, you're on the best lane.

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I have a friend who is in his 3rd year of college for graphic arts/web design and i am helping him with his porfolio its crazy what he doesnt know. but that could be him not the school.
Web design is different than web programming. Web design does not require more than a knowledge of CSS, basic HTML, and possibly templates. And actually, I would think "graphic arts/web design" would be more centered around Photoshop than programming.
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Rather than paying tuition somewhere, I would suggest just watching online video tutorials and creating your own little websites for practice. I have found videos much easier to focus on and learn from (since they seem to go faster than i can read lol) rather than reading a book, although i still read books about various technologies on some more advanced topics. If you're more interested in doing web development, you can watch several free video series on Nettuts in javascript, jquery, and php, along with other miscellaneous web development topics. You could also pay for a monthly subscription to lynda.com and watch video tutorials on Web Design, Photoshop, and several web development technologies. From my experience, I took a small certificate program during my undergrad and it gave me the fundamentals in web development, but that definitely wasn't enough to get me a job in the field. After that over the next year and half, I watched online tutorials, read books, and discovered industry practices which helped me get job offers now in web development. Some of the things that i wasn't taught in school included MVC frameworks, JS libraries, and object oriented programming.

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  • 3 years later...

I agree with big dave!

 

just take ideas from online sites, develop your own websites, and then get some certification from an online school. there are numerous online schools which offer your programs, and certificates on your work experience. Moreover, you can also join small designing firms and start your own work as well. in order to have more certification you can enroll in online college credit for work experience on the basis of your work. in this way, your job profile will be more appealing and competitive.

 

I hope this will work

Edited by Ingolme
Removed link due to commercial advertising
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