When I decided, after fifteen years of teaching young children, that I would like to start a new career in website design, I felt that my clients would deserve to have a designer with credentials, a professional webmaster. Since Texas State Technical College in Waco, Texas, was beginning a Webmaster Technology degree offered entirely through distance learning, I saw this as my opportunity to prepare for the future. Even though I continued to teach and to be a mother and grandmother, I was able to complete the webmaster certification with a 4.0 grade point average and was given the honor of being elected to Who's Who Among Students in American Junior Colleges. During my final website design semester, I chose to participate in a cooperative learning experience working with web designers at Woodward Creative Group of Temple,Texas.

At Woodward Creative Group I was part of a website design team designing a program for a Catholic youth group. The youth director wanted to be able to update the site but did not want the complication of standard programming software to do this. I wrote the ColdFusion code for a project which would allow the youth director to update youth worker names, update the calendar, add photo albums and news letters all using ColdFusion interactive pages in the administrative section of the site.

As well as ColdFusion, my webmaster certification included courses in HTML, C++, and ASP. I was trained in the use of several software programs including Adobe Photoshop, Flash, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, and Painter 5.5. The web design curriculum also required courses in basic networking, web design, MS Access Database and Copyright ethics.

Website design is not a static field. As new trends develop, I use online tutorials and purchase books to understand new areas of design. Although Cascading Style Sheet nor PHP and MySql were taught as a part of my training, I have worked to develop those skills and have used them in design projects.

My last teaching assignment was as computer lab administrator and instructor for grades K - 5. In this position, I found it necessary to listen carefully to the needs of students and teachers in order to make assignments and find materials that would most help the students and teachers alike. I will use those same listening skills when I design your site, making sure that the final web design product is one that will be an asset to you and your business. I often had to troubleshoot situations involving schedules and computer software finding a solution that was useful to everyone. That ability to find solutions when others cannot is just what is needed to find the solution to your web design presentation needs. I am looking forward to combining my newly learned website design skills with my older, well polished skills to give you the Internet presence you and your company deserve. For more detail visit Website Design Samples to view a list of sites I have designed or updated.