As one previous poster alluded to but did not get into the detail of, the question is what are you trying to accomplish and where will the results be used. HTML 5 is not fully implemented in any browser currently. Tags are implemented but the implementation is not consistent across browsers as a result of implementation decisions.

If you are just trying to teach concepts without regard to what may or may not be available in the real world the, by all means, teach them these and other potential tags. If you are trying to teach them something which will be used in the real world jobs then you might want to think about teaching something which is not fully implemented nor is it consistently implemented. This just puts the students into the fog and confusion which existed back in the late 1990s and early 2000s with different standards, etc.

Concepts are nice, but my husband who works in the real world suggests that educators thoroughly teach what is currently implemented and encourage their students to stay up with emerging standards. One additional thing which frustrates him is the lack of analytical thinking and creative thinking. Many of the students he deals with fresh out of school do not have practical knowledge for commercial work and this places a burden on the employer to train them in areas in which he feels the education system fails them. He runs across students from different educational institutions and some have distince advantages in practical application skills as opposed to many who come from institutions which teach the theoretical while omitting teaching implementation in teh real world. His description is that these students have great book knowledge but no capabilities of how to implement that knowledge in real world environments.

Thanks to all who have commented so far. I think the point of the author is to get students and faculty to think. I know some of the materials are a bit out of date. Hopefully, I can finish the book and write a short review about it in the next few weeks.

Best,

Mark

I think the most important thing is to teach students to think presentation as seperate from content. And with that comes semantic markup. The actual labels are the least problem in the understanding. I like w3schools as a reference as it is up to date and many good examples. It does cover what is discouraged. A more difficult area is should we also teach jQuery. Perhapps needs to be not if, but at what level.

I see no issue at all with using or teaching html5 today. I do think students especially should learn xhtml1.0 strict as core markup first. It's a given that students should understand the box model, proper hierarchical naming conventions and production methodologies. Moving fully into using html5 semantic elements of header, nav, footer, etc should be an easy next step and if used with js document.createElement("nameHere"); or the google shiv, it'll just plain work. (And of course making sure these elements are styled as block level in the css). It's really a no-brainer.

Students should also understand the technical demographics of users for any given website in the IA research. Not all websites can be all things to all people. We want to be inclusive and accessible, but the sites need to upgradable and searchable. TheCSS3 issue of graceful degradation and progressive enhancement is actually a totally different discussion.

Start with the new html5 elements and then discern what does or does not work in any given browser (tablets and mobile included). Students should know when and why things break.

Flash is not dead. Just happily going back to its rightful place, not just a ubiquitous plug-in format for every video under the sun

Great conversation. Tough to nail things down when "student" could be a high-school junior or a 4-year interactive design major.

Most "modern" browsers support these tags, it's really only IE that generally lags behind, of course, their market share will force you to think what elements to use.

Like anything in an industry that moves as fast as web development, we need to teach all the latest, greatest tools, but ensure our students are aware of the limitations of being on the edge!!

Most of the awesome CSS3 effects are supported by most browsers, so go nuts on it I say!

Cheers.

Many browsers already support the HMTL5 tags such as header, footer, nav, etc. - Safari, Chrome, Firefox, IE 9. Why one would state that they will not be implemented, when they already are is a mystery. Perhaps the book was written in 2011 when support wasn't quite as strong as it is today.

Yes! Teach all. That is why I think that we need to continue to teach Flash as well as HTML5. The more we know the better prepared we are! The more we know the more we design, develop, and deliver!

How odd. Yes, I thought the whole point of these additional elements was to extend the HTML4 tagset. Are these not the basics of HTML as pure markup? Odd.