Seen the Why Zombies? page, but want a little more meat and back story? Here you go:
It’s not just a gimmick.
The origins of my apocalyptic turn towards teaching web development came, like the zombie contagion, out of the blue while I was working on a conference proposal. I had submitted and gotten approved a more straight forward conference proposal the year before. It was about using WordPress for an alumni magazine site, but this year I didn’t have a case study ready to go, but wanted to speak. It was 2013 and while Ethan Marcotte’s 2010 article on Responsive Design had penetrated deep into the industry, it was not yet a default way to handle so I began banging out a proposal for a responsive design workshop. It was boring at first, but as I wrote and rewrote it I happened upon a joke about boredom eating your colleagues brains, and, knowing that one reference is out of place, but a theme could make it work, I rewrote the proposal again and finally titled it Responsive Design: An Undead Introduction.
So at its origin and its heart it’s about making things interesting, different and engaging.
But there’s another layer to it too. Almost everyone is familiar with zombies, particularly with the many, many, many zombie films that have graced our collective culture. So when I make a zombie analogy about web development, students already have that common language and can better grasp the material because they already understand how zombies work.
There is one more piece to this undead puzzle, and while zombies and web development would be enough for some people, I try to take it up another level by including silly jokes (maybe that’s down a level?). Humor has a way of disarming people who might not be interested in a subject, but it also has a way of making boring technical information much more engaging. Studies have also shown that laughing while learning can help the material stick.
So while it may seem like these zombies are a frivolous gimmick to grab headlines, they are also an intentional way of deepening the experience and helping students of all ages learn and retain the information… at least that’s what I tell myself.