Magazine Software

[HTCIT]

Hello there,

I have been asked by a teacher who is starting a school magazine what software should she use?

I have no idea about this topic but I thought that there might be some people on here that might be able to help me?

Thanks

[marsdenprimary]

I would probably recommend Adobe InDesign but it has a steep learning curve... Well worth learning though.

There's although Microsoft Publisher if you want to go all Microsoft.

[HTCIT]

Thanks for that!

[penfold]

Are you on about what to create the magazine in? If they haven't got too much tech knowledge but you have a VLE, could you not just upload PDF or word docs until you get it up and running? I know they used word in the last place I worked because they wanted the kids to get the magazine running and they did all the work. It made sense to let the pupils use the software they were familiar with and just upload the content to the school magazine section of Moodle.

Maybe not the best way, but it saved learning new software.

[HTCIT]

I think that is what the teacher wanted to do in the first place. So students could do that. Thanks for that!

[mwnci]

I'm using a piece of software called Scribus to create the new school prospectus. You could create a nice looking magazine using that. It's open source which is a plus point, but as seems to be the case with many other DTP applications, there is a lot to learn if you want to make totally professional looking publications.

[HTCIT]

Hello,

Thanks for that I might try it out!

[dhicks]

I have been asked by a teacher who is starting a school magazine what software should she use?

Set up a Wiki server for the pupils to enter text and images into. Then they can collaberativly edit articles. When the article has been edited and checked, transfer it to your publishing / word processing software. If all you want is a basic A4 page with a header at the top and the text split in to three columns then any word processor should be able to manage that.

--
David Hicks

[mossj]

Publisher is best bet, not as chop/changey as word (I think we all have had the issue where words and pictures jsut fly off every which way).

Also DO NOT us Serif Drawplus X2, a member of staff got our kids to make a year book for there final year (Kids that had been using serif packages for years), and some linked to images in there home drives rather than embeding. Which made for one confussed teacher with a memory stick full of unuasable articles, and to top that off the kids went on exam leave before she found out. Had to get all the kids back in to fix it.

[HTCIT]

Thanks for that!b

[Sylv3r]

We use InDesign here for our school newsletter and prospectus etc also.

[penfold]

Publisher is best bet, not as chop/changey as word (I think we all have had the issue where words and pictures jsut fly off every which way).

Also DO NOT us Serif Drawplus X2, a member of staff got our kids to make a year book for there final year (Kids that had been using serif packages for years), and some linked to images in there home drives rather than embeding. Which made for one confussed teacher with a memory stick full of unuasable articles, and to top that off the kids went on exam leave before she found out. Had to get all the kids back in to fix it.

We had that too, but to be fair it's not just a Serif problem, it's a teaching/User one. If pictures need to be embedded because they are being transferred then it should have been explained to them. I've had the same with staff linking pictures in other software too. They did work at home and then were stunned when loading up their work on the network to find half of it missing.

As with anything, just make sure people are aware of these things and do a few test pages first.

[Gibbo]

Also DO NOT us Serif Drawplus X2

Wouldn't PagePlus have been a more suitable application?

[webman]

InDesign or Scribus, depending on budget. We use InDesign for our booklets/prospectus/newsletters.