Adobe Photoshop too advanced for use in schools?

[northerner_chris]

Looking at purchasing the Adobe Design and Web premium suite to use in our school however talking to some members of staff they are concerned it is too complicated for students.

 

Anyone been using Adobe suite for students 11-16yr old? Would you say it is too complicated for them or have they found it to be about right?

 

I know a lot depends on the teacher and how well they can use the likes of Photoshop etc.

 

I have been looking at the Corel suites which are really expensive and the Serif suites which are more economical. Adobe site licence seems to be somewhere between Corel and Serif and it is industry standard software so that's why I am leaning more towards Adobe now.

 

Any other suites out there that are worth looking at?

 

Thanks,

Chris

[Dom_]

Check out Photo editor online / free image editing direct in your browser - Pixlr.com - it might do everything you want and is free :-)

[FN-GM]

Have you considered Photoshop elements? Its allot more simple.

[AngryTechnician]

We used Adobe from about Year 9/10 onwards in my last school, but we also started using some of the Serif packages for price reasons, and they are less complicated to use.

 

Try not to go with the "industry standard" argument; pick what works best for teaching in your setting. The skills should be transferable anyway.

[sonofsanta]

Our IT teachers have started experimenting with teaching it in Year 7; really, it's just about getting the right resources, and having a teacher who knows what they're doing in the most recent version. Knowing what you were doing in Photoshop 7 isn't really good enough, because a lot of the changes made in more recent versions have made it more usable - e.g. Quick Select, instead of faffing around with Magnetic Lasso (how glad I am I don't need that anymore).

 

Check Adobe TV, or use the resources you get with the CS5 set, or just look up tutorials online - one of our teachers found a guide to turning yourself into a Big Blue Avatar Alien and has used that a few times. Better to give them a clear goal ("put yourself in a film poster") rather than basing it round the tools ("learn to use layer masks")

Edited May 4, 2012 by sonofsanta
tpying

[elsiegee40]

... some members of staff they are concerned it is too complicated for students.

.

Otherwise translated as "some teachers are concerned that its too complicated for them to use themselves"?

 

If my teenager is anything to go by, the students pick it up very quickly.

[northerner_chris]

Yeah did consider the elements versions but don't think they're covered/included in the site licence package I was looking at - instead its the full blown versions. The suite I was looking at includes dreamweaver, fireworks and flash which we already use just about 9 years out of date!

[pete]

We use it (CS3) for 11-18 year olds and they seem to get on fine. The tally of .psd's from art students would indicate it's used heavily.

 

Ensure you load the video tutorial dvd contents onto a network share/the image - they're very good as a way to build up knowledge.

[synaesthesia]

We use CS4 (5 from September) for ours and it's very heavily used, as is a lot of other stuff in that suite like Premier.

 

I will stick my neck out here and translate for you:

 

"talking to some members of staff they are concerned it is too complicated for students."

 

"I don't know the people I am teaching, and/or it's too complicated for me"

 

It's a bit of a generalisation but unfortunately probably also largely correct.

[Sylv3r]

Our students have the option of Photoshop or Fireworks - most choose Photoshop.

 

Our staff have the option of Photoshop or Fireworks - most choose Fireworks.

 

It's only really as complicated as you want it to be, if the students are shown how to use it they will take to it relatively quickly. I do agree however, it is a steep learning curve if you are wanting to do more than just the basics. I guess you have got to look at what is required in the schemes of work and work out whether it is going to be cost effective to purchase something like CS5 if the majority of the features are not going to be used. We tend to use it here in a lot of lessons other than just ICT - Graphics, Media, Art etc.

[User3204]

We have the full Adobe Master collection, and the ICT teacher teach it to all of the years 7-13. But we're a Grammar school, so in theory they're more intelligent.

 

They also have taught some of the year 4,5 and 6s from some of our linked primaries, although I'm not sure how much they teach them.

[nyiss]

We use Photoshop elements here (primary school) for lessons where the parents and students take part and although they are young the kids pick it up very quickly so I don't see how older children would struggle with the extra complications of full photoshop. I used it in high school and loved it!

[northerner_chris]

Thanks for all the comments sounds pretty much like Adobe's the way to go, could do with finding some decent training for the staff!

[Valyyn]

Another +1 for Photoshop here. Don't laugh, but we've got Adobe Photoshop CS and the MACROMEDIA suite for Dreamweaver/Fireworks etc. (Although we have now bought the Adobe suite which has just given us CS6 for summer). The kids are aged 11-16 and are fine using Photoshop, although they don't use it to it's full potential - they do things like using the magic wand and nothing else to try and cut out backgrounds etc.

 

Although we have just started a Photoshop club to teach them about the power and potential of Photoshop which has been very popular and they pick it up very quickly!

[NikChillin]

We use CS3 here and the kids take to it quite easily, we do provide lots of online resources too, I found that EntheosWeb - Web & Graphic Design Solutions to be a good resource, it also has Flash/Dreamweaver resources too.

[jonnykewell1]

We are looking at buying it at the moment, It's blooming expensive as hell though isn't it. Although when dividing the total cost between 500 users it came out at roughly £10 per machine which wasn't too bad I suppose when you look at it that way. How easy is it to deploy? Does it run like Sibelius where it connected to the server to see how many users are running the software at any one time?

[broc]

I work at a secondary school where we have both CS5 Master Collection & Serif; Students can choose......

 

Our GCSE Art & Photography students all chose Adobe to work with, as do Media Studies. I think students pick up the Adobe skills much more readily than the staff.

 

The only thing I would say the full CS5 suite is a brute of an install to deploy over a network. Our ex-ICT providers tried to push it out to 500+ systems using SCCM...... not a pretty sight.

 

Also watch out for some CS5 components which mandate 64-bit OS. Premiere Pro was one of them. We are looking at a much more tailored deployment next time around instead of trying to install everything everywhere.

Edited May 17, 2012 by broc

[brewerd]

we use photoshop elements with Y6 kids up to around Y9, after that we move them onto photoshop pro CS4 (we're never up to date with Adobe products) Elements is ridiculously easy for anyone with any photoshop or image editing experience, once you learn which tools do what and ow to tweak the effects and layer options there really is no stopping you. Photoshop pro is just a less friendly interface that brings a lot more tools and options to the table.