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Old Software or Open Source?
Pakled writes "I teach a high school multimedia course. We were scheduled to get new software this year but due to several pointy haired bosses, no software was ordered. The software I have to teach is Flash 5, Dreamweaver 2000, Photoshop 7 and (god help me) Movie Maker. The question is: is it better to teach old commercial software or their open source counterparts (Komposer, Gimp, etc.)?
Is the steep learning curve and slightly less uniform design worth a little student frustration to teach them software written in the past 5 years?"
Just out of spite, what would be the free/opensource alternative?
I would go with the OpenSource. It is free (mostly as in beer) and there is generally great community support. You could trial it for a year and if it fails then go back to the old software..
The biggest hurdle in open source software imo is getting people out of their comfort zone in order to use it.
In saying that I am slightly bias as I disagree with people using the likes dreamweaver for anything other than RAD. Better to code by hand, you learn more. The number of people I have using dreamweaver/contribute that come to me with problems that they could have solved if they had even a basic understanding of HTML.
A lot of apps have OS counterparts that do the job as well or better.
Even in work I use OOo instead of MS Office while everyone else uses MS office.
I'd hope the class is more about how to use software than it is about how to use this software and, as such, I'd use whichever software you're more comfortable with. If you already have notes and lessons planned around the existing, old software, use that. If you have to make new notes anyway, why not introduce your class to the world of Open Source?
Ian
I'd second this but for a different reason. First an anecdote. Long ago when I was taking freshman physics lab, they gave us the worlds crappiest equipment to do classic physics experiments. Why? Not because they were cheap. On the contrary, keeping that crap working must have cost a lot. No the point was this was about education on how to do science not proving the results of those experiments.
There were two reasons. 1) we needed to learn how to do data analysis in the presence of noise. 2) the next big science experiment is always done on tools not quite right to do it.
So it depends on what you want to teach your kids. You might be interested in the graphic arts product. You might be interested in vocational training on current industrial standard tools. Or you might be interested in teaching them how to coax an application to do something it was not really meant to do. Or even you might want them to lift the hood and build the next great graphics art tool.
If it's either of the latter then open source. If it's the first then both. If it's the vocational training then go with the older but more standard tools.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
And yes, they might actually use these skills. I took a desktop publishing class for fun in high school and learned to use PageMaker. I then got a job during college that involved creating publicity materials for an academic department (flyers for events, etc) in PageMaker, and from there got a job doing layout at a local paper also in PM. And no, I'm not a graphic design major or anything - I was a cognitive science major and am now in a PhD program, but layout is a hobby of mine (and possibly the only visual art-type-thing at which I have any skill). And that newspaper job paid much better than anything else I could have gotten at the time.
If some of the other open-source programs are more similar to the standard clossed-source ones, they might be valid alternatives. Or you could let them explore with both programs (for example, more advanced students might be able to do projects comparing the capabilities of two different programs).
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I do web development/design for a living, so I will try to provide a little bit of insight.
I use Photoshop CS2 for the majority of my work... the problem being that I use Gentoo Linux. I have a WinXP install running under VMware just to use it... this is mostly because I learned how to use Photoshop when I was young, and I just stuck. I use gimp for the quick edits, and it does this VERY well. Examples: Crop/Resize, Add Text, maybe add a drop shadow, etc.
When it comes to Dreamweaver, I've always hated it. It was slow, and a painful mess last I used it (version 4 or 5). I'm a programmer, so I suppose I am a little biased, but I code all of my X/HTML by hand. Teach your students how to code HTML by hand. Students tend to use Dreamweaver as a crutch. They learn how to point and click with it, but never really understand what exactly they are doing. When I was in high school, I used to attend a national competition called "Skills Canada". Every year in the national round, there was always at least ONE person who freaked out and dropped out of the competition because Dreamweaver was not set up the same as they used to have it back home. Now, I, and others, used notepad or notepad++, etc (Ya-ya! I know Dreamweaver has an IDE built in -- I still don't like it). We had no issues because we saw, and built the code whereas the competitor who dropped out did so because they were dependent on the visual interface ("It's different, what the hell do I do!?").
When it comes to Flash, there isn't much of an alternative... Flash is what you need. I personally own Flash MX2004 and I like it fine. I'm planning an upgrade to the next release (CS4 I think it will be?) or if there is a nice update to the latest version (like a service pack)... I've heard it has some issues (mostly interface stuff).
As for my recommendation, someone above mentioned for you to teach until you receive the required materials.
Making a stand in the primary school system isn't easy to do if you don't have tenure. Even with tenure there's a pretty good chance they'll replace you with the worst possible candidate and shuffle you off into a corner somewhere.
Combative, but an excellent point. I learned how to word process using DOS-based programs like WordStar and Apple ][e programs like AppleWriter. They resemble MS Word only inasmuch as they both eventually are used to send stuff to the printer. But I still learned about styles, tab stops, etc. I dare say that I know how use Word in a more "correct" way then 90% of my co-workers. When I co-write a paper, I generally get hard tabs, double spacing after periods, double returns to pad paragraphs, and other relics of the typewriter age. Stuff that works just fine until you go to change the format of your document.
I learned Excel in version 4 for Macintosh. It sort-of resembles modern MS Excel, at least as far as the formula notation, but that's about it. Macros, editing, printing, graphing, etc... all different.
It is far more important to understand the concepts than to understand which button to click. If it weren't, we'd all be screwed when they released Office 2007. Oh, wait, a lot of people ARE screwed because they know what button to press, but not what it really does "under the hood". I just got off of the phone with a friend who wanted to know how to make the footer stop after page 3... ugh. If he ever took a word processing class using ANY program, he would have understood the concept of a section break. Sure, it was called a "format code" in WordPerfect, but the concept is the same - change the formatting starting at this point in the document. (Oh, how I miss "show codes"...)
Open source is lovely, too. I'd use it when the old programs no longer are adequate. There is no reason to buy thousand-dollar programs unless you are a vocational school, in which case the kids aren't planning on college and need to learn where to click.
So use the old crappy stuff - it's like complaining about the age of the Bunsen burners in the Chemistry lab. They may look different, but the concept is still the same.
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Thanks for the thoughtful response. I agree with you that learning multiple tools is far preferable to learning only one; however, the reality of teaching dictates that there usually isn't time for that.
I just think that to choose the GIMP is a contrived, pious decision which short-changes the students in order to blindly "stick it to the man". I used to be a GIMP supporter as well. In 1997 we all wanted the GIMP to succeed. Ten years later, the GIMP UI is still uglier than a meth whore and there is still a legion of FOSS-zealot GIMP apologists. I appreciate that it's better to have a bad OSS alternative rather than none at all, but I have to call a spade a spade, even when it sends me into -1, Troll city.
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I agree completely. Look at Computer Science curricula in high schools and colleges - they use obscure languages like SML/NJ and Pascal to teach concepts and theories that can be applied to any "modern" language. I'm a web application developer and the company I work for uses ASP.NET and SQL Server primarily. I had never touched either either when I was in high school or college, but learning the fundamentals of data structures, RDBMS's and Object-orented programming through Java/C++ and MySQL allowed me to pick them up very easily. If you focus on the concepts (layers, paths, filters, etc.) they'll be much better prepared for the future than if they learned that [keyboard shortcut] activates the [tool] in Photoshop vX.X. And don't even get me started on WYSIWYG editors...
I agree to some degree. That said, I used Photoshop in the mid 90s when it was still in 2.0. I use Photoshop in 7.0 now. I'll upgrade to CS3 one of these days. I've used a couple of other versions in there. While the new version adds more features, with the exception of the addition of layers in... I think 3 or 4, the UI basically still works much the same way as it did back then. Someone using an industry-standard tool like Photoshop will have no trouble adapting to future software because the state of the art tools tend to either be built on top of previous industry-standard tools or built to be clones of them.
Teaching something like GIMP is, IMHO, a good way to get your students frustrated. Unless you use focus-follows-mouse (which most computer users find utterly painful as a work environment because the mouse ends up blocking part of the window in order to make it retain focus), the need to bring the tool palette to the foreground before choosing a tool makes GIMP a horribly clumsy piece of software to use compared with Photoshop. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've thought I selected a tool only to have the wrong thing happen when I double-click on my image window. (Remember, the first click gets lost bringing the image window back to the front again.)
I'd love to see a workflow study where someone trained in GIMP and someone trained in Photoshop were sat down side by side and asked to perform the same tasks. I think such a study would be very eye-opening for the GIMP developers, as it would highlight all the ways in which the GIMP UI is deficient.
Even with all the random crashes in Mac OS 7, I'd prefer to use Photoshop 4 over GIMP. Photoshop 7 is a no-brainer.
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You know I see this stated every time someone mentions GIMP. And rarely is it backed it up with anything factual. At best, people say it sucks because it's not photoshop. Well, by that lame definition, every application in the world sucks, save only one. Hardly a defensible position.
What is so bad about GIMP?? I've used it for very simple purposes. I'm not a professional. I'm equally lost in GIMP as I am Photoshop. And unless you use one or the other every day, you are too; unless you are spinning one for us.
Maybe it's because I'm not a professional artist, I remain ignorant of the details for more complex, day to day operations? But then again, that should tell you the interface isn't fundamentally broken. Why? Because otherwise people wouldn't be able to intuit the interface as experience grows, just as people do with Photoshop. And frankly, I have used it enough now to do all the basic things I need to do without any trouble.
As a side note, I know professional photographers (they get paid big bucks for their work) which use GIMP without trouble. Does this mean it's ready for all photographers? No. What he does is a niche for sure. Nonetheless, with a zero digital editing background, he figured how to do what he needs to do with little effort or pain. This again suggests you're fighting a common bias rather than a fundamental UI flaw.
To be clear, I am not advocating GIMP's interface is the best thing since sliced bread. All I'm saying is it's different but I'm certainly not seeing anything bad; which is in stark contrast to the commonly offered opinion here.
Read paragraph 2 of this post for but one example of GIMP's UI travesty.
To me, the GIMP UI is just too clumsy and labyrinthine to prefer it over Photoshop. Just about all the features I want exist in GIMP; getting to them and using them is where I get angry. This mostly stems from GIMP's rootless design, a central decision which has hindered GIMP's adoption more than any other single attribute of the program.
Again, I would like to make clear that I am glad GIMP exists. In fact, I will even go so far as to say that Script-Fu kicks huge ass, and I miss its absence in Photoshop. I just find the GIMP to be a far less user-efficient tool than Photoshop in all other cases.
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I'm a graphic designer, professional and all. One of the biggest and most important things that I learned in school, both High and College, was that it's not about the version of the software, it's not about the software at all. It's about the end result. It's about good design. If you're comfortable using Photoshop 3, and you can do the same stuff and get the same results as someone using CS3, then keep at it. Just like an artist who uses the same brushes and paints and canvas for years at a time because they feel right, or just like that old catcher's mitt, some people get accustomed to software, they know it inside and out, it feels good to them, it works well and it does what they want it to. That's the important thing. The software is a tool, just like a paintbrush or a ruler. It's just a means to an end.
That's a load of crap. Many of these applications differ from business to business... I learned AutoCAD in high school and college. My company uses Bentley. They still saw my extensive AutoCAD experience and knew that I learned to draft. Yes the commands are different, but so are the company policies, structure, and missions. You have to transition in any environment. Hence teaching should be about concepts, NOT software.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
I think you're missing the point a bit here.
This is a high school class.
Pretty much every new feature you just touted is completely irrelevant in the context of what a high school student needs or is going to find useful.
I think the point being made is that except for a few high-end features and tweaks like you mention and the horrible, horrible, "integration" of the CS suite, Photoshop is virtually identical today to the product it was then.
IMO experience for users who are not professional photographers and not stuck in a production house CS suite integration and things like the "Bridge" are worse than useless. They actually cause severe problems in using the software and slow down your computer to a crawl.
Adobe CS 2 installed about 250 Megs of "support" files in my Library folder comprising about a quarter million separate files. At home I have CS 3 and it installed something like 1.8 Gigabytes of "support files." Almost all of these files are there for things like Bridge and VersionCue and Adobe's online picture marketing service that the average PhotoShop user (even the average *professional* user) has no use for at all.
I'm a professional user and I don't need help taking pictures or finding clipart for my projects. I also don't need help managing my file versions to the point that I need memory eating "helper" apps running in the background all the time or trying to connect me to the Adobe "marketplace."
CS suite is the kind of crass, overpriced bloatware of the kind that only a monopolist could get away with.