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?"

Comments

Teach the ability to learn

[ispeters]

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

Re:Either/Or

[goombah99]

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.

Re:Teaching Graphic Design

[MightyYar]

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.

Re:Wake up

[GooberToo]

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.

Re:Wake up

[krog]

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.