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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?"
Yes, next question?...
In my opinion, a gathering of both would be far better... I mean, realistically in the commercial world, it tends to be the "high flyers" which companies go for, (Photoshop, Flash etc) however, teaching students the opensrouce alternatives, gives them a better feel for newer software, and shows them how adaptions have been made.
Well, is a little of both an option? For some of them at least. Flash 5 is almost a completely different program from the modern versions of flash, the actionscript has changed almost entirely, and the layout is very different. The other legacy programs still have *some* semebelence to their newer versions, so letting them get their feet wet might be a good idea. However, you can present it in a way "this is what photoshop looked like a couple years ago and it still looks pretty similar. Due to restrictions we can't show you a current copy, however here is a free alternative called gimp that can do all of the same things, and you can play with it at home!"
Although Gimp resembles Photoshop it isn't the same. Some skills are transferable but if you are teaching graphic design it's silly to teach anything other then what industry uses. It means they must relearn many skills once they enter the job market. If your teaching at a higher more theoretical level then it might be acceptable because more of it transfers. But if it's a trades school or technical college you're better off teaching the actual industry tools regardless of cost.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
The question is: is it better to teach old commercial software or their open source counterparts (Komposer, Gimp, etc.)?
What are you trying to accomplish? Are you trying to teach them design or are you trying to train them in the use of software programs to accomplish any old goal?
If you're trying to teach them design principles in general, then I don't see what the difference is between outdated commercial software and their OSS counterparts. If you're trying to teach them to use software skills in software packages they are likely to see in the real world/college after graduation then that's not the best way to go about it.
If you're trying to teach both, I really don't know what to tell you. Probably retool a bit to put more emphasis on the design part and less on the use of specific software. Design skills change but not like specific software needs.
Good luck.
Use whatever software allows you to teach the concepts to your students in the easiest manner. The tools change much faster than the concepts so don't fret too much about which tool to use. Whichever one is easier for you to use and teach with, use that
Gimp clearly cannot compare with Photoshop, and you'd be hard pressed to find Gimp in any professional office. If these students intend to find work with their skills, then Photoshop by far is the best option of the two.
it doesn't matter, just don't teach them the program, but teach them what the program does.
It doesn't matter if its gimp or photoshop, just as long as you know what the diffrent between ansharpen mask, blur and gaussian blur is.
It's probably worth teaching the students on a selection of software, concentrating on "how to get stuff done" rather than on what particular apps to use.
People who were only taught a single app for a single purpose often have problems adjusting to other programs, they don't understand what features to look for but rather just where to look for them which ofcourse falls over if the software changes, even between different versions of the same application.
It's also worth considering, even if you teach the most up to date and widely used software today... A lot can change very quickly in software, the apps you teach may not be used anymore when your students go out into the world of work, or there may be much newer versions in use. Conversely, many companies keep using even older versions of apps because they still get the job done.
So basically teach the widest selection of apps you can, explain the differences and similarities and focus on the job that needs doing rather than the tools for doing it. Also for anything that is open/free provide your students with a copy of it so they can take it home.
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Oh come on. Is PS7 really that different than more recent versions? Not really. Better to teach them on old commercially viable software, where there is a real market for the skillset. Very very few people get hired for their skills with the Gimp.
How about teaching your students the principles of what they are going to do, so that (with some acclimatization) they can adapt to any software within the category you've taught.
For instance, as far as image editing is concerned, it would be nice to talk about brushes and layers, and filters, all the while showing that while different software can have various options, located in various menus, the work can be accomplished on either, as long as the person knows exactly what they are trying to do.
That way, your students would be more than just click-monkeys, who know little more than what sequence of buttons to push according to a flowchart.
Because otherwise they will wind up like our Pathology department administrator who, when I suggested that to save the school tens of thousands of dollars a year they should use OpenOffice and discontinue the MSOffice site license, turned to me and asked: "But without MSOffice, how will our people do any work?"
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.
How old is the hardware? Something to keep in mind is that an older version of Photoshop may run better on older hardware than the latest version of Gimp.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
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
The older software will be your best bet - why? Many places still use older versions of the industry standards. It wasn't until recently that my place of employment upgraded to CS2 on every primary production machine - some machines still had Photoshop 6, and I think we've got one with 5.5 still that some sales reps use (this is at a newspaper). Second, the UI will still be relatively uniform and familiar in subsequent versions.
It sucks, but better to teach them something they are more likely to encounter in some version or another. Don't hesitate to introduce them to open-source alternatives, but keep in mind that they will rarely be used in a professional environment (cue flames here - I'm an open source user myself, but I have yet to encounter any place that uses The GIMP in any sort of professional high volume production)
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
Why not teach students how
- to think along procedural and functional lines
- to consider the information in the abstract
- to decompose the system and troubleshoot the gazintas and the gazoutas
- to RTFM and search the web when the politician hits the fan
- to calmly view ideas that one finds objectionable (Creationism, proprietary licensing)
- to implement sound practices (version control, unit testing)
Binding the conversation to specific software versions seems a cop-out.Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Dear Choir:
I teach a high school theology course. We were scheduled to get new books this year but due to several pointy haired bosses, no books were ordered. The books I have to teach are (god help me) pagan scrolls from the 3rd century BC. The question is: is it better to teach old religions or their open text counterparts (Christianity, Hinduism, etc)? Is the steep learning curve and slightly less uniform world view worth a little damnation to teach them religion founded in the past 5000 years?
Get a fucking job and you'll instantly understand why all these *idiotic* "just refuse" comments that invariably pop up like stinkweed whenever a professional conundrum is posed to Slashdot make the adults laugh bitterly. Refuse for a stupid reason (like this one) and you're likely gone. If you're not gone, you're pegged as being "difficult," and your future with the company is limited. The only situation in which you can refuse to do anything at work and *usually* come out unscathed is if it's due to immediate physical danger. That's all there is to it. Some day, you'll understand.
Seriously: if you can find a F/OSS package that's analogous to Flash in behaviour and output, then yes, by all means, teach them the F/OSS stuff - they'll learn to think outside the GUI, which will do them no end of good. If, however, you can't find a suitable replacement, then don't. Flash 5 is not even remotely appropriate any more - it bears little to no resemblance to the current versions of Flash. Photoshop 7 is fine, although the layering method has changed a bit: you can now nest them, as well as play about with layer comps, which you can't do in pre-CS versions. Dreamweaver - well, do you really need to ask? As for Movie Maker: you can download a free version of Avid, or try and get hold of Kino or something along those lines. Teaching them Movie Maker will not do anyone any favours.
http://xkcd.com/313/
Since you are talking about highschool and not college, I'd say go with the open source option and touch on the older versions of the commercial software. Here's why...
-If they find that they enjoy what you are teaching, knowing an open source (and FREE) software tool will make it easy for them to continue tinkering with it at home. They can download the same tool they used in the classroom and continue to hone their skills at home if that really is their area of interest/career path. In the end, it's their eye and talent as an artist that will determine if their career at this early stage, learning the software is secondary. Practice is key. Chances are a student can't afford a legal copy of Photoshop for their home computer.
-Odds are that it will be a few years before they get into the working world anyway, so even if the school board gave you the latest versions of the commercial software, chances are that what they end up using in the working world will be several versions in the future anyway.
- Once you've learned one tool, it's usually easy to learn another of the same type. Like learning programming languages. Once you have the basics, the icons for the tools and the menus are trivial.
- Many artists do freelance work when they are first trying to break into the graphic design/art world. Knowing a free tool will keep their costs down.
- It will help support the free/open source software movement, and make them aware of the wide variety of awesome free/open apps available to them.
- Many employers even if they provide a commercial graphics program, will allow you to install and use your own preferred tool if it's free/legal/legit/compatible.
- Giving them an additional taste of the old version commercial software you have will mean they've been exposed to two different tools- an advantage in the long run. Choice is good.
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).
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Yes, the percentage of your class that will be in the industry will be using Photoshop and Dreamweaver (although those programs will be totally different in 5 years).
But, I think you're better off encouraging students' curiosity for use *at home*. Which would you rather hire to use Photoshop, someone who's spent 100 hours using Photoshop 5 in a classroom a several years ago, or someone who's played with everything in GIMP for 600+ hours, built some webpages, entered some silly photo-editing contests, etc, and is still using it?
In reality, of course, if you subtly imply that Photoshop is the only way to go, they'll just pirate it to work at home. This is pernicious. I'm betting 'moral education' is a part of your school's mission statement. Live it.
Teach students to use Open Source software. Hand out discs with the PortableApps files. Accept ODF/RTF/TXT/PDF files as well as DOC.
From a short-term practical standpoint, i don't see a problem with teaching e.g. GIMP instead of an old Photoshop version - as long as you don't require features the free alternative doesn't have (GIMP has no HDR) you should be fine. Additionally, kids can also use the software at home and when they have completed the course, which is a big benefit - I am required to learn Maple [1] and didn't pay up for the draconian license which would require me to wipe it off disk as soon as i am no longer an university student. Also, old Photoshop knowledge most certainly won't help them in the job.
Ethically speaking, as a good teacher you should absolutely abstain from proprietary concepts: Your obligation is to teach them something useful for society, not to teach them something useful for Adobe. Proprietary software essentially says that research into the functions and cooperation between people is forbidden, while free software actually encourages sharing knowledge and cooperation for a mutual goal. Read Stallman's essay on the topic [2] and decide what would be the ethically correct alternative.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maple_(software)
[2] http://www.linux.com/articles/32587
Your students are far better off using tools that people used 8 years ago, than tools that no one uses today.
In particular, anyone who suggests using the GIMP over any moderately recent version of Photoshop for serious work should be sacked, tarred, feathered and shipped to Guantanamo. Photoshop 7 is light years ahead of GIMP today, and I will bet anyone here $5 that it's way ahead of where GIMP will be in ten years. (GIMP will then be twice as old, and if it's twice as good then it will still suck rod.)
Dreamweaver and Flash are also non-negotiable components of any web authoring introduction.
The students who are good candidates for open-source software will usually find their own way there. Don't force them to use OSS tools which are practically assured of leaving a bad taste in their mouths.
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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.
Well I'll be haarrd-pressed![1] I work for a small business, and I use GIMP to prepare product images for the web store.
[1] Said in the tone of "Well I'll be dog-gone!"
If you teach them to use Gimp, then they can legally and without cost do their assignments at home. They could also use the skills you've taught in order to, from home, make nice art for friends' web pages, etc.
If you only teach them PhotoShop, they may be forced to (a) use a pirated copy at home or (b) not use their home computer at all.
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.
Having been modded as redundant I feel need to elaborate
That was priceless! Thanks, you made my day! As to your point, I agree completely. What's wrong with pencils and rulers? The newest software will be out of date by the time these kids get out of college.
All a REAL artist needs is mud and a stick, and he can do without either in a pinch. You have to learn to see before you can learn to render.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
You *could* have each student download a trial copy of the software, namely Flash and Dreamweaver, and use that. It gives you 30 days to play with it.
HTH
Don't teach 'software.' Teach concepts. Whatever you use that lets the kids be productive with the concept should be fine, right?
In college we used some sort of cad software that I don't even remember the name of. That didn't mean that the concept of snapping, lineto, center, tangent, etc didn't translate when I used autocad (which I most certainly did not take a class on) for a few things before becoming a full time computer geek. Same applies to firewalls and routers and such. If you know TCP/IP and Routing and such, how to configure the stuff is simply a matter of looking up how to do it on that particular device in the manual (how do I define a tunnel, how do I define a route, etc). I *hate* working with cisco guys who took their class, and can't think beyond the ciscoese (bringing up partner IPSec VPNs being the best example of this).
Which will be the easier transition: Photoshop 7 to Photoshop CS3, or GIMP to Photoshop CS3?
If the answer is the old version of the commercial software, then you should teach the old version of the commercial software.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
NO. My answer is NO. Do not teach DreamWeaver 5, or Quanta or NVu or Photoshop or GIMP. Do not do it, STOP doing it.
What you should do instead is to teach about web developing (HTML, etc), image manipulation, etc. If you teach only how to press x or y button you will be robbing the students because when the next version of X program goes out they wont do how to achieve that misterious effect the teacher shown them how to achieve which made the picture look better.
You do not need to teach them the science of what they are doing (i.e., no need for an extensive programming class, just HTML and the basics of web design). But you could very well teach them the concepts and apply the conecpts in your "old" propietary software and the "new" open source. In that way, they will be able to onder the benefits and disbenefits of each tool.
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You could use both types of software, commercial and open source, to reinforce the abstract concepts. In Photoshop, for example, the basic concepts are layers, selections, filters, brushes, levels, curves, etc., but when a digital artist plans an image, it's an abstract process, wholly independent of software interfaces (although familiarity with a particular interface can boost productivity). Many of those same concepts transfer to web design and film editing.
Also, the commercial versions of the software you mentioned are expensive, so your students might like to know that there are freeware alternatives to piracy.
Because you are faced with a time constraint, though, it might be better to go with the commercial products. There will be fewer technical snags, more options for further education, more employment opportunities and so on. Besides, as others here have said, the commercial versions available to you are quite advanced. More recent versions have cool tools, but artists got by without them for the longest time, and had to be very creative to get past those limitations.
I can't easily draw outlines of geometric shapes such as circles and squares. Right click menus aren't very context sensitive.
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.