Barriers to teaching cool stuff

I agree with Kate's comment re cost of Adobe Software – its so expensive to kit out just one or two labs with Industry standard software

Steve

(Address removed) 03/09/2007 14:51 >>>

Hello,
At the moment I can see two potential barriers to teaching cool stuff like Digital Media.
The first is schools not being happy with the module only option. Although there's an NC to work towards, there are no exams, so no 'courses' so no school statistics. I am quietly hopeful that I can argue the case with this.
My second worry is the cost of Adobe software etc. I am teaching multimedia units in Information Systems currently using Powerpoint and feeling like a real cheat! The cost of buying the industry standard software (which the kids would love to use and would be great for their CVs) is too high. With the DIVA collaborations, is there any plan to help us get cheaper educational prices for the software?
Thanks
Kate

www.jiglu.com * making communities, smarter

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Yes, I agree that Adobe educational prices are not as good as other vendors. I've contacted Adobe's sales and marketing people with a proposal that Scottish colleges could buy as a consortium, rather than as individuals – that would mean that we could take better advantage of the volume discounts that Adobe offer. Adobe already does this in the US with school districts – so maybe thay can offer us something similar under the DIVA partnership. Lets hope they can do us a deal...

Alternatively, there are a number of open source or free tools that could possibly be used for some of the multimedia and web design stuff – the greatest benefit is that students can take it home to practice.

GIMP is a very good alternative to Photoshop.
Windows Movie Maker is an adequate video editing tool.
Audacity is a superb audio editing tool.
Multimedia authoring tools are harder to come by – Sophie (http://www.sophieproject.org/) looks interesting, and there's Open Office Impress (like Powerpoint, but exports as Flash)

I agree – I was able to buy a Site Licence for Studio MX 2004 four years ago because the cost was better than equipping CDT labs with Freehand – oops, now that's out of the picture, as it's no longer being developed...

So, now I have to look at the alternatives Colin mentions, or so embed Adobe into the rest of my course that 'I can't do without it!'

I am grateful to Colin on picking up all the other packages that are available. I had an email last week from a centre who wanted to know which software should be used for video editing at Access SCQF 3 level.

On sorting out – or trying to sort out – national deals on software – we'll look at that perhaps in partnership with other agencies or lead centres – this is not part of our core business. Centres get approval on the basis that they are staffed and resourced to deliver.

In meantime remember there are lots of packages out there that will serve your purposes and licensing should not be used as a barrier to the teaching of cool stuff ;-)