Business or Art - Your Input is Needed

[Matt Anderson]

I have a couple questions:

Do any of your schools have classes for 7th and 8th graders on Adobe Photoshop?

If so is that a Business class or an Art class or something else?

Do you feel it is legitimate to create a business class for 7th and 8th graders that teaches Adobe Photoshop? Are they ready for that as a whole?

What do your business departments teach 7th and 8th graders?

Your input would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Matt

[Jen Hegna]

Are you thinking of teaching photoshop OR embedding photshop? Full photoshop or photoshop elements? I see value in BOTH classes embedding photoshop projects into the classroom. I like the idea- and right now we do not get into photoshop elements until HS. It is also in the arts -even though I am not sure how well thorough it is taught to our kids.

[Matt Anderson]

I'm having a bit of a debate right now with my business department. We have Adobe Photoshop CS3 that we currently are teaching via our Graphic Arts classes in the 9-12.

I am looking to replace our current 7-8 Business lab with some form of terminal system, be it NComputing or something else. I can save around $10,000 by doing this as opposed to individual workstations.

Their concern is two fold

1. They are worried the terminal system will not last them for 5 years. That the workstations will be outdated before then.
2. They have indicated they need to be able to teach Photoshop to their 7th and 8th grade students

I have some basic opposition to their concerns and requests.

1. If done right a terminal system shouldn't last any less amount of time as an individual workstation and actually can last longer as there are no moving parts. The server is what needs to be replaced over time and that is considerably less expensive.
2. I don't feel Photoshop belongs in a business class. Teach 7th and 8th graders Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Internet Usage practices, Keyboarding, etc. There isn't time to get into this, plus it's an Art class in the HS. Why is it all of a sudden a Business class in the 7-8?

I want to save the $10k so we can start saving for a new Phone system that is desperately needed along with a new boiler for that building as well. $10k won't go far for the boiler but it would for the phone system.

[Bryan Berg]

If a graphics art type of training is what is being looked for - regardless of whether it falls under Art or Business, why not go with something open source such as GIMP? It has many of the features (including layers) of Photoshop, and there is no cost. It should work fine in a terminal environment as well. The only real drawback of GIMP is that for some of the commands, it's different than Photoshop. But I think that's trivial for what would be done in an Art or Business class. Plus, since GIMP is free, it can be sent home on a flash drive or CD, and the kids can do work with it there. Plus, since it's free, it could be easily installed on Public Library computers so that kids (and adults) could use it there. Teachers could take it home as well with no worries about licensing.

The question about the expense of Photoshop or of Express is "what will it get used for?" If it's the basics, and not the high-end capabilities, then GIMP (or a web-based editor tool - see possibilities at: http://www.lifeclever.com/10-free-web-based-alternatives-to-photoshop/) would work great, I think!

[Brian Bartley]

In Hayfield we are teaching Photoshop in some of the more advanced high school classses. I can't believe that 7th & 8th graders need the depth of full blown Photo Shop. I like Bryans idea of GIMP for much of the needs of the lower grades. I know we are using GIMP for some basic things.

[Jeffrey Oian]

I agree with Bryan also.

I teach two elective classes to high school students. The first one covers GIMP, Basic HTML, InDesign (we do the yearbook) and a little bit of Audacity. If a student does well in the class I encourage them to take a second multimedia class that I call Advanced Adobe Design. We work on InDesign, Photoshop Extended, and Illustrator. The students have access to the Adobe CS3 & CS4 Web Premium package. This is my first semester working with kids in the advanced class. However, I have found GIMP to be an excellent tool to teach the basics of Photoshop. We work on how to crop, scale, superimpose, basic layering, painting (marginal) and animations. I have a textbook that we use with an ISBN of 1-59059-587-4.

PS – I have a business license.

[Jeffrey Oian]

The file I attached was an animation GIF created in GIMP by a student. Each layer on this project has three layers. I know that Photoshop is much more user friendly and makes better animations, but I have found that teaching this in GIMP really helps students to understand layering.

PS – I have a business license.

[Matt Anderson]

We own a site license of Photoshop CS3. I can install it on any machine I want. The discussion is not should we buy Photoshop.

We have a problem at our district on the Curriculum side. We are cutting 1 of our 3 business teachers and they are talking of adding either Photoshop courses or adding content to an already existing course which will likely also mean I would need to do individual desktop computers at an increased cost to the district. There have been no conversations between Business and Art to make sure there is not an overlap in courses.

My main question is. Is Photoshop for the most part Business or Art? What do you guys do and why do you feel it fits in one and not the other. Or is it completely non-departmental? I want your conceptual ideas and also what your district actually does.

I'm not looking for open source alternatives. My staff wouldn't accept that since we could give them Photoshop and I would agree that it wouldn't make sense to do that.

[Bryan Berg]

I'll talk with our Business Teacher to see what their thoughts are on your overall situation.

I agree with you, Matt - the Terminal solution should work just fine for the lab set-up (as long as Photoshop runs fine in that environment?).

[Michelle Weidemann]

As a business teacher currently I teach 7th grade keyboarding. We offer a HS class called Graphic Design where the students use photoshop and illustrator - it is taught be our tech ed teacher.

[Marc Patton]

art class

[Jeff Thompson]

We have a graphics art class that touches on photo shop. I believe it is offered at the HS level. It is offered by our Tech Ed. person. He also teaches CAD, wood working etc.. Our business teacher also does some work with desktop publishing, not sure if they use any photoshop.

[Scott Evers]

I'd say Art at 7-8, and upper grades it's just a tool your expected to know how to use and include its use in projects in a business class.