Software and a money saving tip

Posted by Adrian Cooper on 11 February 2011 | 1 Comments

One of the main areas of investment at Newlands has been in ‘Industry Standard’ software.  It is an important element of our students’ preparations for their future lives that they are familiar with the software that they will encounter in their careers.  All our students from Year 7 upwards are taught how to use Adobe Photoshop for image manipulation, principally for use in their Art and ICT work, but often for other subjects too. 

Photoshop is the worldwide standard piece of software for this and any profession that uses images will require a level of proficiency in its use.  However, I also believe that it is important for every student to have experience of Photoshop so that, at the most basic level, they understand that when they see an image in print or on television it is not necessarily what was in front of the camera when the shutter was clicked; almost all images in every published medium has been touched up to some degree, whether it is to remove a facial blemish, or change a person’s figure or to make more extreme alterations to reality.  It is part of our students’ visual literacy to be aware of these things.

We have a site licence for the complete range of Adobe software programmes including Premiere Pro for video editing, Soundbooth (we also use Cubase for Audio editing) and InDesign for page layout.  InDesign is rapidly replacing Quark as the industry standard, and any students who go on to do anything in the world of publishing will be at a distinct advantage having had this experience of the software.

These are all complex, powerful and professional bits of software and our children constantly amaze me with how quickly and how intuitively they learn their way around them.   I shouldn’t really be surprised, this is the Digital Generation, they don’t have my generation’s techno-fear , they see the possibilities for creativity and are genuinely excited about what they can do.

It is inevitable that our children will want to use these software programmes at home too.  Up until now this has posed a real problem for parents because they are really very expensive to buy.  However, any of you who have not heard of the website www.software4students.co.uk will be in for a very pleasant surprise.  Here you will find full, fully legal versions of Adobe and Microsoft products at massive discounts for non-commercial use.  Does Microsoft Office 2010 Pro for £38 sound tempting? And remember, this is the full professional version not the cut down Home and Student version (which costs over £100 anyway)

Look over your children’s shoulders, and let them teach you something new.  But I warn you, editing your pictures in Photoshop is totally addictive.