I Should Be Marking

As I’m sure I’ve mentioned, we recently bought the Adobe CS3 MasterSuite for the entire site. It cost a fair few thousands but we get access to every Adobe package – Fireworks, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, Illustrator, InDesign, Soundbooth, Acrobat and Premiere Pro to name but a few.

On Thursday I filmed ‘Scoop’, the school dance group (troupe?), performing in the main hall and obviously needed to edit it. I started out with iMovie, the standard Mac movie editing package (think Windows Movie Maker with a few extra bells and whistles) – but found it tough going.

I needed a half hour crash course in Premiere from the drama/media techie who showed me the ropes but editing, particularly with multiple cameras, was a doddle.

The next decision is whether I attempt to use it with the Y10 iMedia class. I think they would struggle with the plethora of options, and I certainly don’t intend to throw it at them straight away. It’s worth a look though as it is far superior to the packages you get with Windows and OS X as standard.

Whilst playing games researching online I came across a fantastic resource for programming in Flash. Shootorials, by Kongregate, is a series of video tutorials leading novices through the basics of Adobe Flash and results in a fully playable side-scrolling shooting game (Xenon, anyone?).

The whole thing is done in ActionScript 2.0 (meaning you can do this with Macromedia Flash MX 2004, and presumably some previous versions too) and if you can’t wait until the final parts are released in early November, you can download the source code and image files and skip ahead. The code is heavily commented and is easy to follow.

I’m planning on using this with my new after-school club after half-term and I’ll let you know how it goes.

For a while now I’ve been working on a number of simple graphics tutorials – and given the array of packages available I’ve been creating each one (where possible) 3 times over; for GIMP, Paint.net and Fireworks MX 2004. It’s been very much a ‘when I have time’ exercise, and I’ve found the time over the last few days to update the site with Fireworks and Photoshop CS3 versions as well.

I still haven’t completed anywhere near as many tutorials as I would like to, but there are a couple of interesting ones and please feel free to drop me a line with more ideas.

Web design is an important part of the KS3 curriculum. Not only does it earn its own unit of work in Year 8 but we’re including it in a larger project in Year 9 and throughout all of the ePortfolio subjects at KS4 and KS5 (DiDA, iMedia, OCR, GCE Applied…). But what to use?

We currently have installed on some or all of the machines:

• Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004
• Adobe Dreamweaver CS3
• NVu (F/OSS)
• Kompozer (F/OSS)
• Amaya (F/OSS)
• SeaMonkey (F/OSS)
• iWeb
• Serif Web Plus (F/OSS – outdated versions)
• Microsoft Frontpage
  (NB: F/OSS = Free/Open Source Software)

Plus you can, of course, convert Word, Publisher, PowerPoint, etc. to web pages.

One of the things we really want to push is the idea that students can download and use the same applications at home that we use at school. I try to use GIMP for graphics as much as possible, for example.

NVu is free, but has not been updated in a few years. Kompozer is a bug-fixed branch of NVu but is still a year out of date. The free Serif apps are prior versions, Amaya is W3C’s contribution and throws a hissy fit if you try and do anything that oesn’t match their stringent guidelines and SeaMonkey is part of a package which includes IM and (I think) IRC chat stuff.

All of those problems could be overcome if it weren’t for the fact that Dreamweaver is so powerful and has so many features – integration with Fireworks HTML, Flash, Managing Sites, template management, library items, rollover buttons, etc, etc, etc… makes it a killer app.

I guess the point of the post is to justify to myself the fact that we’re using Dreamweaver over F/OSS alternatives. At the moment it seems a no-brainer. The trick is to convince the kids that you don’t NEED Dreamweaver to do web design. Maybe we should make them do everything in Notepad…

Technically not freeware, but I came across a range of products for Mac and PC at Arten Science that are available free for educational purposes. The two that caught my eye are MacVCR (video screen capture) and ScreenAudit (automated webcam or screen capture – ideal for time lapse animation). A quick email to the developer and I have a serial for each package requested at no charge – bargain!

We’ve had a lot of meetings recently about Seals and Pelts. No, we’re not setting up a new extra-curricular expedition but it seems the secondary curriculum is having an overhaul (note it’s no longer called the National Curriculum…). Apparently we could abandon Year 7 to a ‘transition’ year, merge our History and Geography departments or even abandon every Friday in favour of ‘project days’. We’ve decided to take the (mundane? sensible? I have my own opinion) approach of forging more cross-curricular links.

It’s something I’ve been trying to push now for a while, but now it’s an official policy and we’ve had ’speed dating’ between heads of department in an attempt to set up something concrete. So in Year 7 our new intake will no longer present information on some arbitrary, made-up on the spot topic (Wild Facts). In Geography they are examining tropical rain forests so we’re doing Amazonian Wild Facts. Huzzah! (Sustainability and Global Dimension)

There are various other projects, but I’ll save those for another post. The chance to push forward the links I’ve been trying to make anyway is a real opportunity an I’m really excited about the possibilities that are opening up.

I’m really enjoying work at the moment. No big topic to talk about but I’ve managed to work a lot of GIMP stuff into the curriculum, I’m tackling Actionscript 3 now we’ve upgraded to Adobe CS3 across the site, my iMedia Y11s are doing well (although I’d never tell them to their faces), my Y12 group seems OK (and we’re only slightly behoind schedule), my Y13 group is enthused and ahead of schedule (that’s a first!) and things are progressing well. Some people seem to think this is a long half-term – and I guess it is – but I’m having a whale of a time right now. Just thought I’d be all smug about it.