School Software

[James.m.russell@gm]

First of all, apologies for the stupid username, I wasn't paying attention and autofill decided that I was putting my email addy in rather than a username.

Anyway, I work at a secondary school in the UK (11-16 yrs old) and we have a small Mac suite. Unfortunately they are at the moment just expensive paperweights as they are criminally lacking any kind of software. The Network Manager and technician don't know a lot about Macs, and although I've used one on and off for the past two years I'm not really aware of what software is available.

I think I will recommend that we get Microsoft Office for the simple fact that the rest of the school uses this, and it will be much easier for the kids not to have to deal with changing file types. If we weren't to go for that I would probably just go for NeoOffice.

Anyway, the suite is for the art department so could you recommend some good software please? There will no doubt be a very limited budget so I think the full blown version of Photoshop would be out of the question, and for the age range (and on the whole, low ability) kids we have, massively overpowered.

It would also be great to have some animation software. A bonus if it can take camera inputs and do stop motion animation (separate software for this might be better?)

We do of course have iMovie so that's fine for compiling video clips, but it would be nice to have some custom software that will do things like display overlays of previous frame for clay animations and such.

Hope you can come up with some good recommendations, feel free to suggest anything else that we might find useful!

[houltmac]

Hi James, and welcome to TAB. Where abouts in the UK are you? There are a couple of us on the forums so it would be good to know. Anyway... on to the question.

For imaging software I would highly recommend Pixelmator. This is very Photoshop like and so the kids with real interest (as well as the older ones) will either know it or benefit from learning it a little. It's also very powerful and far quicker as well as being vastly cheaper.

I'm not personally so good on the animation side, so I will turn that over to the others. I would however say that I have heard good things about iStopMotion as well as suggest taking a look at VersionTracker for great Mac software.

[philbowell]

Hi James, great to have more UKer's in the forum.

I'd agree with Matt on the Pixelmator front, but there is also Acorn which I've heard good things about. Unfortunately I've not used them so I can't speak from experience (only Photoshop). Regarding the Office situation, it would probably be worth buying MS's, but I'm about to start a discussion on the alternatives (so keep an eye on the thread).

[Yuiichi]

Welcome to the TAB forums, James! Hope you enjoy your stay!

For image editing software, I'd highly recommend Acorn. It's really easy to use and actually quite powerful if you need it to be. It's also moderately priced at $49.95 (or $39.95 for 2 or more). Why I recommend it so strongly is that it was the only image editing software that I tried (Skitch, Imagewell, Pixelmator, etc.) that allowed me to specify an amount of pixels to select. Seems like a no-brainer, but nothing besides photoshop includes it.

[baseballboy828]

Photoshop Elements might be a good idea. It's got the same basic structure as CS3, so those who will move on to higher levels can feel comfortable in the real Photoshop. iStopMotion (mentioned before) is definitely the way to go for stop-motion.

[dlemessurier]

Hi,
Okay, first of all - DON"T GET MS OFFICE for the Mac. MS Office 2008 has some major problems with Leopard (if you ever upgrade, or already have OS X 10.5). There are big problems with MS Office and spaces where the floating toolbar disappears and reappears on another workspace, and then causes a spaces crash when you try and move it to another workspace.
Also, MS Office 2008 is completely different to MS Office 2007 for windows. The fact that your school uses office on windows does not mean that your students will be able to open up MS Office 2008 and be able to use it straight away.
I would suggest iWork '08 (if you can afford it) as it can open MS Office documents and has a native mac feel about them, which makes them really easy to pick up.
It's not that I'm a MS hater (I actually liked MS 2004 for mac), but the new and swanky version of Office just sucks.

As for stop motion animation have you tried looking at FrameByFrame - (FrameByFrame)

As for a photoshop esque thing - have you tried the open source package gimp?
GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program

Anyway, hope this helps.
Dan

[houltmac]

While I really don't like (viz. hate) Office in general (especially Entourage), I do have to use it a lot at work. On my machine, and on the many machines I service every day I see it a lot. I can't say I have ever seen the Spaces issue mentioned above and I would have to suggest that the user looks into that himself as it simply isn't right.

[studioprisoner]

Originally Posted by James.m.russell@gm

First of all, apologies for the stupid username, I wasn't paying attention and autofill decided that I was putting my email addy in rather than a username.

i lol'd sorry

[dlemessurier]

I have spoken to MS, and they are looking into it. They know of the problem and it is not just me. I know of at least another 3 people running OS 10.5.4 that experience the same spaces issue.

[houltmac]

Perhaps it's something different in our instances, installers or some other tiny thing then. Or perhaps it's something to do with how my users use the apps/Spaces. Odd, but still I haven't seen the bug on all the machines I have used.