Dreamweaver for Schools

Chilli Con Kearney

Hi all

I hope that I am in the correct forum for this query.

I am a transition year teacher who would like to teach web design to my class. I have some experience of Dreamweaver from school and college. I have also used it at camps, etc to teach young kids.

I would like to get it on around 24 computers in my school. I have checked adobe and the education version is around €180 per pack. This puts it way out of our range. Has anybody any suggestions on where/if I could source a better/cheaper deal.

I have looked at webs.com and some others but am familiar with dreamweaver and would prefer to stick with this.

Thanks in advance

tricky D

If you want the students to have a proper grasp of web design technology, send them over to http://www.w3schools.org to learn html, xhtml and css using NotePad++ (free) and use GIMP or Paint.net (again both free) for web graphics.

Using a wysiwyg editor will provide more instant and easy, but ultimately lazy, results, with a poor grasp of the subjects.

Evil Phil

I think a wysiwyg editor would be a better option for transition year students. Not all of them want to be designers or developers or will have an interest in code but they will want to put things on screen.

And I'm moving this to the design forum (from development).

Have a look at http://kompozer.net/

It ain't dreamweaver, but it is free (though donations are welcomed).

gollem_1975

OP.. maybe you could teach them about blogging software such as posterous or wordpress ( I suspect that they could school you in facebook and twitter )

CMS such as joomla/drupal.

Have a word with digiweb the people who host boards and see if they can do anything for you ( i think the boards.ie username to contact is digiweb )

Microsoft are giving away development tools such as SharePoint Designer these days,beta versions of various operating systems etc. .. maybe contact Microsoft (Ireland) directly and see what they provide to secondary schools.

nellyshark

I have to say I admire your dedication OP, I wish we had someone in school who was willing to teach us something that would be more than likely new to us. Like another poster most schoolgoers are well versed in the internet so prob would be interested in learning about the topic.

However personally I don't believe that using Dreamweaver is the correct method in teaching it. Remember that the topic has to be accessible to all your students, if you do get it installed on the computers in your school then that limits their ability to create websites using only those 24 computers if you understand me.

I think that you would be better off using tools that are freely available to your students outside of their school network. For example you can easily teach how to creat websites using Notepad and Firefox, this is how I spent an entire year in college learning the topic.

Now my suggestion would be make use of some of these apps http://portableapps.com/apps/development & http://portableapps.com/apps/graphics_pictures for the student to carry around on a memory key, maybe even install the full apps on their home networks or the student network and then maybe having Dreamweaver for a couple of pc in the school should you want. You would be making a saving of thousands IMO.

Students could install Wordpress et all using their portable editions of XAMPP etc.

Just my two cents.

Again I salute you

cormee

tricky D wrote: »

If you want the students to have a proper grasp of web design technology, send them over to http://www.w3schools.org to learn html, xhtml and css using NotePad++ (free) and use GIMP or Paint.net (again both free) for web graphics.

Using a wysiwyg editor will provide more instant and easy, but ultimately lazy, results, with a poor grasp of the subjects.

There is a lot more to Dreamweaver than the WYSIWYG editor. I use Dreamweaver daily and I can't remember the last time I used that window.

It was useful, to a certain extent, when table-based designs were the norm but that's a long time ago. In fact, besides text formatting and the likes, I can't see how you could even use it on a CSS-based design.

gollem_1975

cormee wrote: »

There is a lot more to Dreamweaver than the WYSIWYG editor. I use Dreamweaver daily and I can't remember the last time I used that window.

It was useful, to a certain extent, when table-based designs were the norm but that's a long time ago. In fact, besides text formatting and the likes, I can't see how you could even use it on a CSS-based design.

This is not really a discussion on dreamweaver as a tool( and if it is I have no business being here) but whether Dreamweaver ( and purchasing licences for same) is fit for the purpose of teaching web design to transition year students.

how much in-depth experience of the tool does the teacher have? by teaching to kids at summer camps I would suspect that he was not covering more advanced topics such as CSS ( therefore s/he may just want to teach the WYSIWYG functionality ) and therefore is using Dreamweaver a bit like using a hammer to crack a walnut ?

another question would be what is being thought to these kids.

is it "web design" OR "web design using dreamweaver" ?

I think the point made by the other poster about the kids being able to work on their sites outside of the Lab using freely available tools is a good one.

sheesh

what about doing it with them for a month and just using the shareware version of the software ?