I have recently been on a computing course at Akra Jr’s school – its purpose is to help parents get up to speed with what their children are doing in class, but my goal was to find out why Akra Jr was loving using computers at home, but saying he didn’t enjoy ICT classes.
It’s been great – the teaching is fantastic, they’ve invested a lot in computer hardware and software and getting to “learn” with Akra Jr sitting beside me and showing me what he can do has been absolutely fantastic. Well worth sitting through a whole heap of tutorials on things I already knew how to do and had been using for years.
It’s given me a better idea of what sort of tasks they need to be able to do, giving me the impetus to search out the mac equivalents which can complement any schoolwork at home. It’s also given me some new language – a sort of kiddy tech talk – although mostly relevant for Windows than mac: “kiss the window goodbye” to remind children to use the X to close the window, “dog in the box” to remember which icon is for text wrapping round images.
However, one thing I am finding really frustrating is the inappropriate use of Microsoft Word for desktop publishing tasks. Now, I can see why they are doing this:
- the curriculum probably insists they learn a well-known word processor, but for young children learning needs to be fun. When you’re 7 years old, fun is pictures and very little text – this implies posters, fact sheets, newsletters etc.
- in terms of licensing for school use, using Word for as many different tasks as possible will be cheaper for them than buying a separate DTP package license.
- kids are likely to have some incarnation of Microsoft Word at home so it will be familiar, but are much less likely to have a DTP program at home.
So logical, yes. Easy to learn? God, no.
Using Microsoft Word 2008 to manipulate text boxes and pictures reminded me why I love my iMac so very very much. Getting a picture and text box to stay where you wanted it required more voodoo than mouse skills. To add insult to injury, every now and then when you added a text box (seemingly if you had the cursor in the wrong place but no rhyme or reason as to why) then it would wipe out everything else you had on the screen. I was getting frustrated… Akra Jr just looked a bit bewildered and gave up trying.
It reminded me very much of my experiences of Lotus SmartSuite in my days of working in the insurance industry where colleagues would beg me to fix complicated layouts and I would be able to after a few minutes of faffing – but wouldn’t be able to tell you exactly how I did it, or repeat it in exactly the same way the next time it was needed. Voodoo and confidence were more successful than logic.
Anyway, I’ve bought Swift Publisher for similar tasks at home which is so much easier for a child (and me!) to use, so hopefully we can build some confidence and experience at home with a tool that’s actually designed for the job. We’ll save the Word Processor for when he’s actually got some words to process.
13 responses so far ↓
1 Colin Brooks // 18th Apr 2008 at 3:53 pm
I haven’t used Swift Publisher before. I’m downloading it as I type this comment because it seems like a great piece of software. You are right, MS Word is not the best program to be using for things like that. However, it’s popular and if you push hard enough it can do things it’s not really meant to do. I think they use it so students already know how to use at least one word processor and it is something that most offices use also. I remember student placements (you know the ones that go into a work experience placement for a week or so) who, although were pretty young, knew how to at least use Word and the MS Office suite (since the rest of it uses the same principles).
I love my iMac too (I love it more than my MacBook because of the massiveness of the screen – 24″ can fit a lot of stuff) and the apps available for Mac OS X can do things so much easier than Windows programs. I find it extremely frustrating to use Windows (both XP and Vista) now but I am still stuck with using MS Office for Mac because I must make my documents and work compatible with the computers at Uni and what other students use. I should not complain, Word covers my needs for now since I just have to produce text reports and having tried the iWork suite as well I don’t feel I’m missing anything but Swift Publisher looks great!
2 Pewari // 18th Apr 2008 at 3:58 pm
It is excellent – had a play with it this afternoon with Akra Jr, and he found it much easier just to drag and drop things around. He enjoyed it much more and was more creative as a result, I think.
If you end up getting it, it’s worth getting the actual boxed retail version as you get more clip art (and it’s good clip art – lots of photos, rather than crappy clip art). Also have a look at the bundle PrintFolio which includes Swift Publisher with extras like Art Text (mac equivalent of Word Art, but better) and CD label design thingie, business card design, mailing labels etc for not much extra cost.
3 Pewari // 18th Apr 2008 at 4:01 pm
Just had a look, PrintFolio (which is the bundle version) comes in at £44 – not bad considering Windows MS Publisher is £150…
4 Colin Brooks // 18th Apr 2008 at 4:16 pm
Yeah I saw the prices! I will try it in a bit and see if it’s worth buying now. I’m trying not to spend too much money on things I could live without. Since I don’t have a proper job and I’m still a student, every little helps.
I didn’t mean this to sound like an advert for Tesco.
5 Pewari // 18th Apr 2008 at 5:02 pm
I remember that time of life well :)
I’d like to say that it gets easier, but I don’t have a proper job… shouldn’t be spending money on things I could live without…
6 Colin Brooks // 18th Apr 2008 at 5:08 pm
That’s the best way to spend money though!
7 anabels // 19th Apr 2008 at 9:24 am
Getting Word to do things it is nominally designed to do is an exercise in fustration a lot of the time. Try getting page numbering to be in Roman numerals for some parts and in arabic numerals for another and starting at a aprticular page number at a particular point in the document. Never mind having to control double spacing for main body but single space indented for quotations. So I am beyond not surprised that it isn’t very good at handling images which is why i cheated for as long as I could with teh thesis and had the images as separate documents that i printed and put in the right places in the bound copies. Unfortunately the final version had to be a single electronic file. Converting it to PDF was the most painless part of the process. I am impressed that Akra jnr hasn’t punched the computer or his ICT teacher!
8 Pewari // 19th Apr 2008 at 10:13 am
anabels: ugh yes, I remember having to do reports and dissertation on earlier incarnation on Word it was not fun.
I also remember the first time I had to write some training documentation on the Mac. I used Pages (the Mac equivalent of Word) and had to have a title page, table of contents, main body with loads of screenshots and a glossary. I was prepared to do battle…
… it was so *easy* I was in shock. So how come Word couldn’t be designed to be as intuitive?!
9 Miss L // 19th Apr 2008 at 10:14 am
Have a look at the curriculum online, then it will give you a good idea of what he will be doing. Lots of fun activities in the maths section!!
10 GoodTwin // 21st Apr 2008 at 11:51 am
Word’s handling of long documents has long frustrated me with the daft section breaks and trying to keep numbering straight. Even worse if you want chapter numbers with page references.
I used Wordperfect (for DOS to start with) and they had a superb interface for that sort of thing – it was simple codes, much like html is today. You want that as a title? You put [title][/title] around it, etc.
Such a shame that M$ dominates the world.
11 Lyle // 21st Apr 2008 at 2:25 pm
It’s not strictly relevant (and I don’t know if there’s a Mac version) but I’ve found I now use OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org) as an MS Office replacement, and it suits me fine.
Also, there’s one hell of a lot less Voodoo required to get things to work – and you can still set it to save docs as MS Office filetypes(although not the ’08 version as yet, which is fine because Office’08 is f’kin ‘orrible IMHO) and open MS Office docs straight into OpenOffice.
12 Colin Brooks // 21st Apr 2008 at 2:31 pm
Lyle :: OpenOffice is cross-platform and so it works on Macs as well. It’s pretty much the same as MS Office though when it comes to DTP. Neither of those are designed to do something like that but if you put enough time and effort (and swearing) into it you’ll eventually get something out.
13 Pewari // 21st Apr 2008 at 4:18 pm
Miss L: that’s a good idea, I will do.
GoodTwin: WordPerfect was great in comparison, wasn’t it. However, like many I’m sure, I do prefer a WYSIWIG interface, as long as it doesn’t behave idiosyncratically. There are word processors out there which manage it…
Lyle: Yes, heard lots of good things about OpenOffice and it does come for Mac. At the moment, though, I don’t need to use MS formats so am happy enough with iWork and now Swift Publisher for DTP stuff. But if I have issues in the future, I’ll be downloading OpenOffice.
Colin: the swearing is the really crucial bit, which makes it so much more tricky in front of children ;)
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