This collection gives teens the tools to express their technical wizardy.

Classroom teachers know that state standards rather than digital gadgets drive instruction. But truth be told, it's often the technology that motivates students to do the work.

Company: Adobe Systems

System Requirements: Intel Pentium 4 or Celeron 2.3 GHz processor; Windows XP; 512 MB RAM, color monitor with 16-bit video card, DVI link/ FireWire/I-EEE 1394 interface to connect a Digital 8 or DV camcorder, or a USB-2 interface to connect a DV-via-USB- compatible DV camcorder

Grade/Price: Middle school and later; volume licensing only, $149 per copy for up to 999 copies, plus $22 for the CDs

Pros: Four heavy-hitting applications enabling students to create and share digital content; teacher resource CD with lesson plans, training materials, and product help; affordable

Cons: Primarily just four standalone products bundled together in a single collection; applications require significant learning time to master.

The success of Apple's iPod and Web sites like MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube suggests that tweens (ages 8-13) and teens alike appreciate opportunities to share messages, audio files, photos, and video clips with online friends. Adobe's Digital School Collection turns their love of techno-wizardry into a teachable moment, enabling them to construct digital narratives focused on classroom instruction. If students know they are going public with their work, they will be much more inclined to put in their best effort.

This collection of digital communication tools includes four popular Adobe applications: Photoshop Elements 5.0, Premiere Elements 3.0, Contribute 4, and Acrobat 8 Professional. It also has a teacher resource CD with lesson plans and assessments for science, history, civics, and art, plus hands-on tutorials, technical guides, teaching advice, images, videos, and links to online educational resources. I'll examine each product's highlights.

Learn more about

• Photoshop Elements
• Premiere Elements
• Acrobat Professional
• Contribute 4
  

Unlike Adobe Creative Suite or Studio 8, Digital School Collection applications function independently of each other. They do not constitute a tightly integrated suite. However, some products incorporate features that facilitate work within the others. For example, users can manually configure the File Editor Preferences in Contribute 4 so that double-clicking an image automatically opens it for editing in Photoshop Elements. Each application makes use of the browser-based Adobe Help Center searchable by topic, keyword, index, and bookmark. Similarly, all applications in the Collection include a user friendly Start page with links to common tasks.

Digital technology, like plumbing, often works unnoticed until it breaks down. Applications in Adobe's Digital School Collection constitute the basic plumbing of digital communication. They're versatile, robust, and will require time to master, but collectively they incorporate a full complement of tools to create and share digital content at a very affordable price.

By Carol S. Holzenberg

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