Teaching Intro to Publishing

[wordtothis]

might also be worth giving students a little grounding in the print process too, taking them to a local print shop so they know how it all works too.. and perhaps gain a better understanding of the system as a whole not just their niche.. definately cant hurt..

Truer words have never been typed.
ALL of the shops I've worked in have press operators that can't stand prepress operators and vice-versa. I believe this is because one group "knows" that the other doesn't empathize with them. Arguable the most important thing you can impress on your students is to understand the process from beginning to end. Not only will this help them perform their tasks more efficiently, they will have the respect and understanding of their colleagues. When a worker can count on someone in another department to do their job correctly because they know what's required further along in the workflow, it helps all other processes come together more effectively.

[oxburger]

I got into printing in 93 by taking a two year course at a community college. I got into it just as the college got rid of a 6 color Heidelberg press and used the proceeds to buy Macs. Thank God for that. I'm now happily entrenched in the prepress side of things. While I've learned most of what I know about prepress by "trial by fire" in the real world, I'm glad I took the program I did. We had classes in the following that helped round out my understanding of the printing world, so hopefully you'll benefit from some of these as ideas.

• Design
• Photography
• Camera (most likely not needed these days)
• Paste up (again, for the dinosaurs)
• Offset press operations (we had to run one good sheet of a duotone image, used 500 make ready to get there, but damnit, it looked good (pressmen insert snicker here) But at least my team wasn't as bad as the team who had their whole dampening roller looking like a paint roller covered in red paint...
• Stripping (can you say "make sure you don't cut through your base") must have used a whole role of ruby tape on my final project.
• Quark
• Estimating
• Paper and Ink
• Photoshop

[wordtothis]

I got into printing in 93 by taking a two year course at a community college. I got into it just as the college got rid of a 6 color Heidelberg press and used the proceeds to buy Macs. Thank God for that. I'm now happily entrenched in the prepress side of things. While I've learned most of what I know about prepress by "trial by fire" in the real world, I'm glad I took the program I did. We had classes in the following that helped round out my understanding of the printing world, so hopefully you'll benefit from some of these as ideas.

• Design
• Photography
• Camera (most likely not needed these days)
• Paste up (again, for the dinosaurs)
• Offset press operations (we had to run one good sheet of a duotone image, used 500 make ready to get there, but damnit, it looked good (pressmen insert snicker here) But at least my team wasn't as bad as the team who had their whole dampening roller looking like a paint roller covered in red paint...
• Stripping (can you say "make sure you don't cut through your base") must have used a whole role of ruby tape on my final project.
• Quark
• Estimating
• Paper and Ink
• Photoshop

Ahh yes, manual stripping and camera work. I used to HATE hearing the undergraduates whine and moan about having to strip ONE PROJECT!
And, I don't think there's any great way to teach estimating in school other than just to learn a lot of it on the job. The school environment is too regimented, not true enough to the real thing. Though I think teachers who try to talk about estimating in school programs are very honorable for doing so, there's no comparison with actually doing it, at all.

[splenguin]

I realize that it's probably not your decision, but let me emphasize that teaching them Publisher would be a complete waste of their time and yours.

[GazKL440]

We used to have students come in on a regular basis from local TAFE colleges, they would be there to learn about "what happens to your file after you hit send" Very very few understood what a printing press was or how it worked, most didnt want to know what happened between 'send' and 'invoice' Im hoping that teaching them about laying up film and burning plates on vacuum frames and the printing process in general might have helped and perhaps bridged the gap between the two rooms... i wonder if any of those students are still in he game...