[Scribus] Using Scribus in the classroom?

[Moritz Dorka]

Hi Rolf, hi Craig,

On Tuesday 07 November 2006 00:17, Craig Bradney wrote: 
> I think the youngest known Scribus user that the team is aware of is 6.. so 
> a 4th or a 5th grader should be fine. I might be an exception, but I was 
> certainly typing quite ok by the time I was 9..

I was able to type by the age of 9, too. But probably we're both exceptional. 
Look where you are now: You are a Scribus *developer* and I'm, well, at least 
a user. But nevertheless, you cant expect everybody to be like us. The vast 
majority of kids (at least at my school) is _not_ able to type at that age. 
Even graduates (my age) have difficulties setting footnotes or tables 
correctly. And I'm talking of shitty M$ Word (not Scribus), which they use 
for almost everything (including 30 page essays which make Word crash every 
other time).
I recently tried to give an introduction to LaTeX in an InfoTech class (18/19 
year olds). No way. 90 % werent able to produce a document without errors 
(and were not talking about fancy stuff here). Not to talk about using it 
productively. They laughed at me: Why should we use such an old command line 
tool if there is "Microsoft Word" out there. Well, sooner or later they'll 
realize...

On 07 November 2006 08:15, Eilert wrote:
> Our son discovered Publisher when he was 10 or 11 and produced some 
> marvelous private newspapers with it which he distributed in the family. 
> He is using DTP ever since, and Scribus from its first Windows version, 
> no problems.

If you pick the students (so make it some sort of extracurricular activity) I 
have little doubts that it fails. If they are willing to do it, the chances 
to succed are much higher anyways. But as I said, an average 5th grade (who 
is forced to do it) will almost certainly not manage to work with Scribus.
No matter if there are templates or not.

Your son did work with Publisher out of his own effort, right? And he succeded 
and had fun? No wonder...

--
Moritz Dorka
www.fvsgy.de