Its a no brainer to have the GIMP installed on every machine in school. Whilst Photoshop is the industry standard bitmap graphics editing package (at least until this generation of kids leave school) the GIMP is the child’s choice. Why?
Forget the question of relative cost of ownership (to the school) and performance, the most important thing is that the child knows that they can go home safely install the GIMP and keep expanding their creativity outside school.
Otherwise we are tacitly saying:
1. We don’t value independent learning enough. We don’t expect you to want to use what you learned at school in your own projects at home.
2 a) You have to be rich to get ahead – non educational Photoshop licence £500; b) You have to steal software to get ahead. and c) It is safe to install cracked software on your system at home.
Furthermore by using the GIMP you are introducing the children to the Open Source software model, a collaborative, distributed and social constructivist phenonoman that is closely aligned with the values of education and a thoroughly modern concept for future generations.
If you are just thinking IT’S FREE, you are missing out on the main part of the story.
