Teaching new high school course, LR and PSE

There's the possibility that I could be teaching a PP course next September to about 15-20 grade 11s -- that's what you call juniors in the states, IIRC. It's a brand new course that I'd have to build from the ground up. (I'm currently teaching special ed to troubled teens at another school of the district -- what we call "school board".)

FYI, we're talking 110 hours of in-class instruction and work. Can't assign homework because a) those kids might not have LR4 at home and b) the photography computer lab is not available after hours. The program supervisor hinted that's he'd like 75% Lightroom and 25 % Photoshop Elements 8 (The school board won't buy 20 copies of CS6, so an old version of Elements will have to do the trick.)

My personal workflow involves LR4 on a daily basis, with perhaps 10% of my time spent on PS CS (Yeah, my own version of Photoshop is outdated, I know. What do you want, I have an addiction to lenses...)

What's the raw material that the kids will work from? They're also taking a 110-hour credit "intro to photography", with entry-level Nikon D3000. (I might also teach that course, but that's another story and thread...) As soon as they understand the expose triangle, DOF and other basic concepts, the students will be shooting RAW (actually, NEF) exclusively.

I taught myself LR4 following Scott Kelby's most excellent book, and I'm thinking of splitting the course in units according to LR's modules or following Kirby's table of contents, to keep things logical, skipping what we don't really need (i.e. Book)

Any thoughts/comments/sugg​estions?

It's not as clear in my mind as to what would be the most important to cover in PSE, givent that the bulk of the workflow will be in LR4...

Thanks

Consider that the kids will quickly get bored if they do only an isolated unit on Import and then nothing downstream in the workflow. Then they will will quickly get bored if they do only an isolated unit on Develop and then nothing downstream in the workflow. So you really do need to give them a greatly simplified complete workflow from the beginning! -- basic Import, then basic Develop, then basic Print and/or Export, etc.

My own approach would be to start with Introduction session(s) to teach the organization and overall flow of using LR, to get them interested. After doing that, then delve more into the details of using the different parts of LR...Library, Develop, etc.

Visit the bookstore or public library and see how the many books on LR have been organized. You might run into one which is particularly well organized to appeal to the impatient teen brain while still managing to instill knowledge into it!

Wow...

I'd say your challenge would be to find a way to actually make things interesting to a bunch of teenagers!

I'd consider Lightroom to be an "adult" application, focusing on Digital Asset Management (can you say "boring"?) and having at the heart a great "digital darkroom" for Raw processing (If anyone is interested).

Honestly, if you want to get the kids interested in an active way, you may get more mileage by getting into the "toys" that Elements offers, things like cloning, composites, things that can get their "creative side" working. You can use Lightroom to get them going with DAM "on the side", shooting Raw to get the "basics" of the digital darkroom down, but for teenage beginners I'd think a good introduction to Elements might get them "stirred up"...Scott Kelby does, by the way, offer a "primer" on Elements -- good tutorials for some cool stuff!

I am assuming that you have some kind if smartboard/projector setup. I would start with showing them some poorly composed, exposed, wb'd image. Go around the room-having the students critique the image (they should understand basic rules/theory) explaining what they would have done differently. Then show them your final (and extremely drastic) lightroom edit. That should pique their interest. The following day, walk them through the sliders on how you created the new image. Break them in to groups of 4ish (once the slider mechanics are understood). Have these groups battle (using the same image), showing off their new skills. Have members of the group explain to the class the "what, why, and how" of their changes.

I definitely assign "homework" - have them take photos for them to upload into lightroom and after they finish a session, have them upload to their favorite photo hosting site like Flickr, facebook. I think you can capture their interest when they edit their own stuff and then share with friends. Teenagers these days are very web social. Seems to be that 110 hours for LR/PSE would be a bit much for teenagers; maybe some basic photo techniques could be added in.

My high school physics teacher was pretty popular, because at least once a week he would put together a little "special effects project" that when he would set it off in class would always "blow our minds"!

Now, many years later, I don't recall the actual subject matter, but at least we kept coming back!

As it happens, there is a similar thread that's seeing some activity:

https://photography-on-the.net …/showthread.php​?t=1279451

Dawicka2 wrote in post #15665399
I am assuming that you have some kind if smartboard/projector setup. I would start with showing them some poorly composed, exposed, wb'd image. Go around the room-having the students critique the image (they should understand basic rules/theory) explaining what they would have done differently. Then show them your final (and extremely drastic) lightroom edit.

Great idea! But I think I'd have to be careful: a wicked LR edit that goes WOW! on my home monitor might turned "BLEAH?" on the classroom's cheap, uncalibrated projector, where everything might be desaturated...

Note to self: test it first...

OK, well it's official, I'm the teacher they picked to teach that special photo-intensive program!
I'll spend most of the month of August prepping and planing the equivalent of a full-day, five days a week for 20 weeks (late Jan. to late June) program, attracting juniors and seniors (grade 11 and 12) from across the school board. Class size will be about 15 students or so.
One subject is Photography 101 -- with Nikon D3000, three-station 850 sq. ft. studio, strobes hooked on tracks or stands, -- the other is the aforementionned Digital Imaging 101 (LR and PS LE), while the two 75 minute periods of the afternoon are cooperative education, learning by real life projects. While the program coordinator is thinking about feeding microstock sites, I'm more thinking about created a photo agency, taking photographs on assignment at the grade schools where my students once attended. Plus, we could get into the whole senior portrait (U.S. style, as opposed to what happens here, where a photographer sets up a couple of lights in the library, every senior dons a cap and gown and smiles for the camera.)
I've also learned I'd have a budget for field trips that would blow my mind.
My challenge -- and I'm looking forward to it -- is to create from scratch, or so, an interesting program that's All Photography, All the Time.

I'm thinking there might also be value in having them all work on the same image you picked for a purpose (I understood you were only going to have them use their own shots, apologies if I misunderstood). Maybe take a nice sunset, overexpose on purpose, and teach them to recover blown skies while keeping a believable transition between the sky and foreground; or a nice architectural shot, and teach them to spot remove the people in the picture; or a RAW street shot, and show them how to do a B&W conversion. Stuff like that. Cool pictures that can wow them to keep them interested, and themes they'll use routinely.

Another update: the program starts at the second semester (late Jan. to late June)... Less than a dozen students with me all day long.
I've started creating the curriculum, which lists the course's expectations.

I've split my digital imaging course -- remember, it's 110 hours of in-class instruction -- into five units:

• Basic Lightroom:file management and culling (following Kelby's first few chapters) , basic image processing (global, exposure, WB, tonal curves)
  
• Advanced LR: image processing (local, curves, B&W conversion, sharpening, print/slideshow modules)
  
• Basic Photoshop: watermarking, shape clusters, basic tools and retouching, layers and unsharp maks
  
• Advanced Photoshop: exposure blending using layers, HDR, tilt-shift effect
  
• Ethics: research based on a current issue (World Photo Press 2013, Nat Geo's shifting pyramids, perhaps USSR's politburo's retouching of fallen members...)
  

Is this a photography course, or a PP course? I don't see where you cover getting a better image before you get to the PP stage? Things like composition & light should fit in at the beginning, & as much as you might hate it, something like "Getting better images with your camera phone" would probably be appreciated?

You might show them the free GIMP so that they would have a program to use at home.

PhotoGuy, it's a full-blown PP course. I'll also teach the same students a photo 101 lass, with Nikons D3000. Everything that is SOOC is covered in the photo class, what happens once you copy the RAW files to the hard drive is the digital imaging (i.e. PP) class. Both are 110 hours.

^ ^ My miStEAk! I missed that "One subject is Photography 101" in post #9! ; )

What a cool high school course. I'd have jumped all over that back in the day. Of course that would have meant plate cameras with bellows and darkrooms and such.