I agree, Kristie!!! If at all possible start the students in middle school using CS6.

We're running the Creative Suite 6 in our middle school; my children are "economicaly-disadvantaged" ( I HATE that label). There was a great debate: Elements or the full versions?

I can tell you, firsthand, these kids are capable of the full program. This year we're launching a program to have our 8th graders certified as Adobe Certified Associates before they leave. Again, these are children that people have written off as "unteachable." There's no need to "lower the bar." Heck, my middle school kids pick up this stuff faster than some of the adults I teach! :)

In my mind (a very scary place indeed ) I would think that Elements would work great for Middle School (Grades 6,7,8) but for High School students they should be exposed to CS versions. Elements would give them a background in Layers, organizing images, toning, selections and Adjustment Layers.

Thanks, Linda. We don't have an art program thats sophisticated to start a Elements to CS for our students. To me it would make sense to use a new version of Elements in elementary and CS in secondary, but even if it were not that, a first time user, not having any background in an art program at all, will not have a problem using a standard version of Photoshop. Truly, I can settle on using Elements 10.0 now in grades 9-10. However, does it really matter? Id rather use CS5 or 6 bc the choices of project types is larger and more creative in CS. Particularly in painting. The different brushes and tips and mixer brushes, etc.,...

To me, its all about the theory of what you teach, not learning the whole program just to begin making art. Then just use Photoshop for the things you need to do. Back to Elements, though, the new version has capabilities that Photoshop has, like masking. This says something. Elements was created for Photo-editing,for photoggraphy, and thats great!! Its perfect for that, and not so much creating other forms of art, even if you can use the paint brushes and filters and effects etc,... they are just not as open, and they are a little limited in the older versions. The new version of Elements is def better than the older ones.

This is a very good topic and I have been looking for some major responses from professionals, educators or industry pros,...I am both!

I will tell you right off the bat that I believe in raising the bar for students in high school. A standadrd version of a Photoshop CS suite should be just fine for secondary education. I do not think its too advanced to understand. If you teach any kind of art using Photoshop, you will never get into using all of its features in one semester course or year long course. The idea for any art application is to use it for a specific reason or specific type of art that it can be useful and effective for the art subject being taught. That being said, if you compare Photoshop Elements to a CS version, high school kids can get more out of the CS version bc there are so many more kinds of art projects one can do and complete using the new paint features to the editing tools for photos. Whatever the kind of art you are having the students work in, you do not need to teach the entire package just to learn a specific kind of art where certain tools will not even be tampered with. For example, if I am teaching an animation course and I want to use Photoshop CS6, then I wil be teaching my students how to create animation not how to paint an oil painting and learn how to use the brushes and special paint brush features, etc., etc., ...Now if anyone has a problem about students tampering with other parts of the app and may take away from someone elses course using Photoshop, I say, it just strengthens and reinforces the skills AND, as a teacher, discipline is part of grading, so students need to know that they will be repremanded if they use techniques not needed for learning a particular art using Photoshop. I am not telling anyone how to teach their class,so to speak, but just explaining that is one option to make students understand.

WHEW!!! I hope thats easy to understand. I have a situation at the school I work in that is making it difficult to use CS5 and I am forced to use Elemets 2.0. I can go into alot of rationale here as to why I should be using a CS version, but even in a beginners course Photoshop is not a major difficulty to learn and besides that, I am in a pc lab that uses Win XP Pro, and using old versions of ANY software is an issue bc the Network server is a Win 7 Pro server system and there are a TON of functionality issues that are driving me and my students crazy.For example, the simple task of saving a file cant be done bc Elements cant save to a certain memeory amount like 1 TB of data, or whatever. What it is is that Elements 2.0 is not meant to work with Win 7 Pro and its time to upgrade so it can. I dont want to come up with altermate ways to save a file when I should do it straight from the software, not resort to saving to a local drive and copy and paste from a window and send it to the right folder.

There is a whole lot of stuff going on in my situation but I'll explain once I get any responses here.

Thanks all!!!

I am a secondary educator in New Jersey.