art_teacher

Yes precisley, To afford the students with a powerful graphics-manipulating software in the hopes of preparing them for more advanced software at the middle and high school levels. I was specifically told that it was a java issue - the reason that paint.net could not/ would not be installed on the school computers. I see that Windows 7 has a new version of Paint, watching the youtube demo, it looked very interesting. Maybe that is the answer - but ultimately its the same situation because I seriously doubt that the school system will upgrade to Windows 7 anytime soon. I suppose if money were not the issue, we would already have something like Adobe Photoshop Elements etc., whereby I may have never found it necessary to actually search for and locate paint.net. However I am very glad I did. Thanks for the reply.

I had been searching for either a bitmap or vector-based drawing program that would be appropriate for K-6 students. My search lead me of course to Paint.net. I teach visual art K-6 at a public school and have taught high school seven years (we often used at the high school-level Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat etc.) with the use of "technology" as the primary tool(s) for the student. The schools that I teach have computers with MS operating systems, which have of course MS Paint installed. MS Paint certainly has it's good points, but I wanted and want for the students to have access to a more robust program. I installed paint.net on my home computer and assessed if it were appropriate for K-6 students. The reasons I thought that paint.net was perfect: 1. (I believed) That paint.net is affiliated, contracted and or created by Microsoft employees. IOWs, that paint.net is completely compatible with MS operating system, i.e. MS XP. A free program akin to MS Movie Maker or MS Storybook. 2. It is free 3. It has the capacity to create layers, a greater variety of selection tools, and not unlike Photoshop, has a 'history' application or many more 'undos' than the original MS Paint - among other very good points - applications and skill-sets necessary for visual art students to become adept and prepared for Adobe Photoshop in middle and high school, where the students will have access to more advanced Adobe software when they arrive. K-6 students at this time do not have access to the Adobe products - which is fine, because paint.net exists. My quandary: After having made a request/recommendation to the IT folks to have paint.net installed on our school computers, I was informed that the installation of paint.net would not happen on the school computers because of "Java Script" issues. As I am not an IT - person, and I do not currently speak Java-nese therefore I'm ignorant of 'Java issues', I am disappointed that my visual art students will not have access to paint.net, as I happen to think it is a perfect transitional software for K-6 students. My questions: If paint.net is presumably (or so I thought) the next version/generation of MS Paint, why would it not be compatible on our school computers just like MS Movie Maker or MS Picture Story, or Google Sketchup for that matter? Is there anyone that could please explain to me in laymen's terms why paint.net would not be appropriate to be installed on school computers - apparently because of 'java issues'? I believe it would be completely awesome for K-6 students to have access to paint.net at school during their visual art class. Thank you kindly. Leo