Back to school with Adobe's Education Exchange

When I last reported on Adobe’s Education Exchange site, it was a fledgling social learning destination with several lessons that integrated Adobe professional tools posted for teachers to use or modify with their students. I was impressed when Adobe first formally rolled out the beta of the site at ISTE this year, but taking another look this fall left me pleasantly surprised at the richness and breadth of lessons that teachers were sharing. In fact, it has become my go-to site when I want to learn to do something new or interesting with CS5.

I’m no graphics or design guru. My wife, the aesthete, will be happy to tell you that. My own website stinks and is badly in need of a facelift and fresh content (not to mention a better host than an old desktop in my basement, where our miserable DSL service often leaves 6geeks.net dead in the water). I’ve been happy letting Joomla and WordPress handle the layout and content for me (I’ve used both and was planning a full migration to WordPress this summer, but just never got around to it), but since I’m a real live consultant now, it’s time for something a little bit less blog-y and a little more website-y. I need the site to be much more focused and give clients quick access to what I do, how I do it, and my philosophies in Ed Tech. I also need to be able to distribute an e-book I’m working on whenever I manage to get it finished.

And here’s where Adobe and the Education Exchange come in. I’ve been wanting to learn Dreamweaver and really pit it against some of the less expensive tools out there to see if my earlier impressions of CS5 and its potential roles in tech education (and educational technology) continued to ring true, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity. I’ve used Dreamweaver in the past, but a lot has changed since CS3, so the 6geeks.net redesign gave me an excuse to really dive in.