Training the Trainers

Fifteen years ago, Photoshop education cost designers thousands of dollars. If you wanted to improve your skills, you had to go to specialized seminars and conferences, often on your own dime. As a  struggling photographer and designer myself, I wanted to help emerging designers avoid the financial strain I had to endure. This is where the Houston Photoshop Meetup began. 

A Community Leader

Over the course of five years, the group grew to over 1,000 members. I delivered two to four trainings per month, often in the back rooms of restaurants, coffee shops, and libraries. In 2008, Adobe recognized my efforts and gave me the title of Adobe Community Manager. Along with the title, that gave us a free Adobe Connect account, where I could now host live webinars to a larger audience. 

Every month, I surveyed the members to determine what was in demand and what skill level the participants possessed. Little did I realize that I was conducting Needs Assessments before this idea became mainstream. My members quickly dubbed me the “Queen of Photoshop,” sending heartfelt thanks and appreciation for my ability to make complex concepts easy and fun. 

Paradigm Shift

Within time, Photoshop tutorials became readily available on YouTube, and our core membership began to disband. On-demand training replaced face-to-face instruction, and my focus shifted. Graphic designers no longer needed free training, but a new audience emerged. Within education, I found that many career and technology (CTE) teachers were being thrown into computer courses with no knowledge of the software they were required to teach. 

Teaching Photoshop requires a different approach than learning Photoshop. Many of the teachers I encountered had no previous experience with the program, putting both them and their students at a severe disadvantage. This is when I developed the Photoshop Bootcamp; the six-lesson course takes teachers through the process of teaching Photoshop, allowing them to gain an understanding of the program as they progress. 

This training was initially offered in person as a one-day event during national edtech conferences. As demand grew, I built an online version within the Canvas learning management system. This allowed teachers to copy and modify the course within their own classrooms, sparing them the time and effort of creating their own curriculum. The Bootcamp course gave way to other mini-projects; overall, I created over 30 Canvas-based project modules that teachers could download and use in their own system.

As online learning has grown, advanced, and evolved, so has the training. To address tech equity issues concerning students who want to learn Photoshop but did not have access to the software, I created several interactive Captivate software simulations. Students can experience the look and feel of the interface without the expense of buying the software.