Flex Builder free to Education ... what about ColdFusion

October 24, 2007 · 10 Comment s

I just read, via Matt Woodward - who is talking at Scotch on the Rocks 2008 by the way - that Adobe are offering Flex Builder 2 at no cost to Students and Faculty at Educational institutions world wide.

Great news in my opinion.

Following on from this, I've often pondered how Adobe could inject ColdFusion into education. Here in the UK, there are a great deal of Universities and Colleges that are using ColdFusion in one way or another; hosting their website, offering hosted services to students, or even in the rare case actually teaching it.

I believe the University of Abertay, Dundee actually teach ColdFusion as part of their syllabus.

All this is great, but what more could be done to help ColdFusion penetrate the educational sector, and more importantly see graduating students come out looking for ColdFusion jobs rather than just whatever is currently being taught (which in my case was Java or Eiffel).

Provide students on any Computer Science related course with a free copy of ColdFusion Standard?
Offer each Computer Science (or related) department at every University or College a free copy of ColdFusion Enterprise?

What else could be done?

Tags: ColdFusion · Flex · adobe · Education

10 response s so far ↓

1 Raymond Camden // Oct 24, 2007 at 5:56 PM

Errrr... why? Students can already download and use CF free. This is more than enough for them to learn CF. It only costs to host. Flex Builder 2, being entirely client side, makes sense to be free for students.
2 Sean Corfield // Oct 24, 2007 at 7:23 PM

So that they can provide internal hosting for student projects without requiring students to install ColdFusion on their computers (that would be up to the students - and as you say that's already free) and without having to install ColdFusion on every lab computer. Think about how other web technologies are dealt with in education: student projects are placed on central servers so they can be viewed by everyone.
3 Raymond Camden // Oct 24, 2007 at 7:26 PM

But that would be free for the school - not the student. I think it would be easier for Adobe to do that (one license per comp sci class for example) as opposed to giving free licenses to all the students.
4 Andy Allan // Oct 24, 2007 at 8:08 PM

OK, giving the students a copy of a server product *probably* isn't that useful. Having a "ColdFusion Builder" to give away would definately be better. And yes I know we have CFEclipse, but Mark is one man and has a day job, and probably likes to get out and about every now and then.

I'mjust trying to think of how we can capture students and actually hold onto them AFTER they graduate.

It's not just the free software angle I'm looking at, it's also how can we introduce ColdFusion into the official curriculum, and certainly giving free server licenses to the CS departments would be a good move.
5 James Buckingham // Oct 24, 2007 at 8:37 PM

Go straight to the source!

I think we've talked about this before Andy but Adobe should be getting out there and organising awareness tours. Arrange to go round the Universities and present the selling points of ColdFusion to Students and Tutors. Microsoft are doing it (http://www.microsoft.com/uk/academia/inspirationtour/default.mspx) why not Adobe?
6 Andy J // Oct 26, 2007 at 12:03 AM

A student/tutor tour would be great. Adobe could get a massive bus and drive around parking up at ........ hold on a minute havent they done that for AIR in the states!

I don't know what the answer is to getting the CF word out there but it just annoys me that Adobe do come up with some good/cool/amazing ideas on how to promote all they other products. And yet we (I) just get excited seeing CF included on a cover disc.
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