Rotterdam College Integrates PDF In To Courses

Enfocus Software's certified PDF has been fully integrated in to the day school and the custom school programmes of the Grafisch Lyceum in Rotterdam (Netherlands).

Enfocus Software's certified PDF has been fully integrated in to the day school and the custom school programmes of the Grafisch Lyceum in Rotterdam (Netherlands).

The use of Enfocus's Status Check, Instant PDF, Pitstop Professional, and Pitstop Server, has been integrated in to the day school programmes for design and for media management, as well as in to the pre-press skills training courses.

The Grafisch Lyceum Rotterdam has opted for a step-by-step approach in all relevant training courses by going through the stages of PDF introduction, PDF applications, PDF research and finally the ability to generate flawless certified PDFs.

In 2003 it was already clear that the day school and custom school programmes could not afford to lag behind the standard as it was developing in the Netherlands for digital document delivery for reproduction.

Jeroen de Groot, responsible for quality and innovation, guided the implementation at the Media College, which delivers the communications industry with well over 100 standard or bespoke courses.

Rene Blokzeijl, professor of graphic pre-media techniques at the Grafisch Lyceum Rotterdam, was responsible for cPDF integration in to the day school programme.

To get started with cPDF in the 2004-2005 academic year, the teaching staff had to be trained.

In cooperation with Enfocus, a master class was established to prepare the teachers for the Enfocus certification exam.

Jeroen de Groot said: "The training was so intensive that the Media College has already earned the title of Certified Enfocus Partner.

This is important for both parties.

For Enfocus, it is a test run to find out how the role of certification software in graphic media education can be broadened.

And for the college, it enables us to give our students continuing, up-to-date knowledge about cPDF." He continued: "Implementing cPDF in all our educational programmes is fun but in the first place it is a question of understanding the subject.

Being capable of dealing with Pitstop Professional and Pitstop Server is, in fact, reserved for students who will use it effectively in practice.

Obviously we want to anticipate prevailing trends, especially the ones that become mainstream.

Media College in particular is capable of moving fast.

Think of developments such as certified offset, 'Quality in Print' for the newspapers, the important attention to colour management, workflow development, content management, variable data printing and the arrival of Indesign and we deal with all of them.

We take on the topics that are requested by the industry.

We can do this by means of custom courses." Rene Blokzeijl confirmed that day school education is a different process: "You are grooming young people for their future jobs.

That process takes more time and proceeds step-by-step, with intermediate checks to see if the students have properly understood what has been taught.

In one way or another, all the alumni now leaving the GLR will have encountered cPDF, whatever their training programme.

For designers, cPDF is essential for submitting flawless work.

In management courses, training on digital document examination should be a basic requirement.

In many companies, order management is also responsible for document verification.

They must be able to respond quickly to their clients in case of defective documents, or have the capability to manage the in-house recovery process towards a flawless document.

"That makes know-how and skills about the pivotal function of cPDF a strategic necessity.

In the third year of the pre-media course, students are taught to make their own certified PDFs.

In the course ICT management, the students learn how cPDF can be embedded in to a corporate workflow.

Obviously we assume that they will become even more familiar with cPDF during their year of internship," added Blokzeijl.

To the question of how far GLR's training goes with respect to using different certification profiles for the various types of printed products, Blokzeijl's answer is very clear.

"Their practical existence is accounted for in our course material but together with Enfocus we have developed our own GLR certification profile.

This is almost indispensable for development purposes, for keeping such profiles up-to-date and to avoid confusion in our training programme.

The cPDF profile that was designed for us is also implemented within our own network and in relevant workflow components.

Working with all existing certification profiles would be too cumbersome.

From an educational viewpoint the cPDF principle is always the same and for teaching purposes the GLR certification profile is clear enough.

As long as the students know, for example, that the upper limits of maximum screen coverage are different from one printing technique to another, they get the point and understand that cPDF can be used completely across the entire spectrum of all printing techniques.

This is something they will soon have to use when they are employed in the industry.

Obviously, they will also deal with this in their year of internship and the necessary know-how on this subject forms a logical part of the final exam," concluded Blokzeijl.

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