There are other DEs/WMs out there. XFCE, LXDE if you want a somewhat complete DE, WindowLab if you want something minimal but like your mouse, i3 if you like tiling (or xmonad if you swing that way).
KDE's sure to use more memory than some of the other competition, and if you're like me and only have 2GB of RAM in your primary machine, that's important.
The tech curriculum at my high school (Northcote College, in Auckland, New Zealand) is rather advanced compared to some others I've seen. First years get a half-year compulsory course, which covers some aspects of Adobe Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Flash, as well as the good old Microsoft Office skillset. From second year onwards, it's all optional.
Second-year course (which is a full-year course) covers the same stuff as first-year, but more web stuff using Dreamweaver, basic CSS, more Photoshop, less Flash. It also dabbles in VB.NET programming.
Third-year (NCEA Level One) is a full-year course which does more web stuff, and much much much more VB.NET (it's all relatively simple stuff though. writing a small list sorting algorithm is amongst what has to be done).
Fourth and fifth year (NCEA L2 and L3 respectively) I don't know anything about, because I'm only a third-year and haven't done any of those courses yet
It's all kind of basic, though. Photoshop, Dreamweaver, VB.NET. I refused to use Dreamweaver in my courses and started using Sublime Text instead
"A child is a person who can't understand why someone would give away a perfectly good kitten." -- Doug Larson
