Alexandra College Alexandra College (www.alexandracollege.ie) is a Day and Boarding school for girls in Milltown, Dublin 6. The school network is based on Windows 2000 and Mac OSX. All staff have an Apple iBook or Macbook. Roll-out of MacBooks to 2nd Year students started on March 28th, 2007. This is a pilot programme and it is envisaged that, following a successful pilot lasting one year, every 2nd Year student will use a MacBook or equivalent in school. All classrooms are equipped with fixed data projectors. ICT is taught in 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th years. Students study for Pitman City & Guilds and Commercial Examining Board of Ireland (CEB) exams and ECDL. We also hope to offer ECDL Webstarter qualifications to Transition Year students in 2007/2008. Computers are available to students in three locations – 30 iMacs in the main IT teaching room; 14 PCs in the Science Block; and 14 iMacs in the College Library. Staff also have access to a Resource Room equipped with four PCs and 5 iMacs. All staff and students have full Internet access, managed by VicomGateway software, and an email address. Staff and students are encouraged to use technology in class and in their own work, where appropriate. Click to enlarge Students use the Microsoft Office 2004 suite to prepare for ECDL, Pitman and CEB exams. The most commonly used applications are MS Word and MS Excel. By 5th year, students can have as many as six qualifications in IT. Students also use MS Office in a variety of subject areas. For example, in 2006/2007, 2nd Year students, in CSPE and ICT classes, used Word and Excel, along with other packages, to develop and present findings related to the College’s Buddy System and the issue of bullying. Click to enlarge Developed by Macromedia, and now owned by Adobe, Dreamweaver is an industry-standard Web Design tool. Students in Transition Year use Dreamweaver as part of the IT Design module to develop and design Websites. They also use Macromedia/Adobe Fireworks, also an industry-standard tool for editing and creating images for Websites. In 2nd Year, students are introduced to HTML as a basis for working with Dreamweaver. Although Dreamweaver is a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIYG) editor, students are also encouraged to look “under the bonnet” and to become familiar with editing HTML code in Dreamweaver. Click to enlarge Available only for Apple OSX, GarageBand is a music recording and editing tool. 1st Year students are introduced to GarageBand - they write and record their own music and use instruments, notably midi sequencers, in conjunction with the application. Transition Year students commonly use GarageBand for developing PodCasts and making recordings. In 2006/2007, for example, a TY French class use the application to write and record French conversations to develop their understanding of spoken slang in French. Students can also export their finished work to iTunes in MP3 format and burn the completed work to CD or transfer to MP3 players. Click to enlarge Also available only for Mac OSX, iMovie is a movie editing programme that is used extensively in Alexandra College, by both students and staff. 1st Year students learn the basics of iMovie by developing a movie on events around the world on the day they were born. Students are encouraged to use a number of media for this project – scanned photos, digital images, downloaded music and movie clips, their own movie clips etc. Students are also encouraged to put their bluetooth mobile phones and other devices to good use for this project by transferring movie clips, photos etc. from their phone to their iMac. Transition Year students have the option of studying Videography. In this module, they learn about script development, write their own scripts and shoot and edit their own movies. These movies are presented to the College community throughout the year and are entered into the Fresh Film Festival. In 5th Year, students use iMovie in ICT class, in conjunction with a Leaving Certificate class, to develop a movie on an area of interest – recent projects have included the poem “For Heidi With Blue Hair”, osmosis and World War I. Click to enlarge Click to enlarge Apple’s iWork suite includes Keynote, Pages, iTunes, GarageBand and iWeb. Students and staff use these applications for a variety of classes. Keynote is a visual presentation tool, much like the presentation tool in MS Office, OpenOffice etc. Pages is a simple but powerful Desktop Publishing application. Students use Pages for such tasks as book reviews, College newsletters etc. iTunes is often used in conjunction with Keynote, iWeb and other applications for adding audio to projects. 2nd and 5th Year students use iWeb, a simple but powerful tool for creating Websites with such advanced features as message boards, RSS feeds etc. Click to enlarge Firefox (www.firefox.com and www.mozilla.org) is an open-source and freely available Web browser. The College also uses Apple’s Safari browser and Internet Explorer on PCs. Any of these browsers can be used but students are encouraged to use Firefox and to explore extensibility through the use of add-ons, GreaseMonkey scripts etc. Click to enlarge Click to enlarge
Microsoft Office 2004
Dreamweaver
GarageBand
iMovie
ComicLife
Available only for Mac OSX, ComicLife is used to visually and quickly create comic books. This application is particularly popular with Modern Languages teachers who use it to improve written languages. The prgramme can be used in conjunction with iPhoto, a Mac-only image editing/storage application. Teachers find that this application can be used quickly and efficiently to demonstrate and improve upon particular areas of language acquisition.
iWork
Firefox
GoogleDocs
GoogleDocs (www.google.com) is a freely available online application for creating, editing and sharing Word Processing and Spreadsheet documents. In 2007/2008, all students will set up a free account with Google and will use GoogleDocs for where appropriate in place of MS Word or MS Excel. GoogleDocs is particularly powerful because it contains all of the common features of Word Processing and Spreadsheet programs (MS Office, OpenOffice etc.) and, most importantly, it allows users to share their work online. This allows for quick tracking and marking of work by teachers and can do away with the need to print out taks.
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