Clongowes Wood College Clongowes Wood College (www.clongowes.net) is a secondary boys boarding school with 450 students in Clane, County Kildare. The school computer network is based on Microsoft Windows XP, Apple OS X and Linux. All students and teachers have an email address and access to the Internet for use before, during and after class. All students and teachers have space on the server to save their files and space to run their own website on the intranet. Teachers are increasingly using laptops linked to projectors in their teaching. Computers are available in recreational areas outside of class time and the main computer room is open throughout the day up to 10pm. We facilitate students using variety of ICTs both in their academic work and other areas of their life. We encourage and facilitate them to use a variety of applications on a variety of platforms so they will be comfortable and competent with ICT and won't be dependant on any one piece of software or one software supplier. We favour the use of cross-platform, open source software where appropriate so that students can install them on their own laptops or home computers without cost implications. OpenOffice.Org/StarOffice Click to enlarge The GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Project) Click to enlarge This is an open source application for creating and editing images. It is useful for editing photographs taken with a digital camera which can then be printed or used in other applications such as word processors. We use it as part of a web design course with the transition year students. Students learn how to work with images, use different file formats, working with file sizes, image sizes, combining images etc. GIMP can be freely downloaded from www.gimp.org. There are versions of OpenOffice.Org and StarOffice for Microsoft Windows, Apple OS X and Linux platforms. HTML-Kit Click to enlarge This is an application used for editing HTML (HyperText Markup Language) files. We use it as part of a web design course where we teach students during transition year how to create their own websites. We prefer to teach using this very basic tool rather than a more sophisticated wysiwyg (What You See Is What You Get) editor that will create HTML for you, as this gives the students a better understanding of how the internet is put together. It can also work as an introduction to programming where the student puts commands together telling the computer what to show and how to present it to the user. The software can be freely downloaded from www.chami.com/html-kit/. It is only available for the Windows platform. There are similar free editors available for Apple ( e.g. Taco Edit – http://tacosw.com/htmledit/download.php ) and Linux ( e.g. Quanta http://quanta.kdewebdev.org/index.php) Sibelius Click to enlarge As a word processor is to editing text, Sibelius is to editing music notation. It can be used to create, edit and publish your work. You can also burn your creations to CD or export to mp3 for use in CD or MP3 players. It meets the requirements for the technology section of the Leaving Cert. music course and the proposed technology section for the Junior Cert. music course. It is a professional quality tool commonly used by professional composers. While you can get educational discounts it is still quite expensive. Versions are available for Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X platforms. Software Central has a Sibelius Evalaution available here GarageBand Click to enlarge This application is available only for Apple OS X but comes pre-installed with all new Apple computers. It is used for creating and recording music. Students can attach instruments such as guitars and keyboards and record a number of tracks that can be mixed together to produce a song. By attaching a microphone you can add voice tracks that can be added to the mix. It can also be used for producing podcasts that can be used in project based learning in a number of subject areas. For example you could get a group of students to plan and record their own radio show in French. Any music created can be burned to CD or exported in MP3 format for use in CD or MP3 players iMovie Click to enlarge As with Garageband (see above), this application is available only for Apple OS X but comes pre-installed with all new Apple computers. It can be used for creating and editing video. Once the video has been imported from a video camera, captions, credits, still pictures and special effects can be added. Video can be used in a number of different ways within the curriculum. For example a science teacher could record an experiment and use this in class to show a group of students the correct procedure for the experiment before they try it for themselves. It also has many applications for language learning. Work created can be exported for use within web pages or recorded to DVD using the iDVD application that also comes with Apple computers. On the Fis website there are resources to help you create your own content. Flash Click to enlarge Owned by Macromedia until acquired by Adobe in 2006, Flash is used to produce vector based interactive animations primarily for use on the internet. The animations produced usually have a small file size so they work efficiently on the internet. They can be viewed from computers running Apple OS X, Microsoft Windows or Linux though the application itself is only available for Apple OS X and Microsoft Windows. We use it as part of a web design course taught to transition year students. They are usually given a project to produce an interactive animation that tells a story. Students find their own level within the project with the more able students programming, using the built in ActionScript language, interactivity to produce simple games that other students can play by going to their website on the school intranet. Mozilla Thunderbird Click to enlarge Mozilla Thunderbird is the standard email client used in the school by members of staff. It is open source and can be freely downloaded from http://www.mozilla.com . It supports most common standards such as IMAP and POP3. It is customizable and can send email as plain text or in HTML format. It includes excellent spell checkers and search facilities as well as a junk email filter. Versions are available for Microsoft Windows, Apple OS X and Linux. By John Hegarty (Clongowes Wood College ICT & Maths Teacher)
At second level the most common uses of computers involve use of the Internet, email and word processing. The office suite we use in the school is the freely available OpenOffice.Org. We also use StarOffice which is an implementation of OpenOffice.Org released free to schools by Sun Microsystems. It is compatible with other commonly used office suites such as Microsoft Office. The suite consists of six applications for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, drawing, databases and a maths equation editor. It can be used to prepare students for ECDL exams. Blackrock Education Centre (http://www.blackrockec.ie/) publish a manual that can be used as a course text for ECDL classes. OpenOffice.Org can be freely downloaded from www.openoffice.org . There are versions of OpenOffice.Org and StarOffice for Microsoft Windows, Apple OS X and Linux platforms.
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