Top Ten Tools at Lockerby Composite School

I teach at a school, in Sudbury, Ontario, that was one of the first schools in Canada to pilot a laptop education program. More recently, the program has evolved into what is now called the STEP (Science & Technology Education Program). As such, we are often trying to look at new, different technologies and tools at our school. Below are ten tools/resources that are used in the various classrooms at Lockerby Composite School, along with a little description of the tool.

1) Sony Vegas: One of the focuses of our Grade 10 students is to work on video creation. Every student in the STEP program in grade 10 is required to create a video, of their choosing. Typically, our tech department teaches the skills necessary to create and edit video. Students are free to choose their own video editing software (iMovie, Windows Movie Maker, etc), however Sony Vegas is the software that they teach for video editing. The main reason that our teachers use Sony Vegas is because it is powerful, and yet fairly straightforward to use, and more importantly, it comes with a free two week trial. Here is an example of a student created award winning video on safety.

2) XpressLab:  Students in our French Immersion classes are required to do an oral exam at the end of the semester. Our FI teacher has decided to start using XpressLab for the exam. She feels that it is powerful software, because XpressLab provides students with interactive opportunities to practice reading, listening, writing, and speaking in different languages. Further, it is an effective tool because students are able to self-assess, which allows students to build their confidence in French.

3) Desmos: It is always difficult to find good, new tools to use in the mathematics classroom. However, in our math department, we have started using the program Desmos. Desmos provides a graphing calculator to students at no cost. This allows us to replace our TI-83 graphing calculators which are really starting to show their age. The nice thing about Desmos is that it is real time. Changes occur to a graph as data is changed. As well, work from Desmos can be shared on blogs or via bit.ly. In our classrooms, we have used Desmos to explore transformations of functions, to examine distance time graphs/linear regression, and even use their knowledge of functions to create a smiley face. Below is an example

4) iPevo Cameras:  Every department in our school has been provided with iPevo cameras, and I have started replacing our math department’s cameras with iPevo Ziggi cameras. We like using the Ziggi’s for several reasons: to display student work, to take up problems, to teach about concepts in a more visual way, to let students teach/demonstrate for the class, and to archive day to day images to keep a record of curriculum. As well, the new Ziggi cameras have microphone capabilities, which is nice because teachers looking to use a flipped classroom could record their lessons with audio for sharing with students.

5)3D Printers: Recently, we purchased a 3D printer for our school. Our science and tech departments have been working on various ways that the printer could be used in the school, One example that was used in our drafting classes was to create a model for a 3D printer that would print a screwdriver. Here is an example (not one created at our school). We are also planning to use the 3D printer in science classrooms (to create cross sections of various organs), in our design classes to make prototypes of designs, and in our foods classrooms to create design models and cookie cutter templates.

6) iPad Minis: While we are technically a ‘laptop education’ school, we are trying to become more of a bring-your-own-device school. As such, our principal purchased a class set of iPad 2’s as well as a class set of iPad minis for use in the classroom. Several of our teachers have taken advantage of the iPads. As an example, our music teacher has students compose songs using GarageBand, and uses MadPad so students can experience using soundboards. As well, several of our teachers have used various presentation tools, such as EduCreations and Knomia, to have students create videos explaining concepts. Here is an example of a review video I had one of my students create on EduCreations (note: they restart several times as it is not possible to edit on EduCreations as yet).

7) NVU/Kompozer: Similarly to our Grade 10 project, our Grade 9 focus is on website creation. We have students create a website about whatever they would like, but typically we have them display student work. Typically we teach using Kompozer. We use Kompozer because it is very used friendly, which is good for even our less technical teachers and students who want to create a website that has some visual appeal – without requiring them to have any coding skill.

8) Paint.Net: Another component of our tech education classes is working on image editing. The image editing software of choice for us is paint.net, as it is free and web based. Several different photo editing concepts are taught, including cropping, background, gradient, colour correction, and creating digital collages. Students in our civics classroom used paint.net to create political satire image edits.

9) VUE: Creating a concept map or flow chart is a skill that is often seen in our classrooms. Whether brainstorming ideas, or creating an essay outline, the software of choice at our school is Vue (Visual Understanding Environment). We like VUE because it is a flexible environment for presenting and sharing digital information. VUE is effective because not only is it useful for concept mapping, but a variety of files can be imported into the environment, including CSV and RSS files. Below is an example of a concept map that can be created with VUE of the different types of polygons.

10) GPS:  We purchased a few GPS units for use in our Geography classes a few weeks ago. We use them in a variety of ways – to collect and plot data about water quality of streams flowing into some of our lakes; to examine geological features in our community, to geocache, and even to play GPS golf. The students always find these enjoyable experiences, as some of these topics can be a bit dry to learn from a textbook. 

There are many other tools and resources that are used at my school, however I felt as though this was a good variety of examples of what happens in the STEP program.

Please feel free to share any examples that you might have that would be different!