This week the Secondary Learning Suite welcomed a few additions: stylish and height-adjustable classroom tables, “wobbly” seats for our more, ummm, antsy students, and three iMac desktop computers.
These computers are elegant and powerful, and feature a beautiful 21.5-inch screen.
But most importantly, these iMacs open a whole new avenue for student production and creativity. All those things the students’ iPads can do–word processing, number crunching, filming, editing, recording, dictation, music making, sketching–the iMac can do even better.
For example, iMovie. You’ve probably seen your student using this fun and powerful app on their iPad. It allows them to create their own films in individualized and memorable ways. On the iMac, this app’s potential is seemingly limitless. This will take student film making to a new level.
This week Grade 8 got their first taste of the new machines in History class. They’re putting together a magazine set in Renaissance Italy and to do so they are using the iMac version of Pages. This app is more akin to desktop publishing than word processing. It provides a whole host of brilliant templates that are fully maleable to the desires of the user. Plus, working on a publication on the iMac’s large screen is serious fun.
The workflow on this project maximizes our technology in the SLS. Students completed their individual portion of the magazine on their iPads and emailed their work to the editor, Claire. Meanwhile, Claire and Aisha sketched out a conceptual outline of the magazine. With the iMacs in the place, all this work is coming together.