2014 is the biggest year on record for technology investment at Clarkson Community High School.

As you may have read previously in The Bulletin, Clarkson sees itself as a technology-focused school when it comes to teaching and learning. More and more teachers are using our Moodle online course delivery system so that students can access and submit work from anywhere and at any time and more and more students are benefiting from learning advanced technology skills than ever before.

It is also the first year ever that every student and every teacher has been loaned a Macbook laptop computer for their studies and work. This means that everyone has access to super-fast broadband from anywhere in the school and have a powerful tool at their fingertips to assist them with their learning.

Each Macbook has been updated with OSX Mavericks, the latest operating system for Mac, which now comes with Apple’s iBooks feature.

This allows teachers to use interactive textbooks (for the first time) complete with engaging movies, animations and links to websites buried within the “book” itself. If you’ve not already done so, have a look in the iBook store and view the excellent education titles that you as parents can download at much lower prices than buying the equivalent paper-based book. Some are even free, but you’ll need to be an Apple device owner (iPhone, iPad and Mac) to access the iBooks store. You’ll find a whole stack of books on the Australian Curriculum, NAPLAN and just about every other educational subject you can think of. We truly believe that iBooks are a game changer in engaging students to learn and we will be training teachers in how to make their own iBooks this term. (More information at https://www.apple.com/au/ibooks/)

The investment has not stopped there. This year, as everyone now has a mobile device, we have removed the vast majority our Windows desktop PC fleet as they had reached the end of their useful life. However, the school still needed one lab of high-end multimedia machines for classes such as Technical Graphics (to teach AutoCAD) and ICT subjects using video editing and graphic design software. Therefore, we have invested heavily in a state-of-the-art iMac lab complete with brand new AutoCAD software and a full HD data projector to create yet another amazing resource for our students.

However, this is not the end. The school is currently in the process of applying for funds to add a 3D printer to the mix for our Technical Graphics and ICT students. If you’ve never seen or heard of a 3D printer before, they truly are amazing bits of kit.  They work in a similar way to a 2D inkjet printer that most of us have at home for printing on paper, but instead “print” 3D objects out of plastic. (More information at http://store.makerbot.com/replicator2)

Our students will be able to complete the Technology Process for the first time, researching and investigating a product, designing it in AutoCAD in 3D, then actually manufacturing that product by printing it out in 3D and evaluating its success. 3D printers are only a relatively new technology, but you’ll be hearing a great deal more about them in the future as this revolutionary new technology begins to replace traditional manufacturing methods.

We aim to be at the forefront of this imminent future technology, so keep a look out for more information on this subject later in the year.