Who is...Mr.Druiven?

Hello. This site is based on my old teaching website hosted by the First Class system at hdsb.ca. The board moved everything to Google and the old CHATT server went down a few years ago. I am retired from teaching High School full time but still connected to the education system in Ontario as an AQ instructor for OISE, participant in ACSE and as a supply teacher. For years I developed the Tools for Technology Students web site as a place to house lessons, resources and information. I think that some of the resources I developed are still useful and so I have migrated them here. Please use and share.

One of the problems that motivated me to restart this project is the policy of many school boards to maintain their student's anonymity on the Internet. There are many very good web sites like Code Academy and Khan Academy that have very good "Learn how to Program" options but these sites require that the student logs in. I'm especially proud of the Learn Processing part of this site because it contains a complete set of lessons that will get the beginner grade 9, 10 or 11 student up to speed in a programming language. I have used these lessons as the core of my Computer Studies program for years. The students enjoyed it, I enjoyed it. It is anonymous.

More about Processing

The Processing lessons are all presented with the same format. The code is shown as a graphic. To run the code, students need to retype the code themselves. This adds repetition which helps learning the language syntax and commands. I have added some discussion but there is always more to learn about each lesson - either through class discussion or by students researching topics on there own. Each lesson also shows a screen grab of the output to let the students verify they have typed the code correctly. Most lessons contain questions, 1.1, 3.2 etc that students can answer and most contain a challenge that students can try. The challenge extends the code to do something different. Challenges based on what they have learned so far are a good way to verify that the students understand the material.

More about the home page.

The cover art on my home page comes from several sources. The comic on the left was created by one of my students using Bitstripsforschools.com (now defunct). It is a rather accurate rendition of room 112 where I taught grade 10 programming. The photos of Einstein, Picasso et al represent 10 "Think Different" Apple computer posters I hung above the white board. The wall panel behind the teacher is pretty accurate as well. And the students? Yes indeed one of them had a blue Mohawk hair cut and another wore a top hat to class! What a great bunch. The rest of the logos represent who I work with. I am retired but occasionally teach the Computer Technology AQ for OISE as well as supply work at CKSS. Sparbotics is the name of the FIRST Robotics team that I mentor at CKSS. The shadow figures holding the FIRST symbols are from a photo created by CKS photography teacher Ms Giroux.