APP FOCUS – LUCIDPRESS

 BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE ICT LEARNING AREA AND 7F

Year 7 have been using a Chrome app called LucidPress in Year 7 ICT classes.  This app is an online version of a desktop publishing program (like MS Publisher or Adobe PageMaker and InDesign).  Unlike a word processor it allows you to place boxes of content onto a page and then move them, adjust their size, overlap them if you wish and apply effects to the boxes.  It is all about Layout.  Although free, you need to create an account.  This account can then be linked to your Google Drive if you wish so that your files will appear in, and be accessible from, your Drive.  The interface is fairly straightforward and there are several tutorials available in the LucidPress Help Center as well as on YouTube.

Students in Year 7 ICT created a poster to introduce themselves to the class and inserted a fancy heading, pre-prepared text, a photo and clipart before formatting these items to make their poster more eye-catching and easy to read. These posters could be printed directly from school computers or exported as PDF files or graphic images.

 Initially there were some issues with files being “lost” but whether this was a bug or user error we don’t really know.  Later in the term there didn’t seem to be any issues of this kind.

Lucidpress has been very useful, it gave 7F new formatting tools which were hard to get the hang of at first but overall gave stunning results.  I personally think that it gives you most of the opportunities that your normal desktop publisher does, but it isn’t worth all the fuss of going in to LucidPress.  

Angel

LucidPress is a great program, capable of producing a high standard of everything from infographics to birthday invitations, however, there are some flaws.  McKinnon Secondary College in particular relies on transferring documents to our Google Drive and there were some compatibility issues.  However, if you make sure your documents are saved properly it is worth it for an effective formatting program. 

Arwin

LucidPress is a program that lets you create a document with great artistic design. Although LucidPress is a great program for design, I had trouble saving my document through LucidPress but eventually saved it.  I think you should only use LucidPress for artistic design, and Google docs for normal writing.  

Sades

Diana Hatch

Timetabler, ICT Learning Area Manager