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Full Screen Everything!
When you're working on your Mountain Lion (or Lion)
Mac, full screen everything! Then everything is available to you in one window (much like an iPad), and you can swipe with four fingers on the trackpad to get between them.
Make your Apple TV Work for You in the Classroom
If you are lucky enough to have an Apple TV in your classroom (if you don't have one, you should really get one!), make sure you go to the Parental Controls and turn off all of the channels and things you don't use in your class (we have them all turned off at school) so they aren't distracting in class.
Image Capture is Cool Again
Image Capture is an app thats been on your Mac forever, but you probably never used it. But it is one of the easiest and best ways to get large amounts of stuff from the Camera Roll of an iOS device onto your Mac. It is also genius for deleting large amounts of stuff from your Camera Roll on your iOS device as well!
Start Rocking with WordPress
I never thought I'd say this, but I LOVE WordPress. Its that blogging platform that most of the world uses. But if you self host and get WordPress set up on your own school server, the connection between your iPads and the server is super quick! This means using the WordPress app is super cool for blogging, with posts, images and movies uploading super quickly. Of course, if you have fibre in your school it might not be as much of an issue!
Love Your Developers
Again, this is posted under 'Thing I never thought I'd say', but it is really decent to leave star ratings and comments for Apps you love on the App Store. The really good developers don't want to pester you (or your students) to 'rate this app', and won't be soliciting this from you within the app. But it does help massively with ratings, and for other people to be able to find the app when they are searching. So if you like an app (especially if its a Rubber Chicken app!), then go rate it today. Get your students to write a review as a real world writing activity - writing for an audience!
When You Want to be a Real Mac Geek - Use Automator!
Actually, its not that geeky, but it is an incredibly useful tool for creating workflows that can be saved as standalone apps, folder actions, services (available in the finder), printer plugins, calendar actions or image capture plugins.
Automator is perfect for repetitive tasks, whether its something you want to do to a whole lot of files at the same time, or something you do every day. Say you want to convert loads of images from PNG to JPG files, crop them to 800 x 600 pixels, apply some kind of filter to the images, and then save them with sequential file names - thats a perfect case for using Automator.
The beauty of Automator is that you can even record your actions on the screen for Automator to copy when you run an action. I have set this up for a school computer with a microscope that needs to change the default camera it uses every time it starts up. Works super quick and is one less thing to worry about! Here's a link to some awesome Automator resources to get you started -->
I work at Selwyn Ridge Primary School in Welcome Bay, Tauranga as the ICT Integration Specialist Teacher. It's an awesome place!
Currently I am loving learning iPad app development. I also make iOS apps in my spare time, including "100s Board", "Tens Frame", and "RR" (as well as "RunningRecs"). You can find out more about my apps at www.rubberchickenapps.com.
When I'm not playing on my Macs and iOS Devices I'm spending time with my beautiful family. I also want to spend a bit more time mountain biking this summer!
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