Maverick for Macbook - some of the new features you can expect

Maverick -> Apple's latest operating system (10.9) is out. Most Macbooks from 10.7 onwards can be upgraded.  And, in contrary to Apple's tradition, this one is free!

 Photo Credit: Brenna Daugherty via Compfight

However, at Chadwick we recommend to wait with upgrading, as we are experiencing a number of issues so far.  Some are minor, some are quite annoying. E.g. Mail behaves rather bad, and some users gave report of very sluggish computers. We keep track of issues and are testing our configurations. You can ask the students in your class/sections, many have upgraded - and you will have some varying responses as to how happy they are! Some actually had to downgrade (back t0 10.8) again. Did Apple do a bad thing? Hard to tell. There are so many factors playing a role, a nightmare to test them all.

If you are curious what you are missing, then here are some links to Atomic Learning videos that describe the main new features

Getting Started with Mac OS X Mavericks Training

What you'll learn in this training

• Using tabs in the Finder
• Merging multiple Finder windows
• Using iBooks for Mac
• Finding a location in Maps
• Sharing locations and directions in Maps

Tech will inform you all when we have a stable version, and then you could go ahead.

Students that have upgraded are now causing some trouble with handing in work, especially when using Pages and Keynote. The free Maverick update does come with free updates to those programs. They produce different file formats  though, and are not compatible with the versions on the faculty 10.7 or 10.8 laptops.

How to solve:
Students should select the option to save the Pages or Keynote in the older iWork-09 format. Luckily that can still be done by exporting:

Alternatively, you and your class could opt for using Google Presentation and Google Docs as the basic software for presentations. 

That way, they do not have to send large files, but only have to share links with you! No problems with different versions either!

And, if you would think that Google presentation is lacking features, then have a look at he following (short) video,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt9F7tKcZcU

it will show a stunning presentation, and yes, all made within Google presentation.

Yes, Google Apps is getting better every day!

Google Sites - how to make it all look better!

Find here a few hints/tips/resources etc. to working with Google Sites.

They might give you some new ideas!

Design tricks:

http://www.googlesiteswebdesign.com/

This site has many outstanding tricks for enhancing your site.

https://sites.google.com/a/googleapps.com/sitesbp/site-development/tips-tricks

This site is pretty awesome, it shows some nice tips, AND people can contribute (using a form!). Just explore!

Menu tricks:

Google sites can have customized menus on the side (and the top). Here is how to do so!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r1QL_5mijI

How to add a horizontal navigation menu bar in detail:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWdImBSF-JM

Gadgets:

You can insert ready-made gadgets via the "insert" -> ".... More Gadgets ...." menu.

They usually are easy to configure, and will display specified content on your pages.

Google also has an extended list of gadgets on the following directory available:

http://www.google.com/ig/directory?synd=open&cat=all

You can select from their list. Explore and try one or two, so you get the feel of it!

More Embedding tricks:

Many third-party tools exist that can be added to your site. They can display the local weather, run a slideshow, 

show your most recent visitors etc.

Most of them will use "embedded" html code, sometimes in an iFrame.

If you want to try the effect of embedded code before you use it, you can do so at w3schools!

Copy/paste your code, and visit http://www.w3schools.com/

You then can tinker around, and see the results. Pretty slick for testing size, colors, effects etc.

A good site with tips and examples for Widgets/html embeddin etc. is

http://www.steegle.com/websites/google-sites-help

These guys know Google sites in and out.

Take care: a Google search might reveal widgetbox www.widgetbox.com/) , they will stop business March 2014 though.

Another 'take care' issue:

Some widgets and gadgets will not run properly anymore, as Google Chrome now has extra security checks built-in.

They deal with not allowing a mix of https (secure) and http (insecure) sites. Tough to solve right now.

Working with Safari for those gadgets will not show the errors. 

Google Site Examples (good ones!)

https://sites.google.com/site/arvidaok/

A great 'teacher' site: uses blog (announcement entries) in 2 diff. ways 

http://www.konini-primary.school.nz/

An example (slick!) of a schools website

https://sites.google.com/site/dieselandmerlot/

Nice banner, simple design

https://sites.google.com/a/medinacommunityband.org/www/Home

A community site, great startpage with photos

http://www.revue-emulations.net/

Just top-notch! In French, but have a look!

Tutorials:

https://sites.google.com/site/amslerclassroom/sampe-teacher-pages

Great tutorials AND examples

https://sites.google.com/site/mflynchsites/examples-of-google-sites

Great examples AND a great tutorial for all functions as well. 

And of course: we have our subscription to video tutorials at Atomic Learning:

http://www.atomiclearning.com/k12/googlesites

( username = hidden  Password= hidden )

Important Google drive sharing tip

I have seen a few glitches happening with sharing of files and folders with Google Drive.

When somebody changes content in a Google Drive Folder that is shared with you, there is the danger that one deletes/dislocates content for others.

Keep in mind:

Moving a Whole Shared Folder to your "MyDrive" is ok to do

Moving (or deleting) single Folders/Files out of a Shared Folder is NOT ok to do.

I created a graphic below that explains it all in a visual way:

To eliminate possible errors, create Shared folders with View access rights only (as much as possible). 

If you share a folder with your team/students, you might want to consider following option:

Have the Main Folder View for all.

In that main Folder create 2 more folders, one with View and one with Edit access. That way, you keep the View-folder always save!

Good to know:

In case content was deleted, it still lives for a month in the bin (of the one who deleted the stuff).

If content IN a document was deleted, one can go back into the revisions -> and you can restore back in time.

Need a bit more visual help, a quick overview of Google drive perhaps?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SjRH3SImlM

This short video will give you some time-saving tips as well!

Want to learn how to setup Google Drive Sync (keep a synced backup of all your files in MyDrive on your own laptop)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzwDk5JHQw4

This is a recommended step to do!