10 Mac Tips Every Teacher Should Know about
July 9, 2015
Mac is an incredible piece of gadgetry and an ideal companion for teachers. It has tons of features and functionalities that can make your digital life way easier and more productive. To help you make the best of your Mac, we are sharing with you 10 essential and probably basic tips. Check out the resources at the end of this post for more advanced tips.
1- Take A Screenshot
Skitch is an excellent app to use with your Mac for taking screenshots and annotating them. However, if you want a simple and easy way to grab a screenshot of your Mac these key combination will do the job. To capture the entire screen, click on Shift, Command and number 3. If you want to capture only part of the screen, click on Command, Shift and number 4.
2- Type special characters
There are tons of special characters integrated in you Mac OS X and which you can easily insert in your documents and posts. To access them, click on ‘Edit’ in the menu and select ‘ Special Characters’
3- Annotate PDFs
You don’t need to install any third party apps to annotate your PDFs, Mac’s PDF reader can do it all for you and here is how to do it. Open your PDF then click on ‘View’ in Mac’s menu bar and make sure you select ’Show markup toolbar’.
A tool bar will show up in your PDF to help you annotate, comment, draw, add lines and shapes on your PDF.
4- Sign documents
You can also insert your signature into PDFs on your Mac. From the same toolbar that appears in your PDF as is explained above, click on the sign shape as shown below and choose whether you want to use trackpad to sign your name or use your camera.
5- Spot light
Mac’s internal search functionality called Spotlight allows you to smartly search your mac for files, apps, docs, folders and pretty much everything else by simply typing its name in the search bar. Spotlight also allows you to do calculations and even carry out unit conversions.
6- Open a link in a new tab
If you are using a mouse with your Mac, you can simply click on the scroll wheel while hovering over a link and it will be opened in a new tab.
7- Have a clear view of your Desktop
To have a clear view of your desktop without the opened windows blocking you, you can simply hold down Command and click on F3.
8- Parental Control
Parental Control functionality in Macs is a great way for parents to monitor and control what their kids can do on their Macs. Some of the options it offers include: Restrict access to websites and you can even specify the websites your kid can visit; set specific time limit for the use of your Mac by your kids; limit access to apps and select apps you allow your kids to use.You can access Parent Controls from System Preferences.
9- Paste text without its original formatting
If you copy a chunk of text from a web page or from one of your applications and paste it ,say in your email, the text looks out of place because it keeps its original formatting. To overcome this, copy the text and before you paste it, click on Edit in the menu and select ‘Paste and Match Style’. The text will be pasted without its formatting.
10- Back up your Mac
Mac comes in with an integrated back up software called Time Machine. Time Machine is the built-in backup feature of OS X. It keeps a copy of all your files, and remembers how your system looked on any given day so you can revisit your Mac as it appeared in the past. Check out this page to learn more about how to back up your Mac using TimeMachine.
Check out these resources to learn more about other interesting Mac tips:
1- Mac Basics
2- 50 Best Mac Tips, Tricks and Time Savers
3- Top 10 Tips of A Mac Master
Mac is an incredible piece of gadgetry and an ideal companion for teachers. It has tons of features and functionalities that can make your digital life way easier and more productive. To help you make the best of your Mac, we are sharing with you 10 essential and probably basic tips. Check out the resources at the end of this post for more advanced tips.
1- Take A Screenshot
Skitch is an excellent app to use with your Mac for taking screenshots and annotating them. However, if you want a simple and easy way to grab a screenshot of your Mac these key combination will do the job. To capture the entire screen, click on Shift, Command and number 3. If you want to capture only part of the screen, click on Command, Shift and number 4.
There are tons of special characters integrated in you Mac OS X and which you can easily insert in your documents and posts. To access them, click on ‘Edit’ in the menu and select ‘ Special Characters’
3- Annotate PDFs
You don’t need to install any third party apps to annotate your PDFs, Mac’s PDF reader can do it all for you and here is how to do it. Open your PDF then click on ‘View’ in Mac’s menu bar and make sure you select ’Show markup toolbar’.
A tool bar will show up in your PDF to help you annotate, comment, draw, add lines and shapes on your PDF.
4- Sign documents
You can also insert your signature into PDFs on your Mac. From the same toolbar that appears in your PDF as is explained above, click on the sign shape as shown below and choose whether you want to use trackpad to sign your name or use your camera.
5- Spot light
Mac’s internal search functionality called Spotlight allows you to smartly search your mac for files, apps, docs, folders and pretty much everything else by simply typing its name in the search bar. Spotlight also allows you to do calculations and even carry out unit conversions.
6- Open a link in a new tab
If you are using a mouse with your Mac, you can simply click on the scroll wheel while hovering over a link and it will be opened in a new tab.
7- Have a clear view of your Desktop
To have a clear view of your desktop without the opened windows blocking you, you can simply hold down Command and click on F3.
8- Parental Control
9- Paste text without its original formatting
If you copy a chunk of text from a web page or from one of your applications and paste it ,say in your email, the text looks out of place because it keeps its original formatting. To overcome this, copy the text and before you paste it, click on Edit in the menu and select ‘Paste and Match Style’. The text will be pasted without its formatting.
10- Back up your Mac
Mac comes in with an integrated back up software called Time Machine. Time Machine is the built-in backup feature of OS X. It keeps a copy of all your files, and remembers how your system looked on any given day so you can revisit your Mac as it appeared in the past. Check out this page to learn more about how to back up your Mac using TimeMachine.
Check out these resources to learn more about other interesting Mac tips:
1- Mac Basics
2- 50 Best Mac Tips, Tricks and Time Savers
3- Top 10 Tips of A Mac Master
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