Basic PDF Tips Every Teacher Using Mac Should Know about

July 29, 2015
In an earlier post entitled ‘10 Mac Tips Every Teacher Should Know about’ we fleetingly touched on a quick hack on how to annotate your PDFs. We subsequently received few questions from teachers inquiring about PDF tips for Mac users so we decided to feature some of the basic yet overlooked things you can do with your PDFs on Mac.

For any of these tips to work, make sure you open your PDF then click on ‘View’ in Mac’s menu bar and select ’Show markup toolbar’.

1 Add signature to PDFs

You can easily sign PDFs using the sign feature in the mark-up toolbar. There are two options for signing PDFs: sign your name on the trackpad or sign your name in a white paper and hold it towards your Mac’s camera.

2- Add notes and sketches to PDFs
To add a note to a PDF document, click on the note icon as shown in the screenshot below and start typing in the displayed text box. You can use your mouse to drag the text box and place it anywhere in the document.

The same with sketches, click on the pen icon to start sketching .

3- Add text to PDFs
Similar to the notes feature mentioned above, you can add your own text to a PDF document by simply clicking on text icon.

4- Highlight text on PDFs
To highlight a piece of text on your PDF, use your mouse to select the part you want highlighted and right click on it and choose the highlight colour for it.

5- Quick access to highlights and notes
To quickly access your highlights and notes, click on the ‘view menu’ and select ‘highlights and notes’. All your notes and highlights will be displayed on the left sidebar.

When you attempt to close the PDF you customized you will be prompted to save the changes you did. Click on ‘save’.

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Mac Shortcuts Cheat Sheet for Teachers

July 17, 2015
After posting about Google Drive shortcut cheat sheet, we got an email from one of our readers asking about Mac shortcuts. There is actually an official shortcut sheet provided by Apple in its Support centre. The sheet features all of the shortcuts you will need to smartly handle your Mac. These shortcuts are divided into 4 main categories:

• Cut, copy, paste, and other common shortcuts
• Sleep, log out, and shut down shortcuts
• Document shortcuts
• Finder shortcuts

Check out the unabridged Mac shortcuts sheet from this page.

You can also create your own customized shortcuts on OS X Yosemite and assign them to menu commands in any app or in the Finder. Here is how to do it:

1- Choose Apple menu and System Preferences, then click Keyboard.

2-Click Shortcuts, select App Shortcuts, then click Add (+).

3- Click the Application pop-up menu, then choose an app.

4- Type the menu command for which you want to set a keyboard shortcut in the Menu Title field.

5- Click in the Keyboard Shortcut field, press the key combination that you want to assign to the menu command, then click Add (+).

6- Quit and restart any apps you’re using for the new keyboard shortcut to take effect.

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A Quick Mac Tip to Share Your Screen or Remotely View Someone's Screen

July 9, 2015
Mac OS X comes in with a great functionality for screen sharing which many teachers overlook. You can use this feature to connect to another Mac in the same network and display its screen on your Mac and even remotely control its mouse and keypad. You can also share your own Mac screen with others. Mac’s screen sharing is a great collaborative feature to use when working with your colleagues on a project or a presentation. It is also ideal for accessing your Mac while you are away or for helping someone troubleshoot a tech-related problem.

There are two ways to use screen sharing feature:  to share your screen with others or have others share their screen with you. You can also check Apple's Help page for more details.

1- Share your screen with others
This enables whoever you want to share your Mac’s screen with to see what’s on your screen and open, move and close files and windows, open apps, and even restart your Mac. Here how to do it:

A- Open Sharing preferences if it isn’t already open (choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Sharing).
B- Select the Screen Sharing checkbox.

C- If Remote Management is selected, you must deselect it before you can select Screen Sharing.
To specify who can share your screen, select one of the following:

• All users: Anyone with a user account on your Mac can share your screen.
• Only these users: Screen sharing is restricted to specific users.

D- If you selected “Only these users,” click Add (+) at the bottom of the Users list, then do one of the following:

• Select a user from Users & Groups, which includes all the users of your Mac.
• Select a user from Network Users or Network Groups, which includes everyone on your network.

E- To let others share your screen without having a user account on your Mac, click Computer Settings, then select one or both of the following:

• Anyone may request permission to control screen: When other computer users begin screen sharing your Mac, they can ask for permission instead of entering a user name and password.
• VNC viewers may control screen with password: Other users can share your screen using a VNC viewer app—on iPad or a Windows PC, for example—by entering the password you specify here.

If this computer’s screen is shared only by other OS X users, turn off these options and add accounts for the other users.

2- Share the screen of another Mac
This allows you to view and control the screen of another Mac on your network. This is how to do it:

A- Open a Finder window. If no shared computers appear in the Shared section of the sidebar, put the pointer on the word “Shared” and click Show.
B- Select a computer, then click Share Screen.
C- If you don’t see the Mac you want, click All to see all the available computers, double-click the one whose screen you want to share, then click Share Screen.
D- Select how you want to connect to the Mac:

• Guest: Connect to the other computer as guest, which lets you view the screen but not control it. (Not available on all shared computers.)
• By asking for permission: Ask the current user of the other Mac for permission to share the screen.
• As a registered user: Connect to the other Mac using a valid login name and password. If the other Mac allows only specified users to connect, use a name that’s in its list of allowed users.
• Using an Apple ID: Connect to the other Mac using an Apple ID. You must be set up in Users and Groups preferences with this Apple ID, on both this Mac and the other Mac.

If someone else is already connected to the Mac as a remote user, a dialog asks if you want to share the display with the other remote user (Share Display), or log in concurrently using a different user name and screen (Log In). Choose the option you want. If you choose Log In, you will share the Mac with the other remote user, but you won’t share the same screen.

If you know the IP address or the DNS name of the Mac you want to share, you can also connect to it by choosing Go > “Connect to Server” in the Finder, and then entering vnc://[IPAddress] or vnc://[Name.Domain] in the Server Address field. To find the address of a shared Mac, open Sharing preferences on that Mac and select Screen Sharing.

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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

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