MyAppleMenu

The Teacher-Features Edition Sunday, April 3, 2016

Apple Classroom First Impressions, by Fraser Speirs

Apple Classroom is more like a basic Apple Remote Desktop for iOS. Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) was a Mac app that allowed administrators to monitor and manipulate multiple Macs remotely over the network. ARD was mostly a sysadmin tool but occasionally teachers would get into using it because of its ability to monitor and lock computer screens in a lab scenario. ARD was really too complex for classroom use.

ARD was also able to gather and report statistics about Macs on the network. These included disk space usage, device identifiers and so on. In the iOS era, all of these functions are handled by your MDM server. Still, we have been missing the screen monitoring features of ARD in iOS since day one.

Apple Classroom brings the 'teacher features' of Apple Remote Desktop to iOS, and it's fantastic.

Sweet Suite

How To Master Microsoft Office OneNote, by Melanie Pinola, Lifehacker

Microsoft OneNote has been one of our favorite note-taking apps for years, and it keeps getting better. The app is completely free to install on your Mac or Windows desktop and lets you format notes any way you wish in an intuitive digital notebook interface. Here’s how to get started with OneNote and take your notes to the next level.

Top 10 Cheat Sheets To Help You Master Microsoft Office, by Melanie Pinola, Lifehacker

Microsoft Office is still the most popular office suite used by companies and individuals across the world. These Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote cheat sheets will help boost your productivity and save time when you’re working in these programs.

Stuff

3 Ways Airtable For iOS Can Help You Ditch Spreadsheets, by James A. Martin, CIO

It has the look and feel of a spreadsheet app, such as Numbers or Excel, but it has a relational database engine as well.

This App Takes The Cake, by Holley Simmons, Washington Post

The app, founded almost six years ago in Denver, is an online DIY university that offers more than 1,000 courses in knitting, sewing, embroidery, cooking, photography, woodworking and more.

“We’re all about actionable inspiration,” says Craftsy founder and chief executive John Levisay. “Pinterest is great. I see a lot of cool things on there, but it’s like, ‘How do I do it?’ ”

Develop

I’m A Boring Programmer (And Proud Of It), by Dan Kim, Signal v. Noise

I have a confession to make — I’m not a rock star programmer. Nor am I a hacker. I don’t know ninjutsu. Nobody has ever called me a wizard.

Still, I take pride in the fact that I’m a good, solid programmer. One who works hard at his craft and really enjoys it, even without the fancy labels.

Notes

Coding On Tape - Computer Science A-level 1970s Style, by Judith Burns, BBC

Staff at the AQA exam board have been trawling their archive and have found some early 1970s computer science papers, which highlight how much the subject has changed over the intervening period.

Back then, schools offering computer science A-level had to prove they had access to a computer, according to a syllabus from the time.

In 1970 computers were a rarity and pupils would have to visit machines in nearby universities or businesses, said AQA's computing qualifications manager Steven Kenny, because the cost of a school owning one was "prohibitive".

Million-dollar Babies, by the Economist

In the past universities employed the world’s best AI experts. Now tech firms are plundering departments of robotics and machine learning (where computers learn from data themselves) for the highest-flying faculty and students, luring them with big salaries similar to those fetched by professional athletes.

The AP Finally Realizes It’s 2016, Will Let Us Stop Capitalizing ‘Internet’, by Davey Alba, Wired

Is it “Internet,” with a capital “I,” or just “internet”? “Web” or “web”? Few debates in the history of the English language have raged more passionately. Now, The Associated Press—purveyor of the AP Stylebook, used by journalists for the last century to standardize mass communications—has made a pronouncement. No more will the AP insist on capitalizing either word: today, it’s officially declaring its allegiance to the lowercase camp. (This is personally very satisfying to me.)

Bottom of the Page

My wife and my daughter went shopping today, and I'm the one feeling so tired this evening.

~

Thanks for reading.