Tool 8

As a middle school Journalism teacher, I will be receiving MacBook Pro computers. I am very familiar with MacBooks as I have several in my classroom at present. I'm looking forward to the additional machines and especially the capacity of the MacBook Pro.

In reading through the MacBook tutorials, I found several widgets I thought were on the machines, but had not located, most notably stickies and Flight Tracker. I also was glad to review the Time Machine feature to back up files. This is something I will be sharing with students. The final segment that will be useful is the Mac Cheat Sheet. I will use this to write down the serial numbers, operating system, etc. for my new devices so that I will have them on file and easily accessible when I need them.

Managing the devices in my classroom will be fairly simple. Due to the set up of my classroom, the devices will remain in their assigned locations and students will be assigned seats. At the beginning of each semester we will have a lesson on computer care and use to cover appropriate use as well as care of all of the machines and other devices in my classroom. Students will have a trouble ticket they can hand me during or after class letting me know if there are any problems with their machines.

As much as possible I would suggest students using MacBooks or iMacs be instructed in saving their documents to their student folders or a cloud location rather than on the individual machines. I have discovered that in many cases the students do not realize that saving to the home folder on the computer which shows up with their computer log in is not the same as saving to their individual student folder located on the Cougar server. It is worth the time up front to ensure that every student knows exactly how and where to save any files they create on the machine.