Date Night with Your Mac

As promised here is a synopsis of what was shown during the Demo Slam at Date Night on Friday November 23, 2012. If you would like to learn more please see the person who presented: 

Phil Meehan share two of his favourite email tools. First up was 'Undo Send' which gives you a 30 second window to 'unsend' an email. You can turn this function on in your Settings menu under 'Labs'. (Undo Send can be found by clicking on the Gmail setting gear, then the Labs tab, search for Undo Send, click enable and save)
Next Phil shared Boomerang For Gmail an add on in Chrome. 

"Boomerang allows you to schedule messages to be sent or returned at a later date. Write a message now, send it whenever, even if you're not online. Track messages to make sure you hear back, and schedule reminders right inside Gmail"

Dave Caleb shared his favourite Mac tips and tricks
- Caffeine keeps your Mac from going to sleep
- Hot Corners - configure the corners on your Mac to do things for you
- Folder Clean Up
- Reflection - an app run on your Mac that allows you to wirelessly project onto your IWB (works like magic!)

Jeff Plaman focused on "finding your voice" during his slam.
- Siri (on iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices) allows you to speak and dictate a wide variety of actions. Press and hold the "home" button and Siri can be used to dicate notes, write emails  and search the web. This could be really useful for students who can't type well yet to search for info. 

- Wolfram Alpha is a computational search engine that Siri calls on when you ask technical questions like "What's the boiling point of ethanol?" "How do you find the area of a right triangle?" or "What is the frequency of Middle C?" Wolfram gives answers and mini-lessons that explain the result. 

- iOS 5 (the most recent operating system on iPads etc) has the ability to do dictation. When you open anything where the keyboard pops up, you'll notice that there's a little microphone icon just to the left of the space bar.  Pressing it activates the microphone and you can speak your text and your device will turn in into type. (NOTE: you have to manually enter punctuation) This feature also exists in the newest OS on the Mac, Snow Leopard (you can get upgraded at IT Support).
Jeff showed how you can open a Google doc from your Mac running Snow Leopard, insert a comment and use dictation by pressing the "fn" key twice to speak your comment. 
(You can't actually write into the body of your Google Doc for some reason using dictation on the Mac, but you can do this from an iPad. Just open a Google Doc on your iPad, put the cursor where you like and press the dictation (mic) button and yammer away)

Keri-Lee Beasley shared the cool functions that can be done in Preview:
- get rid of a background on a picture
- adjust the colour of a picture
- annotate on top of a picture

Katie Day rounded off the sharing with a demonstration of Google Reader, managing your settings in Chrome, and using shortcuts to enhance a Google Search. 















We would like to say a special thank you to Jabiz for his inspiring opening about creating on line and off line spaces where our students feel safe and valued. Thank you to everyone who shared and thank you to those of you who came out to spend time with us on a Friday night after a busy week at work. We look forward our next Date Night in the new year.

Rubicon Reserve Wines had some awesome wine for tasting - a special favourite was the Maccari Prosecco. If you would like to learn more you can contact them by email: sales@rubiconreservewines.com