Sal Soghoian talks Automator use in education

Total Apps has published a nice guest post from Sal Soghoian, Apple's Production Manager for Automator, intended for teachers. He describes how educators have a limited amount of instruction time with the kids, and even less for maintenance tasks like making sure the proper software is installed, that students are on the proper web page, and so on.

Sal wants to help, and points out a number of links useful to anyone (not just teachers) who wants to automate these repetitive and often time-consuming tasks. Best of all, he shares a link to The Teacher's Helpers (scroll down a bit), which is a free collection of Automator actions specifically written to assist teachers with Macs in their classrooms.

If you've been put off by AppleScript, give Automator a try. Its drag-and-drop interface is much easier to use.

View Tags

Source: http://www.totalapps.net/tutorials/guest-post-sal-soghoian-o…

Categories

Software AppleScript

Total Apps has published a nice guest post from Sal Soghoian, Apple's Production Manager for Automator, intended for teachers. He describes...

Add a Comment

Sign in »

7 Comments

Filter by:

williamlane

You're right, I haven't managed multiple machines at once, but I AM curious about how these Automator actions would help out.

November 15 2009 at 12:06 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

williamlane

OK, now I've read through the real link. Sorry, I just don't see the value. Here's what 'Teachers Helpers' offers:

Adjust Volume - available through keyboard
Cleanup Computers - Are they talking the 'student computers'? If so, why bother? Student logs in using a 'Guest' like account, finishes work, logs out and everything goes back to 'Guest defaults'
Close Every Finder Window - Option + 'Red Button'
Copy Finder Selection to Computers - may have some value
Delete Desktop Items - Select + Cmd Delete
Set Finder Access Options - Do NOT even go there. No offence but allowing your average teacher to start mucking about with 'access options' is in invitation to disaster. This is part of the reason why most school IT departments SOOOOOOOOOOOOO love Windows.
Display Message - Huh?
Stop Showing Message - Huh Pt. II? WHAT message? Where? In what format?
Dock - Hide - Menu Bar>Dock Prefs
Dock - Show - see above
Set Dock Access Options - another recipe for disaster
Eject All Disks - Sidebar, select 'em and eject 'em
Empty Trash - Shift Command Delete
Enable Disable Dashboard - another disaster, of a smaller nature
Execute AppleScript - This sounds just, well, silly. So I'm going to have an Automator action to tell an AppleScript to run? Why don't I just run the AppleScript directly?
Force Quit All Apps - WHY? What on earth would possess someone to want to do this? Seems like a case of the 'nuclear bomb to swat a fly'.
Force Quit Application - Opt+Cmd+esc
Observe Computers - As in 'Share Desktop'?
Open Folder - Double Click....
Open System Preference - Single click in Dock
Open Web Page - Puhleeeze.....
Present Movie - As in 'hit play in DVD player?' or 'Play Button in Quick Time'?
Screens Lock - en masse? As in locking ALL the student computers at once? I don't 'get' it...
Screens Unlock - see above
Set Desktop Picture - Control+Click Desktop
Set Quicktime Player Prefs - The prefs are in QT Player, which I assume would be running in order to adjust the prefs....
Start Application - Click on it in the Dock
Start Screen Saver - Hot corner, point cursor at/into same

I'm sorry, I just do not see the value in these 'shortcuts'. Maybe someone else can offer some justification/explanation for why I would use them.

November 15 2009 at 9:48 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to williamlane's comment

Angelo Caputo

It seems pretty obvious you've never had to manage multiple computers at once. These are all Automator actions to be used with Apple Remote Desktop, which allows you to do all those items listed to multiple computers at the same time.

I've been using Automator for the last few months with ARD, and have created my own version of a lot of these actions, and they save me A LOT of time. Imagine clicking one button in the menu bar (less than 2 seconds) to do what used to take 10 or so minutes? Add that time up throughout the day / week, and you really save a lot of time. The possibilities are nearly endless, and I come up with new Automator actions every week.

Good to see someone's putting together a list for teachers, very useful tools!

November 15 2009 at 11:07 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

DigMo!

Sal has sent through updated links and a few new ones too http://www.totalapps.net/tutorials/guest-post-sal-soghoian-on-automator/

Sorry about the URL issue.

November 14 2009 at 6:57 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Steve Dale

The links on the site fr Teacher's Helpers is broken! Any idea where the resources mentioned can now be found?

November 14 2009 at 6:51 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Steve Dale's comment

Christian Schultz

Try macosxautomation.com ... specifically http://macosxautomation.com/automator/examples/ard/teach/index.html

November 14 2009 at 12:26 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

williamlane