Alfred/Workflows for teachers

[doughpat]

Hi everyone-

This is clearly a program most-often used by programmers.  I'm a science teacher and I consider myself a relatively tech-friendly person.  When I hear people rave about programs like Alfred, I figure there is a reason.  So far, I haven't really come up with much of an advantage to using it, other than it is a bit more intelligent when launching applications (it supposedly learns your habits, correct?).

 

I'm most interested in workflows, though like I said, I'm no programmer and I don't really know exactly how useful they would be for me.  I'm curious if any teachers are out here, and how they use Alfred.  Or, of course, if any programmers can "live vicariously" (hah!) and imagine any hypothetical uses a teacher might have for Alfred and its workflows (or other functions).

 

Thanks kindly- Ryan

[dfay]

I am a college professor, and most of my use of Alfred is for research / bibliographical / writing purposes, but I have a workflow that I update / duplicate each quarter to automatically open materials related to whatever course I am teaching.  Overall it looks like this:

 

Keyword (some abbreviation for the course)

-->

Multiple Files - this launches all the folders with my syllabus, grade books, slides, slides from previous versions of the course that I may be cutting/pasting from, etc.

--> 

Run Script - this is an Applescript with two parts:

1) open my current syllabus and automatically go to the date of the next upcoming class - you can find this here: https://github.com/derickfay/course-creator

2) arrange the files / windows that I just opened according to a corresponding Moom ( http://manytricks.com/moom/ ) template

 

I also use my Keynote to PDF workflow (linked from http://dfay.fastmail.fm.user.fm/alfred/ also in these forums somewhere) after every class to prepare my slides for posting to course web sites.

 

None of these are particularly tied to Alfred - they could all be accomplished by independent Applescripts, but Alfred 1) makes them readily available and 2) with Dropbox syncing, makes them available on all three Macs that I use on a regular basis without worrying about syncing Library or other script folders.

[rice.shawn]

If you're a big Evernote user, then Carlos's Evernote workflow can be of immense use. If your students turn in assignments electronically (and in terrible file formats), then you could use Pandoctor (an overlay of pandoc) to help you. If you're working with PDFs, then Skimmer might help you. If you need to convert units... If you need to keep your computer awake while you read... If you need to check percent changes...

 

I'm sure there are others. What you could always do is identify tasks that you find yourself doing over and over that might require clicking or other tedious things, and you might be able to turn those into workflows.

[Someone Someone]

I'm also a College instructor.

I use Sven Fritsch's "hide/unhide desktop" workflow to hide my desktop icons when I need to mirror my screen on a smart board or projector, and I don't want the class/audience to see whatever I have on the desktop.

 

I use "prepend to file" as a collector for details and ideas. I created an "ideadrop.txt" file that lives in dropbox, and when I stumble across something I want to remember (things I might want to use in a class at some point) I prepend it to that file without having to leave what I'm doing. Every time I open the file, the newest stuff is right at the top. Periodically, I open it up and file all the individual bits of info into places where they will be useful. Incredibly useful when I'm in data collection mode and I don't want my actual desk littered with little bits of paper.

 

"Create new file in Finder" is useful when I'm developing content. Often, I think of something else I need to create while I'm in the midst of something; the workflow allows me to quickly create a relevant document, without leaving what I'm doing, and without having to open the piece of software to create a new document.

 

"Eggtimer" has all kinds of uses in a classroom.

[deanishe]

Hi everyone-

This is clearly a program most-often used by programmers.

Not really. It's talked about most often by programmers because they're the kind of people who're interested in such things, just as car enthusiasts do most of the talking about cars despite being a small minority of car users.

 

I'm a science teacher and I consider myself a relatively tech-friendly person.  When I hear people rave about programs like Alfred, I figure there is a reason.  So far, I haven't really come up with much of an advantage to using it, other than it is a bit more intelligent when launching applications (it supposedly learns your habits, correct?).

 

I'm most interested in workflows, though like I said, I'm no programmer and I don't really know exactly how useful they would be for me.  I'm curious if any teachers are out here, and how they use Alfred.  Or, of course, if any programmers can "live vicariously" (hah!) and imagine any hypothetical uses a teacher might have for Alfred and its workflows (or other functions).

 

Thanks kindly- Ryan

Well, I'm one of those programmers, I guess, but my day job is teaching and translating.

Job-wise, I mostly use Alfred as a quick way to access reference materials. I have most of the text books I use scanned to PDFs and have custom searches set up in Alfred to search them.

I also have a few workflows I've written to search various offline and online dictionaries.

If I used my MacBook in class, I reckon I'd use Alfred a lot to quickly pull up information to show on screen.

FWIW, a lot of the people you'd consider "programmers" had never written a line of code before they decided to write an Alfred workflow to scratch an itch they had. You can also do an awful lot with Alfred's built-in building blocks without writing any code.

Edited January 9, 2015 by deanishe

[smarg19]

All the workflows mentioned are great, but to take a step back and consider how Alfred is helpful in and of itself, I would say that you should think about it as an always accessible hub for using all the functionality of your computer. Alfred is always one key command away from being available, and once you're there, you can do anything directly from the keyboard. The great thing about workflows is that they bring even more functionality to the same hub. Why open Finder to search files; open Alfred. Why open Safari to look something up in Wikipedia; open Alfred. By collecting functionality in one place, it makes it easier and faster to get things done on the Mac. That's why I love Alfred, and the workflows just build on top of that basic usage.