Get the latest version of Libre office. Bring up the word processor, do an open from within the app NOT trying to make that the standard app to open up all those old MacWrite docs. They come in as untitled stuff with a few glitches if the user used some odd formatting. Save out in something you like. I’ve been saving them as Libre Office files myself.
Yes, it’s a by hand one step at a time proocess, but at least it works.
The ones I am doing date from 1993 or so.
I do basically that with DEVONThink. But since hubby is on Android and Linux they are not shared. DT would work if you both are on a Mac.
If not then I second the idea of Obsidian. It’s the most cross platform of those sorts of things.
Or do what I am considering, some sharable notes in Obsidian that I then index into my DT databases for portably on my iOS devices.
Yes, what is amazing with Obsidian using classical Markdown files is that you can use its strengths but then index it in DEVONthink.
There are also scripts and features being developed that will allow you to parse your Obsidian vaults in Tinderbox. Meaning your pretty much have all the heavyweight thought processor apps working in concert for you. I find that pretty exciting.
Sure! This is still a work in progress, and I may end up moving over to Airtable for this, since Airtable provides a calendar feed and has Pocket integration. But I think the general idea will work in either app.
Here’s a snapshot of what I put together for myself:
The goal is to not have to type everything multiple times during the planning process, and to be able to see how things fit together.
I see units as containing topics, which in turn contain readings and activities/assignments. Blocks are where everything eventually ends up — they’re portions of class sessions.
There will actually be more than 80 blocks in a 15-week semester (there will usually be 85-90), but planning for 80 provides some wiggle room in case something takes longer than I planned, I get sick, we’re closed due to weather, holidays hit the class schedule particularly hard (we get Easter Monday as well as Good Friday off at my college, so the spring semester MWF cycle takes quite a hit).
Our MWF classes are 50 minutes, and our classes that meet MW or TTh are 75, so either way a full week has six “blocks.” I took the idea from my high school experience. Though the school has since gone back to a traditional schedule, when I was there it was modular: each day was divided into 20 20-minute “mods.” We also did a six-day cycle rather than a five-day week. Some classes worked more traditionally within that structure, but others took advantage of the opportunities our unusual system provided. For example, on days 1, 3, and 5, Calculus met in a large lecture group of about 100 students, for two “mods.” That time was used for presentation of material. On days 2, 4, and 6 we met for three “mods” with our individual teachers in smaller groups of 20-25. That time was used for working problems, clarifying questions, helping individual students with particular difficulties, etc.
Sorry if that’s TMI about blocks. The TL;DR version: I’m trying to think about my course not only as a whole, or even as units/topics, but also as even smaller units. Doing so will make it easier to shift from a MWF to a TTh schedule, if needed. I’m also trying to think through what kinds of things might work well online (and which would work best synchronously), in case we need to be online in the spring.
I picked a really good semester to be on sabbatical. I don’t know how those of you in the classroom this term do it, especially those of you who have to do dual-mode!
Maybe it’s because there is something called ‘travel’.
Sometimes I find it quite irritating and arrogant that people who sit at a desk all day long, don’t realize internet connectivity is basically non-existent in an airplane. And there are many areas, especially in the Western US where cellular coverage is spotty.
We could also mention that cellular coverage inside large corporation buildings can be sketchy, and logging into your customers wi-fi network is not an ideal situation.
So to answer your question, there are many reasons why online only access is not acceptable.
Hi!
As I was watching this guy on YouTube, it dawned on me that he would/could have lesson plans down to a science using notion. He’s amazing to watch, at any rate.
He’d have the lessons readily available for the next time he taught the class… all laid out and ready for easy modification. He didn’t say all that. Rather it is what I extrapolated and perhaps it might help you.
I spent one entire summer building and refining a database of lesson plans with radio buttons, pull down menus etc. (I had fun actually).
The State had mandated their very own, totally new, next to impossible to implement, nit picky, micromanaging set of rules that would wreak havoc on one’s spirit if done during the regular school year. The teachers had a VERY hard time with it but I could do mine in a half hour because I had spent the summer working on them.
You could even save them to a particular format (database) as you go.
Hope that helps! Good luck!!
Yes, and the vast majority of people who are mobile have mobile devices with WiFi, and 3g/4g/5G cellular, as I noted. Most people who’d use this class of software don’t find online only access a problem
This is great. Thanks. Lots to digest … I’ll explore. And thanks @Katie for your insights too.
Seems to be a lot of teachers in this group… So maybe I can throw out another question?
I like the idea of keeping my teaching materials organized and I’ve used Evernote, I’ve use dropbox, and Devon think… Right now I have it all stored in Google drive because sharing with other teachers and sharing assignments with students through our LMS it’s easiest this way… But if you were to use this notion platform or air table, how would you work in the teaching materials? links? Import The file? I don’t like having files in two places so just some food for thought
Maybe a more general question is how does everybody organize their teaching materials?
Perhaps you might start a separate thread on this great question (related of course to seeking macOS specific insights). It would avoid a sense that you are inadvertently hijacking this thread.
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JJW
I disagree with that. It’s been a long time since I had to travel but you cannot depend on wifi, cellular coverage is more than just “spotty” over most of the west as in read non-existant and quite frankly I am not going to carry a huge satt. phone again. Heck I can get into places where I have no GPS coverage as in you can’t see neough of the sattelites to get a decent fix.
And as has been pointed out you can’t use the wifi in many corporate buildings, even cell phone ocoverage is spotty in inside buildings.
On-line only is a deal breaker for many more people than you might imagine.
I suspect the first sentence is to suggest that on-line only should not mean “no access” for “the vast majority of people”. It borders on being a broad generalization from a local experience. It may be true but, show the data first. Independent of this, it seemingly dismisses out of hand the quality of service required to use Notion. By example, I dare you to go to the backwoods of upstate NY and try doing full-on Notion database work using a 3G network connection with 1 bar service – Yep, you are in the “vast majority” on that one.
Better said … Most people who’d decide conclusively that they want to use this class of software assure first that they will not be limited by online only access (as) a problem. Otherwise, the original sentence is a Cart – Horse – Backward trap.
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JJW
Every course begins with
and a standardized naming system, e.g. 20sprg-methods, 19fall-econ etc. which gets a snippet & i’d for the directory and as a prefix for any files created in the course. Dated material is identified by week.day e.g. 4.2 so I can easily locate where in the course something fell without checking the old syllabus for exact dates.
Everything lives in the directory for its course, but also gets tagged. Smart folders based on tags can bring up e.g. every essay assignment on a particular topic, every slide deck for week 4 of a course etc.
Fully agree. Until, you know, the world happened, I had very long and regular flights with stopovers in China. Internet does not happen, either in flight or on the ground (VPNs in China have become a complicated matter). And you can travel places where Internet connection is just bad, making for a painful user experience. Offline access matters.
The post on Paperless is dated 23 August 2020.
If that’s accurate, and the author used a December 2019 video to make their point, it simply underpins my initial opinion
I concur. Prior to the pandemic I traveled to China, Taiwan, South Korea, Germany, France, and Spain, and occasionally Australia. It would be essential to have off-line capability for any app that I’m using. Not having off-line capability is a non-starter. At some point the pandemic will end and I will resume international travel .
Glad to see that I am not the only MPU person on all of the flights I take😅.
Total offline access is the only reason I am unable to embrace iCloud as my only cloud service, as I love the experience I get using it. Quite irritating that I have iPad Pros with 1TB of storage, with 800Gb free, but Apple still won’t let me download all of the files I need.
have you looked into a Scriptable script for downloading all critical iCloud files before flying?
One of my main requirements for an app is that it does what paper cannot do. I can use paper if I step out of my house. An app that cannot be used offline is an app I cannot use if I am not at home or at a place with secure wifi, and therefore violates the “cannot be done with paper” principle. You may think differently, and that’s ok. But lack of offline support is still a valid reason not to use Notion or any other software.
Unfortunately, I run my businesses virtually, which is usually very much a positive. However, many times I have no idea of what files I will need while not having Internet access. So to manually download several thousand files before each trip (4-6 times/month) is a definite non-starter.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, it constantly amazes me how many people who work in an office, or live in a fairly congested urban area, have no idea that there are large swathes of the country / world where Internet access is either very limited or non-existent.
I travel with 2 iPad Pros, both with Verizon cellular access, as well as a laptop. So I am as connected as it is possible to be.
Even though I have Google Drive andOneDrive, I absolutely prefer iCloud Drive, except for this one issue. Therefore I have a Hazel rule that copies every one of my files to OneDrive, which is the only cloud service which enables me to designate entire folders for offline access. Of course, OneDrive and O365 comes with it’s own set of problems…
And those things have their own challenges as well. “Fairly congested urban area” can sometimes mean cellular congestion to the point where you can’t get a reasonable signal, even if the signal is otherwise seemingly readily available.
Around here in particular, there’s also a couple-mile stretch of the expressway on the way home where I just can’t get Siri to do anything. Whether or not that’s due to a complete lack of coverage or just some persistent weirdness, who knows - but it’s a thing, and it bites me enough that I’m now habitually dictating things to Drafts (which can process dictation on-device) instead of just asking Siri to deal with them.
And at least around where I live, every spring / summer it seems we can count on at least one multi-hour power outage. Which, almost by definition, clobbers wi-fi, followed immediately by all the devices clamoring for a cell signal, which causes one of the aforementioned congestion spikes. Not a huge inconvenience typically, but if I couldn’t figure out where I needed to be in an hour because my itinerary was online, that would be rather unpleasant. 
I don’t live in the third world or anything, either. I’m in a decently-populated suburb of a major city.
No manual download is what I’m saying. Using Scriptable, I think you could create a button that downloads all of your iCloud things. You could probably get help for that over at the Automators forum.
Not sure, though. sorry about your situation…
