Editing an audio or video file is easier than you might think...

Trim audio

Not a lot of people know this but if you need to trim a video or an audio file, like an MP4 (video) or an MP3 (audio), it's easier than you think. Just open the file in Quicktime Player, and use the editing features to trim the track.

Audio trimming in Quicktime

Edited audio can be saved it to iTunes as AAC (Apple's version of an MP3) using the Export option, if you really need it to be an MP3, iTunes can convert audio files to MP3 if you need it to.

Now you can do more complex editing, but not as an audio file, so one way round this is to record the audio as a video, then edit as described below, then at the end discard the video and export as audio only. The same works in iMovie.

Edit video

If you're not bothered about transitions, and picture in picture, then the editing option in Quicktime are all you need. You can trim the video just as you a would audio, (which incidentally is exactly the same on any iOS device, same conventions). But where it really rocketh is in it's accuracy with splitting and deleting bits of video, or moving them around.

Just choose View > Show Clips to reveal a simple editing timeline at the bottom, click to select it (it will have a yellow outline) then move to the section of the video you want to split, you can even nudge the split point frame by frame using the arrow keys.

Once you've found the split point just choose Edit > Split Clip (or command Y) and you will see the video split into two (or more, if you split more than once) lozenges. Those bits can be deleted, or even moved about, simple.

You can even view the audio waveform to make editing easier, see where the quiet parts are...

Combine multiple clips

Just drag a video onto a video you have open and see the magic unfold before your very eyes! Now you can trim, move, split and of the clips. 

When you're finished Export and choose the kind of video you want.

Convert video/audio file formats

For a final phenomenal feature, got video that is to big? No problem just right/secondary click, choose Encode Selected Video Files. The in the dialog window that pops up choose a size, 480p will create a smaller, web friendly version of your video.*

* You can make video files smaller, but you cannot make them bigger! 

Search Smarter

If you ever hear 'boolean operators' mentioned in a sentence, you could be forgiven for giving this whole rigamarole an eye roll and moving on—which I must confess I used to do, but DON'T, if you ignore these fabulous little functions you are missing out; you don't need to use all or even most of them, but you won't go wrong with these...

Just remember when using an operator, this is not an essay, so NO SPACE after the colon or it won't work! 

Six Scintillating Search Strings

So yes, most 'boolean operators' are extremely geeky and only really relevant to highly specialised search gurus, but there are a handful that are useful to anyone, yes that includes you, if you can use Google you can use these; they are:

define: 

Get a dictionary definition not just a webpage with the word in 

“search term here” 

Use quotes to search for a specific term or phrase with exactly those words in exactly that order eg “halt and catch fire“

site: 

eg site:ie to just return websites that are based in Ireland, especially useful for research where you want the perspective of people of a certain nation not just the most popular websites on the Internet. 

intitle: 

eg intitle:gaming will only give you websites where gaming is in the title of the page not just a possibly fleeting reference within an article that is primarily about something else completely different. 

NOT or - to exclude a particular term that keeps messing up your search results, eg maybe you’re searching for Koala, but you keep on getting websites that include the phrase “koala bear“ which you know means that they can’t be particularly authoritative, then you just add the search term -bear now any of the results that included the term “bear” will be excluded, refining your search down to a much better selection of sites. 

Search for transparent images for your Google Slides 

Search for images with other images… 

Mix & Match! 

And of course don’t forget your combos, any/all of the above can be combined to extremely powerful effect, eg

intitle:”halt and catch fire” site:ie  

This will return websites that are based in Ireland that are all almost certainly about the TV show ‘halt and catch fire’ ... 

The 10 Commandments of Word Processing

This has to be one of the most commonly used ICT skills, even be the most tech reluctant, but unfortunately as most of us are self taught, there are quite a few aspects that have been poorly learned, are poorly practised, and are now inevitably poorly taught...

The good news is that once you know what you don't know, it's easy to fix, the chances are, no matter how long you've been word processing, you will find a few surprises in this list:

1. Thou shalt use spell check (but don't rely on spellcheck—homophones much?). 
2. Thou shalt use the built in thesaurus (and use 'Command+F' to check for repetition!).
3. Thou shalt not ignore the grammar/proof reading tool—if it's got a squiggly line under it, check it!
4. Thous shalt not centre text by tapping the spacebar, use the centre align icon on the formatting bar. 
5. Verily the same is true for tabbing, use the tab key to indent, not the spacebar (also useful for adding a new row to the bottom of a table).
6. Thou shalt not do things manually that can be done automatically; like adding page numbers, numbered lists, or creating a table of contents.
7. Thou shalt use the 'paste unformatted' or 'paste as text' option to avoid reformatting all the text you paste in. Every. Time.
8. Thou shalt use the styles menu to structure your document with headings etc (and you can't use some automatic features without this).
9. Thou shalt insert a page break if you want a new page (don't just repeatedly hammer the return key).
10. Thou shalt not hammer keyboard keys— NEVER press a space bar more than once, or a return key more than twice. 

All of the above are true regardless of the tool you use for word processing, from MS Word, to Pages, to Google Docs. The last of these is arguably the most practical in our context, so here's some specific pointers:

Google Doc formatting like a boss... 

Use the templates to get a head start, these also function is great 'mentor texts' for students to see how formatting using Styles looks and works. Instead of creating a Doc within Google Drive, click on the Google Grid and select Docs—Voilah!



Inside any Google Doc, the Styles menu allows you to format your document with a couple of clicks,  you can even customise this menu so the Styles use the fonts and formatting you prefer, these will be available in any Google Doc you create or edit.



Once you've formatted your document using Styles, you can add a Table of Contents with a couple of clicks, just go to Insert > Table of Contents. All the formatting, and page numbering all done for you, you can even choose a more screen friendly version that makes all the headers hyperlinked.

Can you show me?

Google have an online guide that will step you through all of the above, and this article has a similar guide to the skills I've outlined above, but specifically tailored to Microsoft Office, and with lots of nice pictures! The key takeaway is that these skills are conventions that apply regardless of the platform, device or application you use, from MS Word, to Pages to Google Docs, they all utilise and provide these features.

Last but not least, here are some video tutorials I made a few years ago, this is in the older version of Pages, but as is often the case with tech, not much has really changed, these fundamentals of word processing are pretty much unchanged in over two decades!

Typing Club Tips

Use TypingClub, or the UWCSEA Portal

Typing Club is the online tool we encourage our students (and teachers) to use at UWCSEA to learn how to touch-type, so in the interests of 'walking the walk' I thought I'd better have a go myself. In so doing, I have gleaned some experience that I believe will come in useful for anyone attempting to do likewise.

Don't look down

Whatever you do, don't look at the keys! If this too tempting to resist, then maybe place something like a tea-towel over your hands/keyboard. Some people even cut down a cardboard box so a flap can be placed over your keyboard. Or it can be as simple as draping a cloth/towel over your hands as you type...

Courtesy of Wendy Jones - Touch-typing expert!

Or just fold a sheet of A3 paper...

You can even use a sweatshirt! 

Set your sights low! 

The goal is not to hit 50-100 wpm—yet. The goal is to become 'functional' ie type with all 10 fingers with capital letters and basic punctuation, even if the speed is relatively low, eg 25 WPM - at this point students can stop hunting and pecking and touch type, then anytime they type, they would effectively be practising. I reckon aiming for a minimum of 3 stars should suffice, and would mitigate the frustration they will most likely encounter if they try to get 4 or even 5 stars. If they switch to touch-typing for everyday use, they'd probably find that if they return to the typing tutor after a month they'd be able to turn those 3s into 4s and 5s without too much trouble. If they're anything like me, they will find that their touch-typing speed is probably slower than their 'hunt and peck' speed, but this is an investment, if they stick with it, they will be much better off in the long run.

Top Typing Club Tips

You start off typing gibberish, but fret not, most of the typing you'll be doing will be real words, even if the sentences don't make much sense.

Command R (refresh) to retry when (not if) you mess up right at the start.

Commit to at least 10-15 mins a day. This is all about making your subconscious know the keys without thinking about it, tedious repetition is the only way to do this!

Much like Maths, there's no point trying to be fast, focus on being accurate, and speed will come naturally and gradually with confidence. Focusing on speed will just stress you out, causing you to make more errors.

Give up (sometimes)! Sometimes your fingers just won't respond to your mind, and you'll find yourself going backwards! This is really frustrating,  you just need to take a break, do something else, come back in half an hour and try again.

Practice Makes Permanent!

You only get good at games like this through repetition, lots of repetition...  

Treat it like a platform video game, albeit not a very exciting one... It's the same kind of 'twitch' skill you learn through tedious repetition that is essential for mastering a platforming game like Super Mario Bros, or Geometry Dash, but a lot more useful! Soon you'll have a rhythm and your fingers will find the keys without you needing to consciously think about it. 

Ignore the backspace key, focus on getting it right without it, you can still get 3-5 stars even with some errors; the faffing about you'll be doing fixing the errors will actually lower your score more than you would if you just ignore the typos and keep going.

Star stress; the 'gamification' of this tool by rewarding you with stars is fine at the early stages, when hitting high scores is relatively easy... The problem is before too long this becomes a source of great frustration! My advice is that obtaining 3 stars (or higher) is more than enough. They can always return later and turn those 3 stars into or 5 stars when their skills have improved. There are other typing tools out there, like typingstudy that don't focus on these kinds of shallow motivators, which you might want to consider if the stars are causing stress!

Turn this off in settings as soon as you feel capable

Turn off the visual assistance ASAP, you need to be able to rely on touch as quickly as you can. I'd abandoned it by stage 10. I notice my speed increased significantly once I did that.

Focus on the first 56

Don't let the magical 100 bother you; by the time you hit 56 you will be able to touch-type, not fast, yet, but at least you'll have done the hardest part! As you can see from my stats above, I did, so can you! Out of curiosity, I decided to do the test review, which is kind of cheating, as you're supposed to do all the stages up to 75 first... But I 'passed' the test, I confess, I 'hunted and pecked' the numbers, still, I did it, and I couldn't have done it a few weeks ago!

How long does it take?

Based on the stats, it's taken me a total of 11 hours to get this far, or 660 minutes, which works out as 44 lots of 15 minute sessions—or about 6-7 weeks. Not a bad result considering this is an investment in a skill I'll be able to use for the rest of my life!*

So, you too can learn to touch-type in a couple of months, what are you waiting for?

When can they stop?

Even with a goal of approximately 2-3 months, you still need a clear idea of when it's OK to switch from using the Typing Club for practise, to just using everyday typing as practise, like I am now.

A good plan is to start at the start of term and push through until the end of term 1, ie Xmas. But the real point is to try and give kids 2 - 3 months of daily practise, to get them to a point where they can touch type basic sentences at about 20 wpm.

If you don't get to that point, basically everything they've done up to that point will be in vain, as they will have to revert to the bad habits of hunting and pecking for their writing.

Kids should keep going until they can score 20 wpm with 100% accuracy (they can use the backspace key to help!) in lesson 203, as that is the stage where they are able to write in sentences with capital letters and basic punctuation. 

This should be 100% accurate, even if that means sacrificing speed, as in their everyday writing/typing they will need to be 100% accurate for it to be useful. Lessons 200 - 244 are the ones which are the goal, as mastering these means they can confidently and competently type most sentences, although they will need to ‘hunt and peck’ numbers and characters. 

A speed in the dashboard of 20 wpm is not the same thing, as they could be hitting 20 wpm in week 3, just typing asdf jkl; asdf jkl; or ll ss llss, ll ss lssl ...

We want the students to get to a point where they can touch type basic sentences before they stop using Typing Club, as they can they effectively practise whenever they type anything they need to type, like I am now.

Addendum

A year ago I stopped using Typing Club, and from that point forced myself to touch type everything I write (except passwords). When I went back in to Typing Club to compare today, my speed is now consistently over 40 wpm with 100% accuracy—it works!

Is Cloud Confusion Driving you Crazy?

Ridiculous name, revolutionary technology.

With the exponential increase in 'cloud' capacity, it is becoming increasingly critical to rely on this powerful technology to ensure that all of our essential data is safe, and accessible, from, well, any screen with an internet connection. With the multiplicity of devices in our lives, this functionality is pretty much essential.

This is more of a blessing than a curse, BUT.

There's always a but.

Now I know Benjen Stark said "You know, my brother once told me that nothing someone says before the word "but" really counts… (GoT)

But...

The fact is that despite it's magnificence, the 'cloud' can cause a huge amount of confusion, so let's just break this down a bit.

What's the cloud?

Essentially, the 'cloud' is a rather dubious name for describing any of your data which is not just stored on your actual device, instead it's stored on a remote server (very much on the ground) that pulls and pushes your content to your devices over the internet. 

How many clouds?

Well, as it turns out there are quite a few forms of cloud technology, but the ones of most interest to us at UWCSEA, are Apple's 'iCloud' and, well pretty much everything even vaguely Google related from 'Drive' to Google Photos et cetera.

Cloud confusion...

The confusion stems from the fact that we all need to separate our home and work life, not to mention that the school's user agreement clearly lays out expectations that there should be clear boundaries between personal and professional use of UWCSEA devices. Anyway, no one really wants to see those pictures of me in a bikini on a beach in Magaluf, allegedly. So whether you realise this or not, you have cloud accounts associated with every Google account, and they are completely separate, as it should be, the same is true for any Apple ID you use (more below on that).

In our hyperconnected world, digital objects have inherited the property of stickiness. Photos end up everywhere and it takes not only the knowledge of how all of the synchronisation works to understand where, but also a determined approach to 'e-Cleaning' to make sure that they are not in places you didn’t expect.

If you're confused, don't feel bad, this stuff is CONFUSING for everyone, why? Two reasons: 

The first is that people don’t know, or understand, what happens to their digital property when they tick the “backup everything to iCloud/Google” check boxes. 

The second is that Apple, and Google (and other cloud providers, eg DropBox, SkyDrive et al), in their eagerness to make the process as simple as possible, do a really bad job of explaining what is going on, and importantly, what can happen if things go wrong. It just 'works' apart from when it 'just works' in a way that you don't want it to work... 

Go wrong? What do you mean 'go wrong'!?

Well if you mix up your accounts with your devices you can end up accidentally having the 'cloud' hoover up all of your photos and videos that you're taking on your phone/tablet/laptop/desktop and adding them to your online collection, if you share that collection with other people (they are private by default) then that audience can see everything, you might be surprised at the kind of content your device has helpfully uploaded in the background for you... 

Don't Panic!

This problem really only relates to your 'rich' media, specifically photos and videos; you can happily access work/home email without any conflict, although I'd still use separate apps to minimise confusion, see below.

Solutions?

You can only have ONE cloud account associated with a mobile device*, you can sign in and out, but this just gets more confusing, so as a general rule, pick one and stick with that. So are the photos/videos on your phone more work or home related? If so, use the home cloud account, but don't use that device for taking videos/photos for work use, unless it is temporary, ie email/transfer them to a device dedicated to work use, and delete them afterwards.  Is your Pad more work related? Well sign into a work cloud account—which is most likely the UWC Gapps account, but then don't capture media for home use on that device, unless it is temporary, ie email/transfer them to a device dedicated to home use, and delete them afterwards.

Isolate with Apps

By dedicating specific apps to work/home you can mitigate the confusion, eg (assuming an iOS device here) Use the Mail app for your home account, use the Gmail App for work, use the Safari app for home browsing, use the Chrome app for school browsing...  This separation breaks down with rich media though, as the apps generally link to your device camera roll, which is shared across the entire device, regardless of the account an app is associated with.

Kids/Hubbie's/Wife's content mixed up with yours? 

Welcome to Apple ID vs App Store

Many of you want to use the same Apple ID on multiple family devices, so that if you purchase something from the App store you can install it on any device in the family without paying twice, that's fine, but don't confuse this with sharing the same iCloud account. 

WHAT? They're different?

Well, yes... and.. no.

You can use the same Apple ID for iCloud AND for purchasing things from Apple, especially the App Store. But these don't have to be the same, and if you want family members to be able to download stuff you've purchased you will need to separate their Apple ID (iCloud) from your Apple ID (App Store).

See? I told you it was/is confusing.

So in my case, scenario, all of the devices in my house can use MY Apple ID in the App Store to download things I've purchased for myself, or for them. BUT 

(and it's another big but)

Everyone in your family should use their OWN Apple ID on their own device, these can (and should be) be separate, that way everyone in your family keeps their 'stuff' separate from yours, but you can all download content from the same App Store account.

You can use a shared account for App Store, & an individual account/s for iCloud

Family Sharing

After years of using the above method to stay sane, Apple finally conceded that there is an issue and rolled out Family Sharing' last year, this should hopefully simplify things, unless you like me use more than one App Store account (I have one in Singapore and one in the UK), as Family Sharing is restricted on onto App Store, ie if you set it up using the Singapore store, all accounts have to be in the Singapore store, even if you leave and move overseas... Which means you need to have an active credit card account for that store. ...

Which is why I don't use it. However it could be JUST what you need, in which case click here, to follow Apple's guidelines to setting this up for your family. Also note, if you use Apple's Family Sharing method to set up Apple IDs for your kids (under 13), they will have to use an iCloud email account, not their school account, this is fine, but you may need to explain this to them...

Smarter iCloud Settings

If you're one of these teachers who is fortunate enough to have had an iPad provided for you by the college, for lots of reasons, including:

• trickledown learning—becoming familiar with device by just using it—you use it for personal reasons, like making a home video, but this skills you up, so you can use the new found skills with those apps with your students with greater confidence
• enabling you to easily explore and learn how to use apps you want to use with your students, and new apps
• to allow you to more easily capture evidence of learning (or the opposite) for your own planning and prepping purposes
• to more easily facilitate recording and assessment, without the many limitations posed by paper based systems, using apps like Numbers, Notability, iDoceo et al.

The problem is this means you will have a load of content (if not all of it) in your camera roll which is student/college related, if you use the same device on holiday, well, all of your snaps will get mixed up with your school content - not ideal. if you connect this device to your iCloud account all of your personal media on other connected devices will also all stream into the same camera roll all 'polluting' the stream. 

You could easily solve this by just not connecting your iPad to your iCloud account, the problem with this is being connected to the iCloud is really useful, being able to sync all your Apple content from other apps like Notes, Pages, Safari bookmarks et cetera can be really useful, not to mention all the content on iTunes you might have purchased. So how can you have your school iPad connected to your iCloud account and avoid this? Easy, just go into your iCloud settings and switch off Photos, done. Everything in your camera roll is now only content you captured with this device, you can still transfer it to other devices using email, Airdrop, apps like Send it Anywhere. If you install the Google Photos app, it will sync all your camera roll content to your college GApps account, so it's all easily accessible from your laptop—winwin! In fact using the suite of Google Apps (Google Drive, GMail...) is another easy way to keep your work/home life separate on the same device. 

Settings - iCloud

You can turn any/all of these off

Final Advice...

I hate to break it to you, but we have really reached a point where trying to manage the entire scope of your digital life on one laptop is increasingly untenable. My advice? Get a dedicated device for home, and keep that content completely separate for the device you use for work. Simple. If you are a family with loads of video/photos, and media being captured and shared by everyone (our home as 2 adults, 2 kids, one helper, and 5 laptops, 5 iPhones, 5 tablets, and one desktop) then I'd advise you to purchase a dedicated desktop computer (I like the iMac, surprise, surprise) with the BIGGEST hard drive available. That is where all family media is stored, all other devices are dedicated to that individual's content only; so any 'family' content is temporarily on their device, and is transferred to the BIG MAC ASAP.  That's it.

*On a laptop/desktop, you can have more than one cloud account, but they would need to be associated with different user accounts on that machine, you probably need to see IT Support, or a DLC to help with this... 

Emergency Medical Details & your iPhone

Have you got emergency contact details? Have you got a medical history? Have you got an iPhone?

Well then it makes sense to combine them. 

That way if someone finds your iPhone lying around we have some chance of getting it back to you (the emergency details are available from the lock screen) and if we stumble on your listless frame, we have some hope of working out who you are if you have your phone on you, which you probably will...

This is also a good idea for you to encourage your students to do likewise, well those with iPhones anyway.

For more on the how, see the advice from the experts I've linked to below:

Health App—Medical ID

Within the health app, you can personalize the Medical ID to keep your important health information in case of emergency, from a lost phone emergency to a lost consciousness emergency.

Apple Insider guide.

Apple's more detailed breakdown on the whole app, not just the emergency contact element.

Explain Everything (with Google Drive)

Using Explain Everything with Google Drive on the iPad is an incredible combination. It's not always a great idea to ask students to work from blank screens, it's often useful to give them all a head start by setting up a slide or two for them.

This way they focus on the learning intention, rather than wasting time faffing about with finding the right image, or typing in text that you've just written on the board.

Here's a short video to show you the process:

As you can see from the video the steps are as follows:

1. On your iPad in Explain Everything, set up the slides you want your class to start with.
2. When it's ready, export the project to your Google Drive as a project (not as a video), it will be an xpl file. 
3. You should be able to save it straight into any folder in your Google Drive, like a folder you've already shared with your class.*
4. Now you can just ask your students to open the file in their Google Drive app, when they do, they'll have the choice to open it with an app, they choose Explain Everything, 
5. That's it, now they have their own copy in Explain Everything, ready to learn.

Method #2

Unfortunately (at time of typing) an update from Google Drive has rendered the above steps redundant... :(

The good news is that the good folks at Explain Everything have provided an alternative workflow that is not very different:

1. On your iPad in Explain Everything, set up the slides you want your class to start with.
2. When it's ready, export the project to your Google Drive as a project (not as a video), it will be an xpl file. 
3. You should be able to save it straight into any folder in your Google Drive, like a folder you've already shared with your class.*
4. Go to the Explain Everything home screen and choose the 'document' icon from the top left corner. 
5. Select GDrive and they can find the project in the shared folder.
6. That's it, now they have their own copy in Explain Everything, ready to learn.

*It doesn't have to go in a folder, if you want you can just share the project file directly with the class, just as you would any other  file/Google doc.

Easily Rename/resize Loads of Files

As we are increasingly relying on Google Drive storage for storing our files, we are also increasingly reliant on search rather than digging through folders to find our files.

For search to work, you need smarter file names, unfortunately, most of the time, especially with images, we get a load of files called something really unhelpful like IMG456789.jpg not exactly the most searchable of names.

With a geeky Application on your Mac called Automator you can set up a workflow to rename a load of files with a few clicks, and if you really dig it, you can even use a similar process to use Automator to set up other workflows, like I have another one for scaling images to a set size.

Don't be put off by its geekiness, you set this up once and use it forever!

Here's a short video tutorial I made to show how this works:




Here is the set up as written instructions, so hopefully I have all the 'learning styles' covered.

1. Open Automator and create a new workflow file (press Command-N or choose New from the File menu). Then choose Service from the window of available workflow types (this option will look like a gear).
2. Adjust Service inputs - so be sure to choose "files or folders" from the first drop-down menu at the top of the workflow, and then choose Finder from the second menu. 
3. Drag the Rename Finder Items option from the action library (to the left of the window, under the Files & Folders category) to the workflow window. When you do this, Automator will issue a warning that this action will alter existing files, and provide you with an option to add an action to first copy the files instead of altering them. At this point click Don't Add.
4. I would tweak it here and choose 'Make Sequential' from the drop down menu.
5. Under options click 'Show his action when the workflow runs" so you have the choice to decide what and how you wish to rename the files.
6. Save - name it something like 'Rename Files'
7. Now whenever you go to the Finder, you can select a group of files or folders, and then right-click them and select your workflow from the Services submenu of the contextual menu.

Batch Resize Images

The same technique works for images, just use the 'Photos > Scale Images' workflow:

Click to enlarge

Or you can Google and install the R-Name App.

Yosemite Update

The good folks at Apple have heard my cry, and added this feature automatically with an right/side click - about time!

FOCUS Lessons

Having just returned from a few days of training teachers in Phnom Penh, at the magnificent CCF I have to confess that within 15 mins of my first lesson observation (of a planned 6 lessons in 2 days) I was seriously struggling with the rationale for this.

Observation without action?

Just watching, knowing that that this lesson, now could be better. If so, then why not act, do what we can, while we can, now.

And a FOCUS lesson was born—a lesson that could be described as an observation, cum intervention/co-teach/sharing/skilling/teaching/reflecting/advising/adjusting lesson.

A FOCUS lesson is largely inspired by Dylan Wiliam's (2011) 5 key strategies for formative assessment, just substituting 'learners' for 'teachers'.

1. Clarifying, sharing, and understanding [teaching] intentions and criteria for success
2. Engineering effective classroom discussions, activities, and [teaching] tasks that elicit evidence of [teaching] 
3. Providing feedback that moves [teaching] forward 
4. Activating [teachers] as instructional resources for one another 
5. Activating [teachers] as owners of their own learning

(Adapted from Wiliam (2011) Embedded formative assessment)

And being a huge fan of acronyms I ended up with:

F: Feedback & Feed Forward
O: Observe (Learning not just teaching)
C: Co-teach & Constructively Criticise
U: Upskill & Unlearn
S: Suggest & Share (good practice)

Meta ACRONYMS

Alphabetically Coded Reminder of Names You Misremember

A Contrived Reduction Of Nomenclature Yielding Mnemonics

A Concise Reduction Obliquely Naming Your Meaning

A Clever Re-Organisation to Nudge Your Memory

Batch Rename FIles

Or, in plain English, rename loads of files at once.

So you have a load of files, maybe images or video, with obscure, automated titles like IMG123456 and so on, but you want them to have titles that are at least reasonably related to the English language.

Well there is a tool for this on your Mac, here's how you do it.

You only have to set this up once, then you can use it forever...

1. Open the App called Automator and create a new workflow file (press Command-N or choose New from the File menu). Then choose Service from the window of available workflow types (this option will look like a gear).
2. Adjust Service inputs - so be sure to choose "files or folders" from the first drop-down menu at the top of the workflow, and then choose Finder from the second menu. 
3. Drag the Rename Finder Items option from the action library (to the left of the window, under the Files & Folders category) to the workflow window. When you do this, Automator will issue a warning that this action will alter existing files, and provide you with an option to add an action to first copy the files instead of altering them. At this point click Don't Add.
4. Under options click 'Show his action when the workflow runs" so you have the choice to decide what and how you wish to rename the files (See example below).
5. Save - name it something like 'Rename Files'
6. Now when you go to the Finder, you can select a group of files or folders, and then right-click them and select your workflow from the Services submenu of the contextual menu.

https://kkaefer.com/journal/2011/batch-rename-on-lion/