Mac OS X Leopard in Education

Introducing Mac OS X Leopard, the sixth major release of the ideal computing platform for education. Since Mac OS X was first introduced, Apple has provided educators and students a stable and secure computing environment for 21st-century learning. With over 300 new features, the latest incarnation of Mac OS X provides even more power and flexibility, with many built-in tools for accessibility, digital authoring, collaboration, and content management. Mac OS X Leopard scales well, meeting the needs of students and teachers – from elementary schools to colleges, universities, and research institutions.

A Space for Everything, and Everything in Its Space

Leopard's new Spaces feature is a quick and convenient way to organize files and applications for instant, clutter-free access. It's easy for students to tab through their Spaces to see every project they are working on. They can move applications from one space to another, rearrange them with drag-and-drop simplicity, and get a birds-eye view of all of their Spaces.

Share and Share Alike

Screen sharing in iChat¹ lets educators and students, with proper authorization and security, remotely observe and control the display of another computer - from across the room or across the globe. Screen sharing provides a convenient built in tool for help-desk staff who will be able to assist teachers or students by sharing their screens.  When a screen-sharing session is initiated, an audio chat is automatically started making it easy to communicate while a Mac is being shared. Student groups can easily create websites, reports, or presentations together, opening a whole new world of collaborative possibilities.

Get a Mac; Bring Windows Apps Along

More and more schools and universities are evaluating Macs as the solution for their computing needs. To make this choice even more appealing, Leopard offers Boot Camp, a technology that lets users run the Windows XP or Windows Vista² operating system on a Mac. Boot Camp gives schools the best of both worlds: a way to move forward to the Mac, while bringing those few Windows-only applications along the way.

Reaching All Learners

At Apple, we believe that every child deserves the opportunity to excel in school and the right tools to make it happen. With the new Mac OS X Leopard there are even more enhanced accessibility features. New voice technology in VoiceOver, plus Braille support, positional audio cues, and extended keyboard capability give users with visual disabilities more control over their Macs than ever. The new synthesized English voice in Leopard, called Alex, uses advanced, patented Apple technologies that deliver natural intonation, even at rapid speaking rates. And Alex works with any application that supports Apple’s speech synthesis. Leopard's new accessibility features are destined to make it the most accessible Mac OS ever.

What's Past is Present with Time Machine

The Time Machine feature in Leopard automates backup, and makes retrieval easy. With Time Machine educators and students can go back in time, find what they need, then restore everything with a single click. Lost files are never very far away, thanks to Time Machine.³

iChat Theater: It's Your Show

Now students can show-and-tell from anywhere with iChat Theater videoconferencing. Teachers can give a full Keynote presentation, accompanied by a live video feed of them making the delivery, all from a stunning, full-screen virtual presentation room. iChat Theater presentations can be saved to make quick and easy podcasts. Educators can bring experts into the class with rich presentations and interactivity and students can share their work with other students across campus or across the globe. It's the easiest, most dazzling way to share over the Internet.

iCal: the Collaborative Calendar

Simply posting a group’s calendar to the Internet is a one-way transaction. With iCal, you can schedule a meeting, book conference rooms, and even resources, such as mobile labs or projectors when using iCal with a compatible CalDAV server like iCal Server. Whether it’s an activities calendar or a class schedule, educators, students, and parents can participate in managing the group’s events.   

Spotlight Shines on Group Projects

The new network-aware Leopard Spotlight lets students quickly and easily search for their media and files. Students can use Spotlight to search beyond their desktops across network-mounted folders on other Macs or PCs. Leopard's new Spotlight enhancements make finding files even easier for student group projects.

Dashboard: Your Portal to the Web

The new Dashboard in Leopard lets educators and students create personal widgets. Widgets perform common tasks and give students fast access to information on the web. Now with the Web Clip feature anyone can simply clip out any portion of a web page and turn it into a Dashboard widget. A widget is always live, and it will update whenever the originating website refreshes its content.

More Than Just Mail

New features in Leopard let students and educators do more with their mail. They can send email messages complete with photos and graphics with over 30 professionally designed stationary templates. With team or school-themed emails and communications, educators can add professional-looking design to parent communications. The new Notes feature is perfect for taking down class notes and capturing class collaboration. And educators can create to-do items directly from email messages. Mail also works with iCal, so to-dos created and modified in Mail appear automatically in iCal and vice versa. Mail makes creating and organizing to-dos from email and notes effortless, so educators can focus on completing their to-dos rather than managing them.