Looks like I will be teaching Blender at Calhoun Community College this Fall. (Huntsville, Alabama, USA). It’s a great way to Blend and get paid for it. The tough part is that the computer lab is macintosh (OS 10.2) and I have been Blendering on Windoze and Linux. I can get used to the one mouse button (I use Macs too-have OS 9 Only), but I would like to get some feedback on what doesn’t work right on the Macs so I can prepare myself.
Your feedback is appreciated.
hey thats great news.
i actually plan on doing similar someday, taking night classes perhaps and teaching people.
i don’t have experience with blender on a MAC, but i do know the windows version works on mac if you use the macintosh windows emulator.
i don’t know how much of a performance cut it takes though.
as for teaching blender i suggest you try to know EVERYTHING about blender, i suggest you read as much about shortcut keys etc… as you can before you go there and start teaching.
i have a computer teacher at Design school who is teaching us Photoshop.
well i ask him a question like how do i put grain over the top of this that emulates the grain on the photo, and he HAD NO CLUE.
i have used photoshop for about 12 hours and already i know more about it than him. its rather frustrating having a teacher that can’t say wether it can or can’t be done.
just a sugestion, not questioning your blender abilitys but just saying you should try to stay as sharp as possible and be prepared for ANY question that comes your way.
Alltaken
Congrads!!!
If you can replace the mouse with a 3 button one. Doing 3D on Mac one should have a 3 button mouse. Any cheap USB mouse should work. So avoid one button mouse.
Sofar I can’t get Python scripts to work. But that might just be me. What I will do is focus some on Mac OS X version and let you know what I run into.
But most of what you will be teaching should work on the Mac version. I did the “Blender Book” and the Blender Manual all on Mac OS X. Blender 2.23 crashes alot on me and Renders were real slow but I’m not sure how 2.26 do, but will look into it for you.
Also it would help to get a Mac OS X book.
Wish you all the luck that one can wish.
hehe i am doing exactly the same in about two weeks i will start teaching blender to people. so please, come with any suggestions.
d52477001
Thanks for the feedback,
I have been teaching Blender for two semesters at a local College but it was a non-credit introductory course. THe class this fall will be fro credit and involve a lot more time.
My recommendations to others is do not try to cover too much too fast. My students this fall will already have had basic graphic computing classes. That should help.
Can you replace the mac mouse with a three button Mouse and specify the key combinations for the buttons. That would be useful. The way Blender for Mac OS works now is you hold the Option Key for MM and the Apple command Key for LM.
Good Luck to those of you teaching as well. I will do my best to share my experiences. I have done some of theat on the Education forum at blender.org
Once you plug in a 3button USB mouse it behaves just like the Windows Mouse. No adjustments needed work auto-magically!!! 
Even right click in internet explorer works the same. Cool thing, kills that one button Mac mouse issue. Even the scroll on the mouse with a scroll button work the same.
OHH MY GOSHH!!!
I can’t believe your teaching Blender at Calhoun!! And I thought I had to look far and near online to learn!!
Reckon I’ll be signing up pretty soon, just for that class!! Even though this was posted some time ago, I hope you’re still teaching!
(I’m the webmaster over at Oakwood College, graduated in '99)
-ecoita
Blender is very very difficult to use with anything but a 3 button mouse. I would strongly recommend you either getting a crate full of USB 3 buton mice or make sure the students bring their own.
Having to use two extra buttons on the keyboard to do what you are used to doing with a mouse is a big pain. Again, I really recomend that you make sure everyone uses a 3 button mouse when they are learning the software.
Why assume that there are things that don’t work right? In my experience with Macs, you should be looking for the things that work better. 
There are almost zero differences between Blender versions across platforms. The main ones I can think of are that Windows is the only version with the ‘fullscreen’ button in the top right corner (on Macs, you can use the zoom button on the window frame). Other than that it’s just the render formats - Windows is the only one that can use AVI codec, since it’s plugging in to the Video for Windows system, and only Windows and Macs can use Quicktime (since that’s all it’s available for). Quicktime on Macs in general is far, far superior to on Windows, there’s a lot more codecs and it just works better. Don’t even think about running the windows version through an emulator!
As was mentioned, you can plug in any old USB 3 button mouse and it will work just as you’re used to in any other OS. There was also a Blender General topic about switching Ctrl and Command for the 2nd mouse button emulation here: https://blenderartists.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=41188
Hmmm… are the dates on this thread correct? If so, mthoenes has been teaching for almost 2 years now (first post May 2003).
How is it working out, mthoenes??
My input on Blender on a Mac…
I don’t think he comes here anymore… at least he hasn’t posted for a long time- actually, it’s kind of ironic that his last post in the forums was 1 year ago today…
s/ironic/coincidental/
Yeah, I kind some looking around on the Calhoun site and didn’t see his name. He might be there, but I will have to look some more. In the school bulletin, there is mention of 2 classes in 3D modeling & animation, but did not say the platform. I would have to assume it is blender…but I’ll see if there Fall semester program lineup…
Anyway, back to the tutorials… I seem to be picking up more & more as I go along… 