Category: Tech tips

In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of pedagogy—the tech topics most important to your teaching—as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.

Today’s tip: How to Auto Forward a Slideshow

Category: MS Office, Google Apps, Webtools

Q: My students want slideshows to automatically forward without requiring a mouse click or spacebar click. How do we do that?

A: Auto-forward isn’t difficult in PowerPoint:

• Go to Transition on the menu bar.
• Go to Timing on the right side.
• Set the timer to serve the needs of the slide. This will require students to practice before presenting so they can put the correct time in. A good default of 5-10 seconds.

It’s easier, but more basic in Google Slideshow: When you play the slideshow, it has an autoplay button that looks exactly like you find on videos

Online tools like Haiku Deck usually have an easy-to-find option for manual or auto-advancing slides.

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What’s your favorite tech tip in your classroom? Share it in the comments below.

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In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of pedagogy—the tech topics most important to your teaching—as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.

Today’s tip: Computer safety

Category: Maintenance, Security

Q:  I’m afraid of getting slammed with viruses, malware–all that bad stuff that comes with visiting the internet. What do I do?

A:  If you take reasonable precautions, the chances of being hit are minimized. Here are two first-steps:

• Don’t download from music or video sites. They carry the greatest danger of malware statistically.
• Make sure your firewall is working.

Sign up for a new tip each week or buy the entire 169 Real-world Ways to Put Tech into Your Classroom.

What’s your favorite tech tip in your classroom? Share it in the comments below.

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In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of pedagogy—the tech topics most important to your teaching—as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.

Today’s tip: Speed up MS Office with the Quick Access Toolbar

Category: MS Office

Q: I tend to do the same actions over and over in MS Office. How do I make that easier?

A: This one will improve the quality of your life immediately.

First, you need Office 2007 or later. Earlier versions don’t include the Quick Access toolbar. Click the drop down arrow (see inset) for the most popular actions–new, open, save, print, etc. Check off those you want on the Quick Access toolbar. Toward the bottom is a choice to have the QA toolbar above or below the ribbon. I choose below.

You can also customize it: If there are tools not included that you use frequently (for example, I use strike through a lot), select ‘customize’ and go find it in the endless list.

Sign up for a new tip each week or buy the entire 169 Real-world Ways to Put Tech into Your Classroom.

What’s your favorite tech tip in your classroom? Share it in the comments below.

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In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of pedagogy—the tech topics most important to your teaching—as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.

Today’s tip: Reset Default Font

Category: MS Office, Google Apps, Classroom Management, Writing

Q: How do I change default font and spacing?

A: Type a couple of paragraphs in any document. Highlight what you typed and right click; select font. Change the font to what you prefer. In my case, it’s TNR 12

Then, in Word: Click the Default button on the lower left to approve that this is how you’d like future documents formatted. See how-to video here.

In Google Apps: Go to Styles drop-down menu>Options>Save current.

That’s it. The next time you open an MS Word or Google Docs document, it will have this revised formatting.

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The last time my daughter visited, life became different than the norm. That inspired two easy tech solutions I had no idea existed and you’re going to love. Here they are:

BTW, I cross posted this to my writer’s blog so my writerly friends could read about these also. If you subscribe to both, you’ll see it there too:

Hey Siri! Where are You?

I have an iPhone. I kept losing it–putting it in places I didn’t normally. My daughter would call me and I’d find it, usually one room over. But then, I discovered if I say, “Hey, Siri. Where are you?” She answers. Then I can follow her voice. Since often, losing a phone occurs when no ones around to call it for you, this was a great discovery.

Walking directions

We went to Fashion Island–a large outdoor mall in Newport Beach–and got separated from my husband. I found him on iPhone’s Find My app and thought I’d follow his dot but it’s easier than that. Find My offers walking directions. They took me direction to the store he was shopping in.

What cool tech tricks have you discovered to improve your everyday life?

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In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of pedagogy—the tech topics most important to your teaching—as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.

Today’s tip: How to Create a Chart Really Fast

Category: MS Office, Google Apps

Q: What’s an easy way to create charts?

A: When students have completed spreadsheet basics, they’re ready to create a chart:

• Collect class data on a spreadsheet.
• Divide into categories.

In Excel: Highlight the labels, categories, and data; push F11. That’s it–a simple chart.

In Google Spreadsheets: Use the icon on the toolbar.

Sign up for a new tip each week or buy the entire 169 Real-world Ways to Put Tech into Your Classroom.

What’s your favorite tech tip in your classroom? Share it in the comments below.

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In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of pedagogy—the tech topics most important to your teaching—as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.

Today’s tip: Open a New Word Doc without Program

Category: MS Office

Q:  I can’t find the icon that opens MS Word. What do I do?

A:  These things happen and always at the worst time. You might have pinned it to the start menu (see Tech Tip #53: How to Pin Any Program to the Start Menu), but what if you didn’t?

No problem. Right click on the desktop and press New>Word Doc. That’s what it does–opens a new Word doc for you without opening the program first.

Sign up for a new tip each week or buy the entire 169 Real-world Ways to Put Tech into Your Classroom.

What’s your favorite tech tip in your classroom? Share it in the comments below.

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In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of pedagogy—the tech topics most important to your teaching—as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.

Today’s tip: Ten Best MS Word Tips

Category: MS Office, Problem-solving, Keyboarding

Here are popular MS Word tips and links to articles:

1. Turn an Address into a Link–push the space bar after pasting in an internet address–that activates it (or push enter)
2. What’s Today’s Date–press Shift+Alt+D in MS Word. Or, as you start typing the date, Word will populate it for you.
3. Menu command is grayed out–push escape four times (you’re probably in something you don’t know you are). This works 90% of the time
4. How to Undelete–push Ctrl+Z
5. #109: MS Word Skills Assessment for Grades 3-8
6. Dear Otto: How do I set the default font on MS Word
7. Tech Tip #37: My MS Word Toolbar Disappeared
8. Tech Tip #20: How to Add an MS Word Link
9. MS Word for Grades 2-5
10. #45: How to Use MS Word to Teach Geography
11. Easy Photo Editing in MS Word
12. Tech Tip #98: Speed up MS Office with Quick Access Toolbar
13. Tech Tip #24: How to Open A New Word Doc Without the Program
14. Tech Tip #102: Doc Saved Over? Try This

Sign up for a new tip each week or buy the entire 169 Real-world Ways to Put Tech into Your Classroom.

What’s your favorite tech tip in your classroom? Share it in the comments below.

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In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of pedagogy—the tech topics most important to your teaching—as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.

Today’s tip: Backup Your Blog

Category: Maintenance, Social Media, Writing, Problem-solving

Q: I’m paranoid of losing my documents so I back them up to an external drive, a flash drive, and in the cloud. My blog–it’s become an important cog in my PLN. If it blew up, I’d be lost. What do I do about backing it up?

A: If you use WordPress, it’s easy; they provide a native tool for that. Here’s what you do:

• Go to Tools>Export.
• Select the bubble for ‘all’.
• It’ll back document files up as an XML file (you don’t have to understand what that is. Just know it’s the file that will save you if Wordpress crashes).
• Save that backup file somewhere safe in case you need it. Preferably where your Cloud automatic backup will grab it (assuming you have one of those. If you use Carbonite, you do).
• Do this once a month–or a week if you’re active.

This will backup posts, pages, comments, categories, and tags. For the entirety of the blog–similar to an image where you can restore the entire website–you’ll need an external service. My Wordpress.org blog is hosted by GoDaddy. Part of that service is a backup of the blog. It’s worth it to me to pay a bit extra for that function.

World Backup Day just passed. Mark your calendar for next year, March 31st, and be sure to perform all backups–your blog and everything else–on that day.

Sign up for a new tip each week or buy the entire 169 Real-world Ways to Put Tech into Your Classroom.

What’s your favorite tech tip in your classroom? Share it in the comments below.

(more…)

In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of pedagogy—the tech topics most important to your teaching—as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.

Today’s tip: 16 Spring Cleaning Steps for Computers

Category: Maintenance, Problem-solving

It’s easy to ignore basic computer maintenance. Heck—it’s as likely you’ll mess up your computer in a misguided effort to ‘clean things up’. Here are sixteen painless tips to try whenever your computer just doesn’t seem to work right:

1. Make sure your firewall is working.
2. Run an antispyware program.
3. Run a malware program.
4. Keep your antivirus software
5. Delete My Documents files you no longer need.
6. Backup files to an external drive or cloud.
7. Empty the trash folder.
8. Delete programs you no longer use.
9. Update any software that needs it.
10. Clean the junk off of your desktop.
11. Clean up your Start Button.
12. Clean out your subscriptions.
13. Make notifications weekly instead of daily.
14. Change your browser to Chrome.
15. Delete that program you never managed to learn.
16. Slim down your start-up process.

For more detail,  visit Ask a Tech Teacher and the article, “15 Ways to Speed up Computer Use”.

Sign up for a new tip each week or buy the entire 169 Real-world Ways to Put Tech into Your Classroom.

What’s your favorite tech tip in your classroom? Share it in the comments below.

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