Category: Tech tips

This week, I’m providing tips for how to prepare for the New Year–that pesky end-of-year technology maintenance. Sure, you should do it once a month if you’re active on your computer, but AT LEAST do it yearly.

Like today.

Tech Tips for Writers is an occasional post over on my Writer Blog, WordDreams, on overcoming Tech Dread. I cover issues that friends, both real-time and virtual, have shared. Feel free to post a comment. I’ll cover your tech dread in a future Tip.

Q: I hate reformatting my computer. I lose all the extras I’ve added (like Jing, cookies, Printkey 2000) I forget which software I have (sure, I remember MS Office, but what about Google Earth? Celestia?) And then there are all the personalizations I’ve put on that get lost with the reformat. Is there any way to make that process easier?

A: Glad you asked. Yes–create an image. This is a picture of what your hard drive looks like, including all the programs and extras, that is saved in a secure back-up area. When you reformat, all you have to do is copy the image back to the computer. Mine is on a terabyte external drive. Even if my two internal drives explode, I’m good.

Here’s what you do:

• Click the start button.
• Go to Control Panel
• Select ‘Backup and Restore’
• On the left sidebar, you’ll see an option for ‘create a system image’. Select that.
• Follow directions (it’ll ask which drive to use for the image–stuff like that)

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This week, I’m providing tips for how to prepare for the New Year–that pesky end-of-year technology maintenance. Sure, you should do it once a month if you’re active on your computer, but AT LEAST do it yearly.

Like today.

This one’s from Tech Tips for Writers, an occasional post over on my Writer Blog, WordDreams, on overcoming Tech Dread. I cover issues that friends, both real-time and virtual, have shared. Feel free to post a comment. I’ll cover your Tech Dread in a future Tip.

Q: I’ve had some virus problems and it reminds me that I need to back-up my computer for the new year. I have all of my writing [aka, classwork, student grades, lesson plans] on there–what if I lost it? What’s the easiest way?

A: There are many ways–and I use all of them because I am truly paranoid about losing my work. Here are some ideas:

• use a back-up service like Carbonite. They automatically and continuously backup to the cloud so even if you forget to do this, they don’t. Even better, you can access your work from anywhere with an internet connection. I love that.
• email copies of your most important writing to yourself. For WIP [and lesson plans, schedules, scope and sequence], I do it constantly. Every day. If you use Gmail, you can email up to 20 mb. If your file is larger than that (which some of mine are–and my RTFs definitely are–just upload them to the Google Drive associated with your Gmail.
• Use Windows Backup function. Here’s what you do:

• • Click the start button.

• • Go to Control Panel
  • Select ‘Backup and Restore

• • Select ‘Backup Now’

From there, select a drive with sufficient space, and start. Be forewarned: If you have a lot of data, it takes a while. You can work on your computer while it’s backing up; it’ll just be slower.

A note: This is the same location you’ll go to restore from back-up if you have a problem.

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As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each Tuesday, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q: I’m off school for two weeks and am backing everything up ‘just in case’. I know how to copy-paste and do Windows back-up , but how do I protect all my posts on my blog?

A: If you use Wordpress, it’s easy. Here’s what you do:

• Go to Tools>Export
• Select the bubble for ‘all’
• It’ll back it 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 back-up 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

My business website is a Wordpress theme with a ton of widgets. I can back it up exactly the same. Which I do, even though it has an automatic back-up.

That’s it. Now you’re safe.

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As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each week, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q: English isn’t my first language. How do I go to Google in other languages?

A: To visit the foreign language Google search engines, type:

www.google.co

Then add the country extension you would like to visit. For example, Japan is .jp, so if I typed:

www.google.co.jp

…I’d get this:

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As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each week, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q: The desktop icons are tiny on my desktop. I don’t know how it happened, so I don’t know how to undo it. Please help!

A: This solution I learned in self-defense, like many other tips I share, when my students figured it out and made my desktop icons HUGE. Here’s how you fix that:

• Highlight all desktop icons by click and dragging a box around them
• Push Ctrl and roll the mouse wheel.
• It enlarges or delarges for you

That’s it. How wonderful. I no longer have to squint at icons too small for my eyes.

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As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each week, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q: How do I check to see where my kids/students have been online without making them think I don’t trust them?

A: If they’ve been online without you (because you considered them mature enough for this action), by all means check up on them. This is not a sign of distrust any more than guiding them through any other new skill is. This is you showing them the correct way to use the internet. You’re not spying on your children; you’re making sure everything is OK, kind of like checking in on them while they sleep.

Go to what’s called ‘history’. ‘History‘ is where a list of all the websites whoever logged in under a particular user name went. Here’s how you do it:

• Hold Control key (Ctrl) and push H. That brings up a sidebar with the sites they’ve visited.
• Select the time frame you’re interested in

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As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each week, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q: I teach Spanish and need a quick way to add accents to words. Can you help?

A: You can go through the symbols library, but there’s an easier way. Use the Ctrl key + the accent. Here is a table:

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As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each week, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q: I can’t read the internet page. How do I zoom out of a browser window?

A: There are a few ways, but here’s the simplest of all: Hold down the “Ctrl” key and move your “mouse scroll wheel”. One direction zooms in; the other zooms out.

There are two other ways:

• Ctrl+ (the plus sign next to backspace) will zoom in one step at a time; Ctrl- will do the same zooming out
• Go to the menu bar. Select ‘View’, ‘Zoom’ and either ‘Zoom in’ or ‘Zoom out’

To return to the original setting, hold down the “CTRL” key and hit the number zero.

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As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each Tuesday, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q: I can’t find enough detail about a particular area of the world that we’re studying in class. Any suggestions?

A: That’s a lot easier to do today than it used to be, thanks to Google Street View. Students love walking down the street that they just read about in a book or seeing their home on the internet. It’s also a valuable research tool for writing. What better way to add details to a setting than to go see it?
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As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each week, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q: If you’re like me, you don’t like MS Office 2007 or 2010’s default font of Calibri, size 11 with a double space between paragraphs. Here’s how you fix that:

• 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
• Click the Default button on the lower left and approve that this is, in fact, how you’d like a future documents to be formatted when opening a new document. If it asks whether you want this for future documents, say Yes.
  
• Now right click again and select Paragraph
• Make sure Line Spacing is single (or double if you’re following MLS)
• Go to Spacing and make sure both Before and After show 0 pts.
• Click Default

That’s it. The next time you open a document in MS Word, it will open with this revised formatting.

Questions you want answered? Leave a comment here and I’ll answer it within the next thirty days.

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