Category: Tech tips

Tech Tip #33: My Desktop Icons are Messed Up

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 have several kids/students who share the same computer. Kids being kids loving moving the icons around on the desktop. Sometimes they create the first letter of their name in icons. It’s cute, but makes it difficult for the next student to find the shortcut they need. What’s the best way to handle this?

A: I’ve tried everything. Refusing to allow them to play doesn’t work and asking them to undo their play at the end of their time doesn’t either. The best solution is to teach all students how to organize their desktop:

Right click on the desktop
Select ‘arrange icons’
If you’re in Win &, pick ‘sort by’ and ‘type

This can be part of their start-up maintenance when they sit down to begin their class. They’ve learned a new skill. They feel empowered to solve their own problems. Life is good.

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Tech Tip #32: My Taskbar Got Moved to the Side

Q: The taskbar at the bottom of my screen got moved. I liked it at the bottom. How do I move it back?

A: It’s easy to move, intended to move. Click on the bar and drag it back to the bottom. If you don’t want it to move (maybe you have precocious children), right click on the taskbar and click on ‘lock taskbar’.

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Tech Tip #31: What’s Today’s Date

Q: I can never remember today’s date. And, I can’t remember where to find it on my computer. Help!

A: There are lots of ways:

Hover over the clock and it tells you the date
Shift+Alt+D in Word
Ctrl+; in Excel
Start typing the date in a Word doc and Word finishes it for you

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Tech Tip #109: How to Open 2 Gmail Accounts at Once

Q: I have a home Gmail account and a school one. How do I open both at once so I can keep track of what my kids/home business/etc is doing while at my teaching job?

A: The quick answer I got from my e-friend and tech guru Chris Hoffman is: Open each account in a separate browser (in my case, I use Firefox and Chrome). Click here to get all the details why this works. It has to do with each browser keeping its own cookie.

Why do you need this:

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Tech Tip #108: Three-click Rule

2 Comments

Q: Some websites/blogs are confusing. It takes too long to do something. What’s with that?

A: I hadn’t put a lot of thought to this until I read Pete‘s response to Kate’s post about Blog Navigation. He cited the oft-debunked-but-just-as-oft-followed 3-click rule made popular by Web designer Jeffrey Zeldman in his book, “Taking Your Talent to the Web.”. This claims ‘that no product or piece of content should ever be more than three clicks away from your Web site’s main page’.

This is true with not just programming a website, but teaching tech to students. During my one-score-and-seven-years of teaching, I’ve discovered if I keep the geeky stuff to a max of 2-3 steps, students remember it, embrace it, and use it. More than three steps, I hear the sound of eyes glazing over.

Whether you agree with the ‘rule’ or not, it remains a good idea to make information easy and quick to find. Readers have a short attention span. Same is true of students.

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Tech Tip #107: Got a Tech Problem? Google It!

Q: Sometimes, I just can’t remember how to accomplish a task. Often, I know it’s simple. Maybe I’ve done it before–or even learned it before–and it’s lost in my brain. What do I do?

A: One of the best gifts I have for students and colleagues alike is how to solve this sort of problem. Before you call your IT guy, or the tech teacher, or dig through those emails where someone sent you the directions, here’s what you do:

Google it.

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Tech Tip #91: Internet Problem? Switch Browsers

I’ve been having more than usual problems with my browser, Firefox. Often, I can fix things by switching to Chrome. Sometimes, it’s the reverse, so I wanted to repost this tip as a reminder at the start of our new school year:

Q: I’m trying to use a website and it keeps telling me Flash isn’t installed. I know it is. I even re-installed it and it wouldn’t work. What do I do?

A: Change browsers. I have this problem more often with Firefox than Explorer in my lab. When students try to use one of the websites on our internet start page and find it won’t run correctly, the first thing I check is which browser they’re in. If it’s Firefox, I switch to IE. That more often than not fixes it.

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Tech Tip #106: Fastest Way to Add a Period When Typing on an IPad

Q: Typing on the iPad keyboard is slow. You have to access two different screens to type most messages. How do I speed that up without buying (and installing) a separate QWERTY keyboard?

A: Here’s one time-saving tip: IPads and most Smartphones will add a period (which inconveniently is on the second screen) if you double-space.

Cool.

BTW–double-tapping a key seems to be a secret shortkey for other tools also. For example, if you double-click the shift key, it turns the CAPS LOCK on.

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Tech Tip #105: Create Shortkeys for any Windows Tool

Q: I love the Windows snipping tool, but it takes too long to get to. Is there a shortkey for it?

A: Oddly, there isn’t, which is why I’ve never used it. I want a screen capture that’s instantaneous. Jing is even too slow for me (though I tolerate it because of all its very cool annotations.

Then I discovered how to create a shortkey for it:

Go to Start–accessories
Right click on ‘snipping tool’
Select ‘properties’
Click in ‘shortcut’ (I never knew that field was there. Maybe they added it with Win 7)
Push the key combination you want to use to invoke the snipping tool. In my case, I used Ctrl+Alt+S
Save

Now all I have to do is remember the shortkey!

BTW, this works for any tool.

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Tech Tip #104: Need a File on Your iPad? Here’s an Easy Way

Q: I have a video on my classroom computer I want to use on my iPad. How do I do that?

A: There are ways to do that–email it to your iPad, open through DropBox–but those have issues:

emailing requires extra steps and time you may not have
many email accounts limit you to <10MB. What if a video file is larger?
DropBox has limited space
like email, you must put materials in DropBox to access them from there (In know–Duh, but that requires planning. What if your inquiry-driven class popped onto this topic on the fly?)

If you’re like me, anything to make your worker faster, easier, less steps is a good thing.

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