Category: Tech tips

Tech Tip #9: Hide Your Screen Quickly

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!

How do I quickly hide what I’m working on from prying eyes. Not just the Win 7 key that minimizes everything to the desktop, but so it looks like I’m working on something else than what I am?

Press “alt+tab” simultaneously on your keyboard (or Command-Tab on a Mac). It’ll hide the window that’s on your screen and bring up one from behind it. This trick is used most often by office personnel, hiding the fact that they’re surfing the Net at work, but it’s useful for any number of other reasons. It’s also a verb, as in, “I had to alt+tab when my boyfriend dropped by.”

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

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Tech Tip #6: The (Horrid Annoying) Publisher Drawing Canvas

When I try to insert a text box or object into Word 2003, a drawing canvas appears around it. It gets in the way–everything has to wrap around it and it leaves too much white space, even when I resize it.

My solution: Get rid of it. It’s huge and designed to allow you to place multiple shapes that are moved and resized as one. Most of us are only interested in inserting one text box, so it is cumbersome, annoying and useless. To turn the drawing canvas off:

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Tech Tip #101: The Internet Button

As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents and students 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: My internet stopped working on my laptop. Everyone else’s in the house works, but mine won’t connect. What do I do?

A: First: Make sure the laptop button that allows connection to the internet is on. More often than not, that’s the problem for teachers at my school. If it’s not that, it gets much more complicated. I’ll cross my fingers.

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Tech Tip #5: What to do When Your Taskbar Disappears

Q: Some programs hide the taskbar when they open (especially for young children–like KidPix). How do I access other programs without closing down the one I’m working on?

A: Push the Flying Windows key (it’s between Ctrl and Alt). That brings up the start menu as well as exposing the taskbar. Now, you can access open programs on the taskbar and/or new programs from the start menu.

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Tech Tip #4: Zoom In and Out

How often have you brought up a website where the printing was too small, or someone used your computer and zoomed out–who knows how, and you certainly don’t know how to fix it. This one is quick, easy, and works most of the time:

Q: I can’t read my internet screen. And I can’t find the zoom in command.

A: Hold down the Ctrl key and push + (next to the backspace key). That zooms in. To zoom out, hold down Ctrl and push the – (the minus sign next to the number zero; also considered a dash)

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Tech Tip #3: Turn an Address into a Link

Q: I get emails from friends with links to websites. How do they do that?

A: When you have a website you want to send to people, here’s what you do:

Copy the address located at the top of the screen (right click on it and select copy).

Return to your email (it’s probably sitting on the taskbar at the bottom of your screen) and paste the address into the message part of the email (using right-click paste, edit-paste, or the paste tool on the top toolbar).

You’re almost done–now push the space bar or enter after the address. That creates the link.

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Tech Tip #1: Insert Key

Q: Every time I type, it covers up everything that comes after.

A: Push the insert key. I hear they’re doing away with it on upcoming keyboards. They might as well. No one knows what it does anyway, and when users errantly push it, they don’t know how to stop its annoying typeover.

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Tech Tip #65: Google Street View

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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Tech Tip #64: Reset Default Font

In my fifteen years of teaching and tutoring tech, I’ve seen everything–and come up with solutions for most of it. I’ll share those with you. My goal: That students (of all ages) feel empowered not frightened by technology, that it is fun not frustrating. These tips will get you there with you and your kids.

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: (more…)

Tech Tip #63: Don’t Like Double Space Between Paragraphs?

In my fifteen years of teaching and tutoring tech, I’ve seen everything–and come up with solutions for all of it. I’ll share those with you. My goal: That students (of all ages) feel empowered not frightened by technology, that it is fun not frustrating. These tips will get you there with you and your kids.

Q: My Word 2010 came with a double space between paragraphs as the default, but I don’t like that. I’ve tried to reset it to single space, but it doesn’t fix it. What do I do?

A: I don’t either. What was Bill Gates thinking? Don’t as many people start a paragraph with a tab indent as a double space between paragraphs?

Now I have to fix that every time I open a Word doc. Here’s how to do it (in Word 2010):