Tag: 169 tech tips

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 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 didn’t use it for a long time. I want a screen capture that’s instantaneous. Jing is even too slow for me (though I tolerate it because of all its cool annotations.

Then I discovered how to create a shortkey for Snipping Tool:

• Go to Start–accessories
• Right click on ‘snipping tool’
• Select ‘properties’
• Click in ‘shortcut’
• 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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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 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 (I 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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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: My youngers often save a blank document over their MS Word file. How? Instead of ‘file>open’, they use the menu command ‘file>save-as’ and then they lose all their work. Is there any way to retrieve the file?

A: Absolutely, though it doesn’t work all the time. Bring the student’s file folder in Windows Explorer. Right click on the file name for the lost Word file and select ‘Restore previous version’. Select the latest version that’s not today.

Every time I do this, I’m a hero for ten minutes.

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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: 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.

Questions you want answered? Click here.

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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 tend to do the same actions over and over on my MS Office software. How do I create a customized tool bar with my favorite tools?

A: This one is going to improve the quality of your life immediately. It’s so simple, you’ll wish you’d known it months ago.

First, you need Office 2007 or later because earlier versions don’t include the Quick Access toolbar. It looks like 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 Tuesday, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q: My child has a program on the computer and I can’t figure out how to get out of it. There’s no File-exit, no menu. What do I do?

A: Try the old standby from Windows’ earliest days–Alt+F4. It works on almost all programs. I use it on the kindergarten programs in my lab all the time.

More tips on Windows:

Tech Tip #69:Change Size of Desktop Icons

Tech Tip #48: Quickly Switch Between Windows

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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: How do I open the internet maximized on my screen. For the younger students, clicking that tiny square in the upper right corner is often one step too many–not to mention that fine motor skills are still developing in the youngers.

A: I got this question from a reader. Here’s how you open the internet–or most programs–program maximized rather than that annoying smaller size that often makes it difficult for students to maneuver:

• Right click on the program icon
• Select Properties>Shortcuts
• Select the dropdown menu by Run and choose Normal window

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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 always find the program I want. They seem to move around on the desktop or get lost in the clutter. I don’t like putting them on the taskbar because then that gets too busy. What’s a better way to organize the programs I use all the time?

A: Pin them to the Start Menu.

• Find the icon for the program.
• Right click and you get a drop-down list of favorite choices.
• Select “Pin to Start Menu”. That puts it above the line on the Start Menu (when you push the Start button). The programs below the line are the ones you’ve used recently.

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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: Isn’t there a shortkey for searching a website?

A: There is. It’s Ctrl+F. It’s been around for, well, forever, but I’d forgotten about it until my efriend Sandy reminded me. As she posted on her blog, EdTechSandy, If you didn’t know about CTRL+F, don’t feel bad. …90% of folks don’t know about 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 Tuesday, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

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Q: Is there a faster way to type internet addresses? All that h-t-t-p stuff–I keep making typos.

A. In fact, there is. Get the main part of the address in, say ‘google’ or ‘spellingcity’, then press Ctrl+enter and the browser will auto-fill the rest. What a time saver!

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