If you look at the far right of the task bar, beyond the tray where the time is typically displayed, there is a little rectangle tile.  When you click on that, your desktop will be instantly displayed.  Pretty nice!

Enjoy the quick trip to the desktop with Windows 7!

Using this pin feature is much like pinning a document to a cork board.  Follow the steps below.

Hopefully this will save you some time and help with organization.

To access these tools, click on the Start menu / All Programs / Accessories / Accessibility.  There is a wizard that will walk you through selecting the appropriate tool.

• Magnifier: Magnifies wherever you scroll your mouse and displays that in the top portion of the screen.  You can change the magnification, invert the screen, etc.  Press the Exit button when you want to stop the magnification.
• Narrator:  This tool will read the menu commands. You can change the voice and the speed of the voice.
• On-Screen Keyboard: This will bring up a floating keyboard that might be handy if you are away from the keyboard using a wireless mouse.  It might also be helpful to use with primary students as the main keyboard displays lowercase letters.
• Utility Manager: Allows you to control the above options.

Again, my favorite of these is the Magnifier, but I don’t like to have to click through all the menus to get to that tool.  So instead, I unlock my taskbar (right click/Lock the Taskbar) and drag the Magnifier icon from the Start menu and drop it in the task bar.  That way you can easily get to it.

To send a text from an email you will need two things: (1) The recipient’s 10 digit phone number, and (2) the phone service provider he/she is using (e.g., Verizon, AT&T).  Once you know that, use the appropriate formula below.

AT&T: phonenumber@text.att.net
T-Mobile: phonenumber@tmomail.net
Virgin Mobile: phonenumber@vmobl.com
Cingular: phonenumber@cingularme.com
Sprint: phonenumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com
Verizon: phonenumber@vtext.com
Nextel: phonenumber@messaging.nextel.com

If you need to text a group of people at one time, you can create a group in your email account and include the above ‘formula’ as each person’s email address.  There are online services that will do this for you to.  One caution: You may want to take your signature off or change the setting so that you can opt to include it or not with the email.

Who knew?  (Apparently a lot more people than me!)

After a quick Google search, I found keyboard shortcuts for a lot of symbols, including the ¢!  To create that symbol, hold the Alt key down while pressing 0162 on the number pad.  For more, see http://www.nouilles.info/keyboard_shortcuts.html or http://www.squidoo.com/keyboardsymbols.

Below are a few of my favorites in Windows:

¢ – Alt +0162
¶ – Alt + 0182 (called a ‘pilcrow’)
¿ – Alt + 0191
¡ – Alt + 0161

On the Mac, use:

¢ – option+4
¶ – option+7 (called a ‘pilcrow’)
¿ – shift+option+?
¡ – option+1

Now you can give your 2¢!

1. Get into your control panel (by clicking on Start / Control Panel).

2. Click on the ”Regional and Language Options” icon.

3. Click on the “Languages” tab and then on the “Details” button.

4. Then click on the “Advanced” tab.

5. Check the box next to the statement  under ”Compatibility Configuration,” and uncheck the box nex to the statement under ”System Configuration” (see picture below).

6. Click on the “Apply” button.  You will be prompted to restart your computer.

One of the easiest things to do is increase the resolution on the computer screen which will make the letters larger.  On a Windows PC, hold down the Ctrl key and press the + key.  On a Mac, hold down the Apple key and press the + key.  (To reduce the resolution, press the Ctrl and – key on a Windows computer and Apple and the – key on a Mac.)

Removing the ‘clutter’ on a page can help with its readability. Tidy Read (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11653) is a plugin for Firefox that strips out all the graphics so that the reader can focus on the text.  Below is a screenshot of what this blog looks like when you use Tidy Read. Once you drag this tool into your link bar, click on it to remove the graphics. (Readability [http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/] is a similar program.)

Another solution is to copy the text from a site and paste it into Read the Words (www.readthewords.com). 

Text-to-Speech is a great feature available both on Windows and Mac computers.  Open Word in either platform and highlight the text that you want to hear.  On a Windows PC, press the Windows button (the four squares Windows symbol on the bottom row of the keyboard) and the “S” key.  On a Mac, highlight the text and click on Edit / Speech / Start Speaking.

Have fun “listening to the web!”

 To turn on the Show feature, click on the ¶ in the standard tool bar (or press the Ctrl+Shift+8).  This will then display all the commands that you’ve entered in Word.  See the chart in the linked document listed below to help you decipher what commands you’ve used and what you want to amend.

 Show / Hide tip sheet

[Enter new technology and digital cameras.]  While I print very few pictures, I do save most of the shots I take.  And if you’ve programmed your camera with the correct date, each picture has a time stamp associated with it.  But, labeling the files is still a chore.  Here’s an easy tip to ‘do it all at once’ instead of having files that read something like “DCM_0001, DCM0002, etc.”

Click and highlight all the files names that go together (e.g., Christmas 2009, Super Bowl 2010).  The easiest way to do that is to click on the first slide, hold your Ctrl key down and click all the other pictures that go in that group to select multiple picture (or Shift to click on the last picture in a contiguous list). 

RIGHT click on the first file and click on “Rename.”  (See below.) Key in a logical description for this group of pictures and then click off that file.  Instantly all the files will be renamed with that same name followed by (1), (2), etc. 

Now go get those digital pictures organized AND labeled!

Keyboard handout