Computer Information

SlideRocket

I saw this product out on the Internet, and thought it was worth sharing. SlideRocket was featured at the Under the Radar conference in Mountain View, and won several prizes there. From what it appears, SlideRocket has some wonderful transitional effects, and the ability to incorporate weblinks and multimedia pretty easily. SlideRocket is currently in beta mode, which means that it isn’t quite ready for market yet, but it is on its way. This presentation software appears to be something worth looking into if you have a job where you use presentations often. Their website includes a demo on the home page at:

http://www.sliderocket.com

They also have a blog that includes a video with presentation tips on this page:

SlideRocket Blog Page

I don’t have information on how much it will cost, or when it will be ready for mass market, but I was impressed with their demo, and if you create a lot of presentations in your job, you might find it pretty worthwhile. Even if you don’t, you might enjoy their demo and the presentation tips video on their blog page. Before you ask, let me say that I don’t have any connection with this company at all, but I do like to share interesting things that I run across. If you have any comments, click the comments link and post them.

Creating a Text Shadow Macro and Toolbar Button in Word

Create a toolbar button in Word 2003 that will let you shadow the text you’ve selected.

I like the 3D emphasis that the shadow effect has and I use it on my titles often. In the Tools, Customize area of Word, it lets you drag additional formatting buttons to your toolbar, but they didn’t include the shadow button among them. So I decided to create a macro to let you apply shadowing to text with one click of a new toolbar button.

Skills You’ll Learn:

• Creating a macro
• Editing a macro
• Customizing a macro button

My TeacherTube video on Creating and Editing a Word Macro

Entering Basic Formulas and Some Sum Function Tricks

I’ve posted a TeacherTube video that shows you how to enter basic formulas in Excel, using cell addresses (because it’s easy to change their content to get new answers).

It also has a few tricks for using Excel’s Sum function. Enjoy!
Excel Formulas, and Sum Function Tricks

MS Word: Find Synonyms

When you know what you want to say but can’t think of the exact word you want, have Word help you find it. Follow these steps: Right-click the word you want to change. A shortcut menu appears. Point at Synonyms, and select the suggested word you want to use. If none of the words are what you had in mind, select Thesaurus. A task pane appears on the right. If the word can be interpreted in more than one way, alternate words will appear under categories. If there aren’t any suggestions, change the tense of a word to get more word suggestions (use think instead of thinking, for instance). Type in the new word and click the green arrow to get your new suggested words. Pointing at a suggested word will make a down arrow appear next to it. Click on that down arrow, then select Insert to replace your original word with that word.

You can also find synonyms for phrases. For example, to find a substitute for cool as a cucumber select the phrase, right-click that phrase, and follow the steps above.

Note: If the word you want to replace is flagged for a spelling or grammatical error, you must fix that first before the Synonyms option will appear in the shortcut menu.

Burn CDs with Roxio or Windows Explorer

Burn CDs with Roxio or Windows Explorer. This presentation shows you how. Click on the link to this Google’s Presentation and then click View published presentation in a new window to start the slideshow in a larger window. Use the Enter or PgDn keys to move forward and the PgUp key to move back in the slideshow.

Link to my Burn CDs presentation

So you were in a hurry and clicked on the wrong toolbar button. What do you do now?
Listen to the podcast to find out.

Toolbar Button Trick Podcast

TeacherTube

There’s a great resource on the Internet for both teachers and students. It’s called TeacherTube, and you can find it here:
http://www.teachertube.com
Check it out now!

MS Word Selecting and Moving Text Shortcuts

Knowing how to select text quickly is very important, because many commands begin by selecting the text that you want to effect. Remember: You’ve got to select what you want to effect!

Some of these selection tips involve clicking in the left margin area of the document. The best way to do this is to be in Print Layout view (View, Print Layout). That will give you a large left margin to use. (It’s also the best way view to use to see what will actually be printed when you want to print your document.)

• Ctrl, Home moves the cursor to the top of the document.
• Ctrl, End moves the cursor to the bottom of the document.
• Press the Home key to go to the start of a line; press the End key to go to the end of a line.
• Page Up moves up one screen.
• Page Down moves down one screen.
• The direction keys will move one space (or row) in their direction.
• Clicking once on a word lets you edit the word at that point.
• Double-clicking a word will select the entire word.
• Triple-clicking a word will select the paragraph containing the word.
• Holding down the Ctrl key while clicking on a word will select an entire sentence.
• Clicking once in the left margin will select a line.
• Double-clicking in the left margin will select a paragraph.
  Triple-clicking in the left margin will select the entire document.
• Holding down the Ctrl key and pressing a left arrow or right direction arrow will jump one word. Keep holding down the Ctrl key and you can jump over several words as you keep tapping the direction arrow. Holding down the Shift key at the same time will let you select them at the same time.
• Hold down your Ctrl key and you can select non-contiguous text. (That’s text that’s not touching).
• To select a large section of text, click once where you want to start your selection, scroll to where you want to end your selection, hold down the Shift key, then click where you want the selection to end.
• Note: If you need to adjust the selection a little, don’t start over! Instead, hold down on the Shift key as you use the direction keys to add or subtract to your selection.

Tip: Hold down the Shift key while moving, to select text at the same time, or while you are using navigating keys (like Ctrl End), as well.

I made a song about highlighting (selectiing) large amounts of text. You can hear it at my podcast website: http://www.gcast.com/u/spooferkd

Hello There. This is my first weblog. Stay tuned for more tips and tricks.

PowerPoint Tips

Here’s a link to a webpage with streaming video that I made. The content is Entering Text Content in PowerPoint FAST. Use Microsoft Internet Explorer to get to the page. You may also have to adjust the volume higher to hear me. Have fun

My TeacherTube video on PowerPoint