Tech Tip #18: 10 Best MS Word Tips

Here are the most popular. The ones with links are from my Tech Tip series. Go ahead and click them for more detail. The others–they’re coming up. Sign up so you won’t miss any (see below). How to Undelete–push Ctrl+Z How to Show the Entire Drop Down Menu at once instead of clicking the menu item, clicking [...]

Tech Tip #17: What’s Today’s Date?

As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers and from students about 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 don’t know why, but I never remember the date. [...]

Tech Tip #16: Quickly Email a Doc

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 want my home/business/classroom to be as paperless as possible. What’s a good first [...]

Tech Tip #101: Doc Saved Over? No Problem

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 constantly save a blank document over their MS Word file. How? Instead [...]

Tech Tip #15: Save Early Save Often–Always

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 computer is old and crashes sometimes. What’s a good rule to follow so [...]

Tech Tip #14: Did Your Desktop Icons Disappear?

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 desktop icons disappeared for no known reason. What do I do? A: This [...]

Tech Tip #13: Powerful Right Mouse Click

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 need a faster way to access menus. Is there one? A: Yes, and [...]

Tech Tip #12: Wrap Text Around an Image

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!

Tech Tip #11: How to Show the Entire Drop Down Menu (Office 2003)

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!

Tech Tip #10: How to Undelete With Two Keystrokes

Q: I was typing and wanted to make a change (formatting, etc). Suddenly, my whole paragraph/sentence/document (fill in your disaster) disappeared. How do I get it back?

Tech Tip #9: Hide Your Screen Quickly

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?

Tech Tip #8: Print Part of a Web Page

I only want to print part of the webpage, not the entire thing. Other than copy-pasting a selection into a Word doc or using PrintKey or Jing (they’re not on some of the computers I use at work or friends’ houses), how do I quickly print just a selection?

Tech Tip #7: Make Backgrounds Transparent

When I insert my picture, the background isn’t transparent, so it covers everything behind it. I want it see-through. How do I do that? BTW, I’m using Publisher.

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:

Tech Tip #101: The Internet Button

Q: My internet stopped working on my laptop. Everyone else’s in the house works, but mine won’t connect. What do I do?

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?

Tech Tip #4: Zoom In and Out

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 often have you brought up a website where the printing was too small, or [...]

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:

Tech Tip #2: The PrintScreen Key

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 push ‘PrintScreen’ (or PrtScn) and nothing happens. A: I have to teach this [...]

Tech Tip #1: Insert Key

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

10 Most Popular Tech Tips in 2011

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 in 2011, I shared one of those with you. Here are the Top Ten tech tips from 2011. Between these ten, they had 40,510 visitors during the year. They [...]

10 Hits and 10 Misses for 2011

Since I started this blog thirty months ago, I’ve had over 324,000 visitors–double last year–visiting the 570 articles I’ve written on every facet of integrating technology into the classroom. They may be about how to use wikis or blogs in the classroom or what I’ve learned from my students as we got through another tech [...]

Introducing: Tech Tip Tuesday

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. To be sure you don’t miss any, subscribe to them here. If you’ve already subscribed–no worries. [...]

Tech Tip #100: Top Ten MS OfficeTips

I’ve been sharing Tech Tips for 98 weeks–almost two years. Here are the keyboarding hints readers consider the most important:

Tech Tip #99: Top Ten Internetting Hints

I’ve been sharing Tech Tips for 98 weeks–almost two years. Here are the internet hints readers consider the most important:

Tech Tip #98: Speed up MS Office with Quick Access Toolbar

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 improved the quality of your tech life immediately. It’s so simple, you’ll wish you’d known it months ago.

Read My Latest ‘Innovate My School’ Article

It’s called What every parent should know about computers and the Internet. There are also some other wonderful posts about tech and school and how to keep up from international experts. Check it out.

Tech Tip #96: Open a Program Maximized

Q: How do I open a program maximized on my screen.

Tech Tip #97: How to Add Zip to Your Slow Computer

Q: I have a small netbook which is incredibly slow at starting up. My son seemed to think I could go to the start up menu. Not sure where that is or what to do when I get there! Can you help please?

Tech Tip #95: Find the Programs You Use Quickly

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.

Tech Tip #94: Shortkey for Find

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. According to the article, 90% of folks don’t know about it.

Tech Tip #93: Auto-fill for Internet Addresses

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!

Tech Tip #92: Rollback Windows Updates

Q:Windows installed automatic updates and now my Outlook keeps freezing. What do I do?

A: I used to turn off the automatic updates, but then I’d miss one of the critical ones. Now, if I have a problem (like the above), I go into the updates list and uninstall the ones that have to do with whatever I’m having problems with.

Tech Tip #91: Internet Problems? Switch Browsers

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?

Tech Tip #90: Don’t Be Afraid of Mulligans

Q:Some kids are hard workers, but they just don’t get computers. Their effort deserves a good grade, but their product is nowhere near class requirements. What can I do?

A: Don’t be afraid to give students a do-over. Some students don’t perform well under the pressure of a deadline.

Tech Tip #89: Use Keyboard Shortcuts With Students

Q:When tech gets difficult, my students stop trying. It goes fine when it’s like what they do at home, but if it gets challenging, like remembering all the steps required to add a border to an Excel cell (or fill in the blank), they aren’t very interested. What do I do?

A: After twelve years of teaching K-5, I know as sure as I know who our president is that kids will try harder if its fun. The challenge for us teachers: How do we make a multi-step skill that they may rarely use ‘fun’?

Tech Tip #87: Image Your Computer

Q: I hate reformatting my computer. I lose all the extras I’ve added (like Jing) I forget which software I have on their (sure, I remember MS Office, but what about Google Earth? Celestia?) And then there are all the personalizations I’ve put on that get lost with the reformat. Is there any way to make that process easier?

A: Glad you asked. Yes–create an image of your hard drive. This is a picture of what your hard drive looks like, including all the programs and extras, that is saved in a secure back-up area. When you reformat, all you have to do is copy the image back to the computer. Mine is on a terrabyte external drive. Even if my two internal drives explode, I’m good.

Tech Tip #88: 20 Techie Problems Every Student Can Fix

There are about twenty problems that cause eighty percent of the tech stoppages. I’m going to tell you what those are and how to solve them. Trust me. They’re easier than you think to solve. I routinely teach them to third, fourth and fifth graders, and then they teach their parents. I’ll tell you the [...]

Read My Latest ‘Innovate My School’ Article

It’s called Twenty techie problems every student can fix. There are also some other wonderful posts about tech and school and how to keep up from international experts. Check it out.

Tech Tip #86: Back up Your Computer

Q: I’ve had some virus problems and it reminds me that I need to back-up my computer. What’s the easiest way?

A: Use Windows Backup function. Here’s what you do: