Tech Tip #50: The Easiest Way to Outline

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 fifth graders are learning outlining in the classroom. Is there an easy way to tie that into technology?

A:  Outlining can’t be easier than doing it in Word. Here’s what you do:

• Select the Numbered List or the Bullet List in MS Word. MS Word 2010 even lets you select the style up front. MS Word 2003–it’s a bit more complicated
• Your first bullet or number appears on the screen. Type your item
• Push enter to add another number or bullet
• To create a subpoint, push tab after you’ve pushed enter to start the next bullet/number
• To push a subpoint up a level, push Shift+tab after you’ve pushed enter for the next bullet/number

That’s it–three keys:

Tech Tip #49: The Fifteen Second Slideshow

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 kindergarten and first grade students are too young to create their own slideshows for Open House (or any parent day) and I’m just too busy. What’s an easy way to display their work digitally for parents that also involves the students in the preparation?

A:  I had this problem last year. I simply ran out of time trying to prepare so I offloaded the work onto the students. I was worried it would be too much, but it turned into a wonderful experience for students and parents alike. Here’s all you do:

Tech Tip #48: Quickly Switch Between Windows

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’m copy-pasting between a Word doc and an Excel doc on my computer. I know how to do that, but here’s the problem: I have three Word docs open. I don’t want to close the other two because I’ll need them soon. It takes a lot of time to click down to the taskbar, bring up the Word group and find the correct Word doc. Is there an easier way?

A: Oh yes, Much easier. Use Alt+tab. That takes you to the last window you visited. If you’re toggling between two windows, this is the perfect solution. I use it a lot for grading and report cards.

Tech Tip #47: Tool 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!

This week’s tip: I’m supposed to find a tool on the toolbar, but there are so many and I have no idea what they are for? It’s just as bunch of pictures to me. Is there an easy way to figure this out?

A:  To figure out what a tool does on the toolbar or 2007/10”s ribbon, hover your mouse over the tool (place the mouse above it without clicking). A tool tip will appear with a clue as to what it’s for.

This works in any program with a toolbar or ribbon–MS Office, the internet, Photoshop, and more.

What’s Trending on Ask a Tech Teacher

I  calculate what’s trending on my blog by which of my posts are popular in a

Most visited Ask a Tech Teacher articles

particular time period. Here’s the run-down so far this year:

1. 20 Great Research Websites for Kids
2. 20 Common Computer Problems and Solutions (a Third Grader Can Do)Great Websites
3. 107 Favorite iPad Apps for K-8
4. 31 Human Body Websites for 2nd-5th Grade
5. 2nd Grade
6. 62 Kindergarten Websites That Tie into Classroom Lessons
7. 18 Online Keyboard Sites for Kids
8. 20 Valentine Sites For Your Students
9. Great Websites
10. Great Lesson Plans

Another part that’s interesting is where viewers ‘click through’ once they find my site. This tells me the resources they like enough to spend time on seeking out. Here are the top then:

Tech Tip #46: The Easiest Way to Explain Right and Left to (Little) Kids

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 teach kindergarten. They don’t always understand the difference between left and right.

A: There are two times kids get confused about right and left when I’m teaching:

• right mouse button
• clicking in front of a spot (to edit, use the tab key, format–stuff like that)

I’ve found an easy way to clarify. Here’s an example:

Tech Tip #45: Your Screen Upside Down?

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 screen is sideways 90 degrees. How do I fix that?

A: If you ever needed this, you’re going to be blessing me. If you’ve never faced that off-kilter screen, you’re going to wonder why I’d post this tip.

Of course, I’ve faced it–I run a tech lab and there are always those pesky prodigies who want to outsmart me. They know if they push Ctrl+Alt+(down arrow), it’ll turn the screen upside down. The first time it happened, I was at a loss. That’s when a different pesky prodigy told me how to fix it:

Tech Tip #43: Back Up Often

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 often should I back up my current project? How about my whole hard drive?

A:  I teach my students to save early, save often when they’re working on a project. Deciding how often that is means determining how much you can tolerate losing should the computer crash. Ten minutes? Twenty? That sets ‘how often’ you hit Ctrl+S to save your work. After all, if the computer loses your work, you’re the one who has to start over.

As for the entire computer, once a week is good. Me, I save each project I’m working on and then save-as to a back-up location. I also have an always-on cloud backup that saves everything constantly on my hard drive.

I hate losing my work.

BTW, most people skip this full-blown back-up. Don’t! It’s easy, and if you’ve ever lost an important document, you’ll know that the end justifies the time spent.

Tech Tip #42: How to (Re)Set Your Homepage

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 homepage got hijacked! I mean, it no longer opens to what it used to. How do I fix that?

A:  Go to the page you want as your homepage. Here’s what you do next:

• If you’re in Firefox, go to Tools–Options
• Click on General
• Click the button that says, Use Current
• Say OK

Tech Tip #41: Repair Your Computer With System Restore

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 don’t know what I did, but my computer doesn’t run right anymore. What can I do?

A:  With access to the internet, computer malfunctions have become more prevalent than ever. Sometimes you download a program–or your child mistakenly pushes a button that allows malware on your computer. Suddenly, through no fault of your own, things just aren’t working right anymore.

This is so common that Microsoft has a program called System Restore on every computer with Windows operating system. System Restore is a utility that allows users to restore their Windows configurations to a previous state. While System Restore is often associated with providing recovery when driver or software installations go awry, it can really shine when spyware or other malevolent software compromises user machines. In many situations, this handy utility can roll back afflicted machines to a completely uninfected state. Of course, System Restore can work only when it is turned on and cataloging system states, so make sure it’s enabled on all user machines.

Tech Tip #111: Quick Internet Fix

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: The internet website is quirky. Stuff I know should work doesn’t. Is there any quick way to fix that without having to reboot?

A: Refresh the webpage with the ‘reload current page’ tool. About half the time, that works.

Tech Tip #110: Sound Doesn’t Work?

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: Headphones are so difficult. There’s always someone who can’t get theirs to work. I’ve tried the usual solutions, and still, we have problems. I know the sound works. What else can I do?

A: Another solution to the no-sound problem is to switch where headphones are plugged in. Sometimes, the front port on a CPU degrades and doesn’t work well anymore. Pick your reason–little kids jiggling jacks, overuse, leprechauns. The reason doesn’t matter. What matters is students can’t hear what’s going on.

Switch headphones to a different jack. In my case, since I always use the front jack so students can independently plug them in, I switch to the rear jack. Problem’s over.

Tech Tip #112: Five Second Back-up

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’m paranoid of losing lesson plans, report card comments, and other school work. I back up, but is that enough?

A: Truth, I am the most paranoid person I know about technology. I have an external hard drive for back up, Carbonite in the cloud, a 128-gig flash drive for my ‘important’ stuff (which turns out to be everything), and still I worry.

Here’s what else I do: Every time I work on a document I just can’t afford to lose (again, that’s pretty much everything), I email it to myself. If you’re using MS Office, that’s a snap. Other programs–just drag and drop the file into the email message. I set up a file on my email program called ‘Backups’. I store the email in there and it waits until I’m tearing my hair out. I’ve never had to go there, but it feels good knowing it’s available.

Tech Tip #39: My Computer Won’t Turn Off

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’m pushing the power button on my laptop (or desktop, but more commonly this happens with laptops), but it won’t turn off. What do I do?

A:  Push the power button and hold it in for a count of ten. That’ll work. If not (there’s always that one that breaks all the rules), hold it for a count of twenty.

To sign up for Tech Tips delivered to your email, click here.

To get the complete list 9f 98 Tech Tips, click here.

To ask a question, click here.

Tech Tip #37: My MS Word Toolbar Disappeared

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 tools for formatting disappeared from the top of my MS Word (2003). Where’d they go and what do I do?

A:  They do disappear at times, for no good reason. Here’s the simple fix:

• Right-click in the toolbar area at the top.
• Select Format or Standard.
  
• Make sure they’re checked. That’s where 99% of your tools live.
• This is true in all MS Office software
  

10 Most Popular Tech Tips in 2012

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 2012, I shared one of those with you. Here are the

Top Ten tech tips from 2012. Between these ten, they had 48,001 visitors during the year. They better be good or a lot of people were disappointed!

1. Tech Tip #18: Ten Best MS Word Tips–How Did You Survive Without Them
2. Tech Tip #18: 10 Best MS Word Tips
3. Ten Best Keyboarding Hints You’ll Ever See
4. Twenty-one Techie Problems Every Student Can Fix
5. Tech Tip #2: The PrintScreen Key
6. Tech Tip #19: How to Activate a Link in Word
7. Tech Tip #12: Wrap Text Around an Image
8. Tech Tip #2: The PrintScreen Key
9. Tech Tip #57: How to Create a Chart Really Fast
10. Tech Tip #1: the Insert Key

Tech Tip #36: The Internet Toolbar Disappeared

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 toolbar disappeared. All I see at the top of the screen is, more of the page I’m on. No tools. What do I do?

A:  Push F11. You can hide the internet toolbar or unhide with F11. It’s that simple.

To sign up for Tech Tips delivered to your email, click here.

To get the complete list 9f 98 Tech Tips, click here.

To ask a question, click here.

Tech Tip #35: My Program Closed Down

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 was working on my program (writing in Word or making a slideshow in PowerPoint) and it disappeared. Did I lose all my work?

A:  Before you arrive at that decision, try these two steps:

• Check the taskbar. Is your program sitting down there, blinking at you? If it is, click on it to maximize it. Now, all should be OK.
• If the program is closed, re-open the same program. If it’s Word, PowerPoint, Publisher or Excel, a panel shows up on the left prompting you to select one of the auto-saved documents. Pick yours. The program automatically saves every two to ten minutes. You’ve lost some, but not much of your work

Tech Tip #34: My Program Froze

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’m writing a very (very) important paper and all of a sudden, the screen is frozen. I can’t save it, or anything else. What do I do?

A: Programs do freeze for no reason sometimes, but not often (I’m assuming you take care of your computer–defrag, don’t download with abandon, update it occasionally). Before you declare a dog-ate-my-homework sort of catastrophe, try this:

• Check your desktop for an open dialogue box and close it. You might have to answer its question first.
• Push escape four times. You might have inadvertently got yourself into something you don’t even know you’re in. Escape often lives up to its name.
• Click your program on the taskbar. You might have gotten out of it by accident.

Tech Tip #33: My Desktop Icons are Messed Up

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 several kids/students who share the same computer. Kids being kids loving moving the icons around on the desktop. Sometimes they create the first letter of their name in icons. It’s cute, but makes it difficult for the next student to find the shortcut they need. What’s the best way to handle this?

A:  I’ve tried everything. Refusing to allow them to play doesn’t work and asking them to undo their play at the end of their time doesn’t either. The best solution is to teach all students how to organize their desktop:

• Right click on the desktop
• Select ‘arrange icons’
• If you’re in Win &, pick ‘sort by’ and ‘type

This can be part of their start-up maintenance when they sit down to begin their class. They’ve learned a new skill. They feel empowered to solve their own problems. Life is good.

Tech Tip #32: My Taskbar Got Moved to the Side

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: The taskbar at the bottom of my screen got moved. I liked it at the bottom. How do I move it back?

A:  It’s easy to move, intended to move.  Click on the bar and drag it back to the bottom. If you don’t want it to move (maybe you have precocious children), right click on the taskbar and click on ‘lock taskbar’.

To sign up for Tech Tips delivered to your email, click here.

Tech Tip #31: What’s Today’s Date

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 never remember today’s date. And, I can’t remember where to find it on my computer. Help!

A: There are lots of ways:

• Hover over the clock and it tells you the date
• Shift+Alt+D in Word
• Ctrl+; in Excel
• Start typing the date in a Word doc and Word finishes it for you

Tech Tip #109: How to Open 2 Gmail Accounts at Once

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 home Gmail account and a school one. How do I open both at once so I can keep track of what my kids/home business/etc is doing while at my teaching job?

A: The quick answer I got from my e-friend and tech guru Chris Hoffman is: Open each account in a separate browser (in my case, I use Firefox and Chrome). Click here to get all the details why this works. It has to do with each browser keeping its own cookie.

Why do you need this:

What’s Trending on Ask a Tech Teacher

I  calculate what’s trending on my blog by which of my posts are popular in a

Most visited Ask a Tech Teacher articles

particular time period. Here’s the run-down so far this year:

1. 107 Favorite iPad Apps for K-8
2. Great Websites
3. 20 Great Research Websites for Kids
4. Great Lesson Plans
5. 18 Online Keyboard Sites for Kids
6. Kindergarten sites
7. Four Online Sites to Teach Mouse Skills
8. 20 Common Computer Problems and Solutions (a Third Grader Can Do)
9. 23 Websites to Support Math Automaticity in K-5
10. 62 Kindergarten Websites That Tie into Classroom Lessons

Compared to all time:

Top Tech Tips of All Time

Every week, I share at least one tech tip to help you through the geeky maze that shrouds education. Some I get lots of feedback on, others–people read and move on.

How do you teach this concept?

Here are the Top Ten Tips of all time:

1. 20 Common Computer Problems and Solutions (a Third Grader Can Do)
2. Tech Tips–this is where people go to sign up
3. Tech Tip #18: 10 Best MS Word Tips
4. Ten Best Keyboarding Hints You’ll Ever See
5. What Do You Think is the Hardest Techie Problem?
6. Tech Tip #2: The PrintScreen Key
7. Tech Tip #19: How to Activate a Link in Word
8. Tech Tip #1: the Insert Key
9. 6 Kindergarten Keyboard Basics
10. Tech Tip #57: How to Create a Chart Really Fast

To sign up for Tech Tips delivered to your email, click here.

To get the complete list 9f 98 Tech Tips, click here.

Tech Tip #108: Three-click Rule

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: Some websites/blogs are confusing. It takes too long to do something. What’s with that?

A: I hadn’t put a lot of thought to this until I read Pete‘s response to Kate’ post about Blog Navigation. He cited the oft-debunked-but-just-as-oft-followed 3-click rule  made popular by Web designer Jeffrey Zeldman in his book, “Taking Your Talent to the Web.”. This claims ‘that no product or piece of content should ever be more than three clicks away from your Web site’s main page’. 

This is true with not just programming a website, but teaching tech to students. During my one-score-and-seven-years of teaching, I’ve discovered if I keep the geeky stuff to a max of 2-3 steps, students remember it, embrace it, and use it. More than three steps, I hear the sound of eyes glazing over.

Whether you agree with the ‘rule’ or not, it remains a good idea to make information easy and quick to find. Readers have a short attention span. Same is true of students.

Tech Tip #107: Got a Tech Problem? Google It!

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: Sometimes, I just can’t remember how to accomplish a task. Often, I know it’s simple. Maybe I’ve done it before–or even learned it before–and it’s lost in my brain. What do I do?

A: One of the best gifts I have for students and colleagues alike is how to solve this sort of problem. Before you call your IT guy, or the tech teacher, or dig through those emails where someone sent you the directions, here’s what you do:

Google it.

Tech Tip #91: Internet Problem? Switch Browsers

How can I help you?

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!

I’ve been having more than usual problems with my browser, Firefox. Often, I can fix things by switching to Chrome. Sometimes, it’s the reverse, so I wanted to repost this tip as a reminder at the start of our new school year:

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?

A: Change browsers. I have this problem more often with Firefox than Explorer in my lab. When students try to use one of the websites on our internet start page and find it won’t run correctly, the first thing I check is which browser they’re in. If it’s Firefox, I switch to IE. That more often than not fixes it.

Tech Tip #106: Fastest Way to Add a Period When Typing on an IPad

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: Typing on the iPad keyboard is slow. You have to access two different screens to type most messages. How do I speed that up without buying (and installing) a separate QWERTY keyboard?

A: Here’s one time-saving tip: IPads and most Smartphones will add a period (which inconveniently is on the second screen) if you double-space.

Cool.

BTW–double-tapping a key seems to be a secret shortkey for other tools also. For example, if you double-click the shift key, it turns the CAPS LOCK on.

Tech Tip #105: Create Shortkeys for any Windows Tool

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’ve never used it. I want a screen capture that’s instantaneous. Jing is even too slow for me (though I tolerate it because of all its very cool annotations.

Then I discovered how to create a shortkey for it:

• Go to Start–accessories
• Right click on ‘snipping tool’
• Select ‘properties’
• Click in ‘shortcut’ (I never knew that field was there. Maybe they added it with Win 7)
• 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.

Tech Tip #104: Need a File on Your iPad? Here’s an Easy Way

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 (In 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.

Book Review: 98 Tech Tips

98 Tech Problems from the Classroom:

and How Students Can Solve Them

Running a tech lab can be frightening. What if there’s a problem you don’t know how to answer? What if the computers break? What if they all break at once?

Several years ago, in an effort to create a practical strategy for technology success, I started tracking how often I got the same tech questions from students. Soon, I extended it to parents who, in a well-intentioned effort to help with school work, often got stuck on a techie issue. Some spent hours on a problem that could have been solved in minutes–if only they knew how to do that.

Turns out, 70% of the time, it was the same 98 problems.

Tech Tip #30: Menu Command is Greyed 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!

Q: I pushed the menu command I wanted to use (in MS Office 2003). I got the drop-down list, but the command I needed was greyed out. When I pushed it, nothing happened. What do I do?

A: Rest assured, your software program isn’t broken or corrupted. Here’s the solution: Push escape four times. That’ll get you out of whatever you’re in that is preventing you from moving on.

Tech Tip #103: Need Email Accounts for Registration? Here’s a Fix

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: A lot of web-based tools require email verification. My students don’t have these at school or home yet. What do I do?

A: I was so excited to find a solution to this problem. Here’s how TILT solves it:

There are many excellent web 2.0 tools that can enhance learning and allow students to communicate what they know, such as Animoto.com/education, Prezi.com, and GoAnimate.com. One of the issues for teachers, however, is that some of these tools require unique email addresses for each user. In this episode, you’ll learn how to create numerous unique email addresses for web 2.0 account registrations instantly using a single Gmail account.

Click for video

Tech Tip #102: Doc Saved Over? No Problem

Need tech help? I’ve got your back

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 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. I just found out about this recently. Bring the student’s file folder in Windows Explorer (I’m using Win 7). 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.

Tech Tip #28: 5 Ways to Fix a No-Sound Problem–For Free

for K-8

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 get any sound out of my computer. Do I need a new sound card?

A: Before you invest that kind of money, try these easy fixes:

• Are headphones plugged in?
• Is the volume turned up?
• Are speakers plugged in? This is my personal favorite. About once a year, this happens to me. The solution is exacerbated because I can’t reach the back of my CPU (the tower) to check the plugs. Can’t being a relative word, because I do finally do so and my problem is fixed!
  
• Is the sound muted? Check the icon on the systray, or the collection of icons in the lower right corner of your monitor.
• Are the speakers broken? Plug in a set of speakers that you know work. Does that fix it?
  

Tech Tip #27: My Taskbar Disappeared

Best 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: My taskbar disappeared. What do I do?

A: Push the flying windows key (it’s located between Ctrl and Alt on the bottom left of your keyboard). That brings up the start button

It might have disappeared because its properties got reset to Autohide. Here’s what you do to fix that:

• Hover over the area where the toolbar normally lives.
  
• If it appears, right click on it and select Properties
• Go to the tab that says Taskbar
• Make sure the box that says Autohide toolbar isn’t checked.

What if the toolbar doesn’t appear when you hover over it? That means it got minimized to the bottom edge of your screen. Here’s what you do:

Tech Tip #26: My Mouse Doesn’t Work

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 mouse stopped working. Do I need to buy a new one?

A: Maybe, but try a few things first:

Tech Tip #25: My Keyboard Doesn’t Work

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 sat down to type, start in on a long project with an imminent deadline, and nothing happens. The cursor blinks… and blinks… and blinks… but goes nowhere. What do I do?

A: Before you go buy a new keyboard, try a few things:

• Is the keyboard’s power light on? If it is, check your screen. Is there something that’s preventing you from typing? Maybe a dialogue box that wants an answer? If the light isn’t on, continue down this list
• Check the plugs. Maybe the cord that connects the keyboard to the computer is loose or fell out.
• Reboot. Sometimes the stuff in the computer’s boot-up sequence that makes the keyboard work gets lost. Restart your computer so it can re-establish itself.
• Do you eat at your keyboard? Does anyone? I say this next solution hesitantly: Bang on the keys. Sometimes they get food between them and get stuck. If that doesn’t work, turn the keyboard over and see what falls out.

None of those work? Throw the darn thing out the window and buy a new one. They don’t cost much any more.

Tech Tip #23: I Deleted a File By Accident

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 deleted a file! I need it back! What do I do?

A.  Here’s what you do:

• find the recycle bin on your desktop
• right-click on it and select ‘restore’

If it’s there, restore it. It’ll end up back where it was before you deleted it.

If you deleted it from your flash drive, it’s gone. There are programs for undeleting from external drives, but they cost money. I’ll cover those later.

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