testing embedded presentations

This is a test post.

TGIT 6 - Excel and Print(??)

Hey teachers..

Thank God it's Thursday. In fact.. it’s the FINAL Thursday before the hols.. so hang in there.

When you need to print MS Excel documents (or its proper term spreadsheets), a portion of your data goes missing from the printout (even after sending it for printing for a gazillion times.) Possibly, this could mean you have not setup your Print Area correctly.

Select the information that you want (click and drag), and make sure that it’s highlighted. Click on File-> Print Area -> Set Print Area. This will make sure your required info goes on the paper. (For advanced users, you may use the View->Page Break Preview. You can drag the thick blue lines to include or exclude data, and drag the dotted blue lines to the edges to squeeze everything into 1 single printout. This sets your print area too.) After this, you may print as per normal.

Thank you for your kind fan mail. This will be the last post for the term, as TGIT will take a break for the June Hols. Meanwhile, please visit our blog at http://TeachersGuideToIT.blogspot.com for archives of the previous posts and/or leave comments.

Have a good break!

Teachers' Guide to IT - Making IT work for teachers
"We always Excel at Printing.."

TGIT 5 - (Keyboard) Shortcuts to Success

Hey teachers..

Thank God it's Thursday. You must be busy marking like me. (Or taking a short break from marking, like me too.) Well, this week I'll make it really short because we're all busy (reading this may take time too.. heh).

Keyboard shortcuts really make your computer usage more efficient. How? By cutting the time you need to move the mouse to click on buttons and highlighting stuff. Try it.. you'll find out for yourself.

I'll introduce 4 commonly used shortcuts that you can use pretty much in any software programme nowadays.

Ctrl-Z : Undo last action (very helpful if you had accidentally deleted something.. allows your heart to continue beating normally.)

Ctrl-X : Cut (to remember this shortcut, think of the letter X as a pair of opened scissors)

Ctrl-C : Copy (C stands for Copy)

Ctrl-V : Paste (Vaste?)

Enjoy the shortcuts (if you haven't known them already..)

Teachers' Guide to IT - Making IT work for teachers
"We always like to take shortcuts.."

check out this video.. cool technology.. it might take some minutes to load though.
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid932579976?bctid=933742930

TGIT 4 - Making your documents print the way you want it

Thank God It's Thursday. By now your exam paper's probably been printed out and sorted according to classes. However, I'm sure there'll be those times when you may wonder, "Why does the question which I put at the bottom of page 2 appear half at the bottom of page 2 and the other half at the top of the following page when printed?" or how come the text overflows to the next page when printed, but on the screen, it looks ok? This problem may be basically due to the difference in page setup of your Microsoft Word document and the printer setup.

Solution : Make sure both your document page setup as well as the printer setup are set to using A4 Paper. By default, Uncle Bill set it to default US standard which is 'Letter' (which totally differs from A4 in length and width). So change it to our standard A4, and to make your life easier, click on set to default so that you don't have to do it everytime.

1. Make Document setup to A4

• - Click on File -> Page Setup.
• - Click on 'Paper' tab, then, under the Paper Size drop down box, change from Letter to A4.
• - *optional - click on Default button on bottom left and click Yes (this will set all new documents to be A4 size)
• - Click OK.

2. Make Printer setup to A4

• - click on Print.
• - under printer section, click on Properties button on the right.
• - Look for Paper Size, change from Letter to A4.
• - depending on the printer type, you may want to look out for how to setup for Default so that you don't have to do this everytime you print
• - click close, or continue to print your document.

Let me know what you think about this tip. Happy Printing!

Teachers' Guide to IT - Making IT work for teachers

"We make Word documents look the same way it looks on your screen as well as on paper.."

This guy calls in to complain that he gets an "Access Denied" message every time he logs in. It turned out he was typing his user name and password in capital letters.

Tech Support: "OK, let's try once more, but use lower case letters.

"Customer: "Uh, I only have capital letters on my keyboard."

TGIT 3 - Making a collage from PowerPoint / or converting PowerPoint to Image

(the subject has been renamed from IT Snippet for teachers)

Thank God It's Thursday. I love thursdays cos it's the day before the weekend comes.. and you get to savour the moment. But today is wonderful cos it's Labour Day! Thanks for the feedback that some of you gave regarding the info shared thus far. Keep IT coming. ;)

You may have done up a wonderful PowerPoint presentation previously, and would like to save one of your favourite slides as an image/picture file, maybe to put it up as your desktop wallpaper. Or you would like to easily do a simple collage of photos without all the frills and photoshop-like effects.

Here's the good news. You can do it all in Microsoft PowerPoint. (Yup, even with the version that came with your school laptop.) Once you have chosen your favourite slide to convert to an image, or done with inserting photos into a blank slide for the collage option, Click on File, Save As. Below the box where you type your file name, click on the drop-down button(inverted triangle) to change the Save as Type to JPEG File Interchange Format(*.jpg). Click save.

Let me know how this helps you. Happy Imaging!

Teachers' Guide to IT - Making IT work for teachers

"We make PowerPoint looks simple.."

Tech support : "Maam, please double-click on 'My Computer'.

"Lady : ".... how can I click on YOUR computer??!"

Tech support : "????"

IT snippet for teachers 2 - Video/movie cannot be projected on screen from laptop

Dear teachers

You may have come across times when you had prepared a video for your lesson and when you tried to play it in class or in the hall, all you get is a black screen even though the sound is playing alright. The weird thing is, you see the video playing on your laptop, but not on the screen.

Here are the steps to solve this problem (stress-free):

Go to Display Properties by
1. right-click on your desktop
2. click on Properties
3. click on Settings tab (top right)
4. click on Advanced
5. click on Troubleshoot tab
6. change the hardware acceleration to None. Press OK.


that's it.

Happy projecting... :)

Teachers' Guide to IT
"We make IT work for teachers.."

IT sharing snippet - MS Office docs unable to open

Dear teachers

Some of you may have come across students submission of their assignments (project work, maybe) in softcopy in Microsoft Word/PowerPoint/or Excel format which has the .docx/.pptx or .xlsx extension, and may not be able to open them using your school laptops. This is because those files with .docx/.pptx or .xlsx extension are created using the latest version of MS Office which is Microsoft Office 2007. This is not compatible with the MS Office version which is installed in our school laptops/PCs. (our version is MS Office 2003/2002 if i'm not mistaken)

To solve this, you can either:

1. Ask the student to re-save the document in MS Office 97-2003 format.

2. Use free online conversion services like http://www.zamzar.com/ (maybe not advised for confidential files)

OR

3. Look for me to convert for you.

Happy conversion..