January 31

January 31

"Great things are done by a series of small things brought together." Vincent van Gogh

In the News
College Students Fall Short in Demonstrating the ICT Literacy Skills Necessary for Success in College and teh Workplace: http://tinyurl.com/yk34wc

Do Web filters protect your child?: http://news.com.com/Do+Web+filters+protect+your+child/2100-1032_3-6030200.html
Parents need to be aware of is how hard it is to depend on technology to "filter" kids' experiences on an increasingly mobile Internet that can be found on a rapidly growing number of devices: handheld game players, cellphones, MP3 players, DVD players, laptops, palmtops, etc. Filtering software for desktops and laptops is still flawed but improving, according to CNET, in an update that pulls together all we currently know on filters and their use by US families.

Pew Internet & American Life Project: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/172/report_display.asp
It's a debate as old as the Web: Do online communications isolate
people or support socializing and networking?" This report says it's the latter. Instead of disappearing, people's communities are
transforming," says the study's summary: 1) They're not necessarily geographically based, but include local friends, relatives, workmates, and neighbors, so social networks are getting larger (you've probably noticed this with teenagers' "buddy lists," but this isn't just about teens); 2) the Net doesn't replace traditional communications, but rather supports regular contact by adding more options, more ways to connect (e.g., texting for confirming a date, IM-ing for gossip, email for more in-depth messaging, blogging for meeting new friends). The study uses the term "networked individualism", how the Internet helps people move beyond networking with a single community to tapping into different communities (of individuals, not places) for different situations. There were some interesting numbers too: some 60 million Americans say the Net "has played an important or crucial role in helping them deal with at least one major life decision in the past
two years," and that number has increased by one-third since 2002.

"A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words
Can technology keep the best and brightest students engaged in science? Nearly half the incoming students who come to college interested in science lose that passion before their junior year, according to a recent Harvard University study Robert Lue, senior lecturer in molecular and cellular biology, attributes some of the brain drain to the, well, boring way introductory courses are taught.
So Harvard turned to technology to help illustrate complex biological and chemical processes using streaming video and Flash and 3-D animations. Faculty separated students into two groups to learn a complex concept. Half had a textbook with assigned readings and two hours to study, the other half had notes augmented by animation and just one hour to study. Test results were striking: The animation group scored an average of 93 percent on a written test, compared with 79 percent for textbook learners. "
A picture's worth a thousand words. (2006, August 3). Network Computing, 17, 14.

Using Technology
Antivir: http://www.free-av.com/
The AntiVir Personal Edition offers the effective protection against computer viruses for the individual and private use on a single PC-workstation.

Bringing Technology Into The Classroom: http://www.techteachconcepts.com/

EcoGeek - Wood Computing: http://ecogeek.org/content/view/62/1
Computer cases, mice, keyboards and monitors handcrafted from mahogany to bamboo are available at this site.

Education World Job Newletter
Subscribe at: http://www.educationworld.com/maillist.shtml

Edutopia is magazine by the George Lucas Foundation. It highlights many of the ways technology is used in the classroom. The latest issue can be found at: http://www.edutopia.org/magazine/index.php You can subscribe to it at: http://www.edutopia.org/products/edutopianews.php

Firefox: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

Integrating Technology in the Classroom: http://www.wtvi.com/teks/
Wesley Fryer offers a variety of articles and ideas for jumpstarting instructional planning.

Library in the Sky - Educational Web Resources: http://www.nwrel.org/sky/
A searchable collection of annotated links, organized by departments (science, language arts, ESL, library, etc.) and materials (education games, lesson plans, grants, etc.); also has special portals for students, teachers, parents, and librarians.

Microsoft Education: http://www.microsoft.com/education/
Go to the bottom of the page and click on one of the following Tutorials, Lesson Plans, Innovative Teachers, Clip Art, Templates for help and ideas from Microsoft.

Photoshow: http://www.simplestar.com/index.php
Free download available for organizing photos and adding music to make a show.

Product News Update: http://www.eschoolnews.com/resources/productnews/
Read the latest company and product updates, as reported by the award-winning editors of eSchool News. Learn what the leading technology providers have been offering at the major ed-tech conferences.

Study Guides and Strategies: http://www.studygs.net/
Joe Landsberger at St. Thomas Univ. (Minnesota, US)has for several years been building it, and one of the interesting features is that the material is available in several languages.

TASK: Technology to Advance Student Knowledge: http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/task/

Texas Information Literacy Tutorial (TILT): http://tilt.lib.utsystem.edu/
This online tutorial presents the skills needed to evaluate information in this age of overload.

PowerPoint
Create a photo album with Microsoft PowerPoint version 2002
1. On the Insert menu, point to Picture, and then click New Photo Album.
2. In the Photo Album dialog box, you can choose to add pictures from your hard disk or a peripheral device, such as a scanner or digital camera. To add a picture:
- Under Insert picture from, click File/Disk.
- Locate the folder or disk that contains the picture you want to add to your photo album, click the picture file, and then click Insert.
3. Repeat Step 2 for as many pictures as you want to add to your photo album. Or to capture them all at once, hold down the CTRL key, click each picture file you need, and then click Insert.
4. Next, specify the look of the album under Album Layout.
5. Then click Create.
If you want to change or update your photo album after you have created it, use the Format Photo Album dialog box from the Format menu.

Non-linear presentation in Power Point
Basically you just hyperlink one slide to another using a word or icon for the link. Then under Slide Show you highlight the linked slides and hit Hide Slide so the slide does not show at the end.
Step by step...
Make up your slides.
In Drawing Toolbar, choose Action Buttons, the choose a button you want. A popup window comes up. Link to a slide in your slideshow.
You can also have a back button to navigate back to the linear presentation.
Use the Text Box to add words to the Action Buttons.
To test out your links, you need to be in View Slide Show.

PowerPoint
http://www.microsoft.com/office/powerpoint/default.asp
http://www.wcu.edu/ccenter_inf/CatOnline/MSPP/index.html

PowerPoint in the Classroom: http://www.actden.com/pp/

Setting Up Self-running PowerPoint 2002 Presentations: http://office.microsoft.com/assistance/2002/articles/ppconAboutSelfrunPresentations.aspx

Sound in PowerPoint presentations
Sound can start at the beginning or middle of the slide show, but only one sound can play at a time.
Navigate to the slide where you want it to start. Click Insert>>Movies and Sounds. To record narration, select Record Sound. Click the red circle to start recording and the button with the square to stop. To insert music, select “Sound from File” instead of Record Sound. Navigate to your file and click OK.
PowerPoint asks you how you want the sound to play. Select Automatically. A picture of a speaker will appear on the slide. You can drag the sound icon off the slide. The sound will still play, but the icon won’t appear on the slide.
Next, set the sound options. In PowerPoint 2002 or 2003, right-click the speaker. Select Custom Animation. In the Custom Animation task pane, click the sound file name. Then click the arrow at the right of it. Select Effect Options.
On the Effect tab, select when you want the sound to start and stop. You can have it play throughout the entire show. Select After in the “Stop playing” section. Then type 999 in the box. You can also have it stop “On click” or “After current slide.” Click OK.
Setting sound options in PowerPoint 97 or 2000 is a little different. Right-click the speaker and select Custom Animation. Click the Multimedia Settings tab. Under “While playing,” click “Continue slide show” or “Pause slide show.” Under “Stop playing,” select “After current slide” or enter a number. Click OK.
Your presentation might not play the same on all computers. Many factors contribute to the way it plays. The biggest are processor speed and amount of memory. The slides and audio may not be synchronized correctly. Also, animations could become jerky and slow.
There are things you can do to minimize problems. If possible, only use one audio file for the entire presentation. Audacity: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/, a free audio-editing program, will combine multiple files into one. It will also allow you to combine music and a voice-over.
Keep animations and graphics simple. Also, make sure your photos are optimized. For full-screen slide shows, set the photo resolution to the same size as your screen. To find your screen resolution, right-click your desktop and select Properties. The resolution setting is on the Settings tab.
Also, set the dpi at 75 or 96. This is adequate for viewing the photos on a monitor. If you anticipate people will print them, set it between 150 and 300 dpi. If you need photo-editing software, you might try Picasa: http://www.picasa.com/ or Irfanview: http://www.irfanview.com/. Both are free.
You can also burn your presentation to DVD. This will be viewable in most stand-alone DVD players.
If you would like to publish this presentation on a Web site, you could use Producer: http://www.microsoft.com/office/powerpoint/producer/prodinfo/default.mspx. This free add-on from Microsoft lets you use audio, video, slides and images to create rich-media presentations viewable in a browser.

Other presentation software
HyperStudio: http://www.hyperstudio.com/

mPower: http://www.mmdesigncorp.com

The Internet
Where Did It All Begin?
It may interest you to know that the basic structure of the Internet has been in place for well over 25 years. In its infancy, it was set up by the U.S. Department of Defense as a reaction to the Soviet launch of the Sputnik Satellite; Sputnik was launched in 1957! By the late 1960s ARPANET was set up. Through the 1970s and ‘80s it was used mostly by scientists and universities around the world to share information. All of the information was textual; no colors, no pictures and no links to anywhere else.
To learn more about ARPANET check out this series of articles:
http://www.dei.isep.ipp.pt/docs/arpa--1.html
To learn more about the Sputnik Satellite: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/sputnik/
Tim Berners-Lee is credited with inventing the World Wide Web in 1989. He was working as a physicist/computer scientist for CERN (The European Particle Physics Laboratory) http://public.web.cern.ch/public/
He wanted to be able to share information much more interactively than it had been done previously. He began to put information into hypertext documents, which allowed the inclusion of pictures as well as links to other documents. By 1990 he had created the first web server and written the first browser; the modern Internet was born.
In just a few short years his invention had really become a worldwide phenomenon and it did not take long for it to develop into an excellent educational tool. Our job as educators today is to make the best possible use of Internet resources while not abandoning our curricular principles. In other words, we don’t want to use the Internet in class JUST to use the Internet in class. With a little bit of research and planning, Internet resources can be easily and sensibly integrated into an existing curriculum to enhance the educational experience for our students and their instructors.

Saving and Organizing Favorites (Bookmarks).
Internet Explorer uses the term Favorite and Netscape/Firefox uses the term Bookmark. As educators, it is good to be familiar with the terminology for both in case a school system uses only one or the other program.
Whether you’re using IE or Netscape/Firefox, the process for saving addresses is simple and similar. First, browse to a site that you want to save. Then click on the bookmarks or favorites menu on the menu bar and choose add. When you click on the menu again, the title of the page you recorded will appear at the bottom of the list. To access the page, just pick the name from the menu. This site will always be available in that list!
As you begin to use this feature, you will quickly accrue dozens of sites and the list can become long and unmanageable. The good news is that the browsers allow you to edit these lists and organize them, so finding sites is easy. On any browser the process of organizing is uncomplicated, but there are some differences, not only between browsers, but also between older and newer versions. There are also differences between Macintosh and Windows versions. You may need to adjust these details slightly depending on your browser, version and operating system.
If you’re using IE, remember the terminology is Favorites. Access the favorites menu, one of the choices, near the top, is organize favorites. Organize favorites has some cascading menus that will pop out or you can just select the main choice. The cascading options are new folder, new favorite and new divider. The usual process would be to pick the main choice (organize favorites); this shows a new window with all of your favorites, then go back to that menu and pick one of the cascading options. Sites in this window can be dragged to new locations, moved inside of new or existing folders or deleted.
If you’re using Netscape/Firefox you’re working with Bookmarks. Access the bookmarks menu, one of the choices, near the top, is edit bookmarks or some newer versions may have manage bookmarks. Edit/manage bookmarks opens a new window with all of your bookmarks. The file menu now has options: new folder, new bookmark and new separator. Again, sites in this window can be dragged to new locations, moved inside of new or existing folders or deleted.

Using MS Word to Manage a List of Sites
Task 1: Open a new blank document. Type in an exact web address, such as: http://www.classroom.com, press <Enter>. The address you typed shows as a blue, underlined link. Sliding the mouse over the link shows the same hand with the pointing finger that you see on links in a browser and clicking will start up a browser and go to the site.
Task 2: You can use the same document or open a new one. Type in some text that you’d like to turn into a link, such as: Classroom Connect. Select (highlight) the text. In the Insert menu, choose Hyperlink…. A dialog box opens, one of the fields is labeled, “Link to:”, click in that box and type (or paste) the exact web address: http://www.classroom.com, click OK. Now the text, Classroom Connect is blue and underlined.

Beginners' Central: A Users Guide to the Internet: http://www.northernwebs.com/bc/

Finding Information on the Internet: A Tutorial http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/FindInfo.html
Includes searching tools, evaluating web pages, and how to cite information found on the Internet.

Word processing
Hide Your Text
Hidden text is really just another formatting option for text, just like bold, underline etc. Under the menu Format | Font you'll see 'Hidden' down in the options, usually last on the list.
To hide text just highlight the text and choose Format | Font | Hidden and it'll disappear from the screen (but not from the document).
Having hidden the text you'll want to see it, naturally.
To do that go to Tools | Options | View and under Formatting Marks check the box Hidden Text. When you click OK, the hidden text will now show up with dotted underline to indicate it is 'Hidden'.
Tip: A quick way to display hidden text is to click the Show All toolbar button. This will display hidden text and other formatting marks.
For more advanced users you can create Styles that include the hidden text option. This will let you hide / unhide blocks of text throughout a document quickly and easily.
When you print the document you'll see a printing dialog option (under Options) to print hidden text.
Why use Hidden Text?
There's a few obvious uses for hidden text:
- A exam or test can be prepared as a single document with the answers 'hidden' in the copies printed for the test.
- In a contract or legal document you can 'hide' sections that don't apply to certain types of clients. Instead of having multiple documents (and the confusion / inconsistency that can result) you can have just one document with hidden text as required.

Insert text in front of a picture using MSWord where the picture has faded into the background
1. Type your text.
2. Insert your graphic.
3. Right-click on the graphic. Choose "Format picture."
4. Change the "Color" to "Washout."
5. Click on the "Layout" tab. Choose "Behind text."
OR
Select the picture and right click. Choose "Order", then "text through the graphic".

Microsoft Word: http://www.wcu.edu/ccenter_inf/CatOnline/MSWD/index.html

Print Gridlines in a Table using Word
A table's gridlines appear only on-screen. If you want to add lines to your table printouts, you need to apply a border to the table. The Table, Table AutoFormat command sets up predefined borders and shading. You can select the design that you want from the dialog box that appears. However, if you want to make a custom border, you need to choose Format, Borders and Shading to bring up the Table Borders and Shading dialog box. In this dialog box, you can apply formatting to the table gridlines or to the text paragraph within a cell.

Spreadsheets
Microsoft Excel: http://www.wcu.edu/ccenter_inf/CatOnline/MSEX/index.html

Use MS Excel... If you go to view- Page break...and minimize the percentage to about 50%..you can use word art and text boxes on the drawing tool bar to make your banner. Also use Insert- Picture menu for images. You can see how many pages there are and you can see the banner all at once. The cell grids do not print.

This site began in March 1998 and was created by Janet Luch. This page was last updated on January 25, 2007
Email to studyplans@yahoo.com.