The Prince's Rainforest Project for Schools

England has a beautiful website that is all about the rainforest. It has videos, a book, games and all sorts of resources for a great rainforest curriculum. It is aimed at the 3 - 16 year old student according to the website, but I found lots of great resources for anyone!
I recommend that you spend time on this site, even if you aren't teaching the rainforest!
http://www.rainforestsos.org

Writing Prompts - Cartooning

If you are looking for a fun way to teach other ways to write, I recommend you spend some time looking at Make Beliefs Comix.  This web site has the cartoons already drawn. You can print or email your creations when you are done. If you want to save the cartoon, you will have to use a screen grab to do that, but this is an easy thing to accomplish. There are also good one panel cartoons that can be printed out as writing prompts. They have a cute cartoon and then a writing prompt and space for the student to write their response. You find this at the printables page.
http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/

iNudge - Make your own kind of music

This site is really fun to play with sounds and rhythms. I did find that it did not work in my Safari browser, but worked fine on the Firefox browser. http://www.inudge.net/
YOu can then share your sound with others by email or embed it in your web site.

Teaching Internet Literacy

Having a discussion with our librarian, Mrs. C. today, I told her I was working to  teach students how to evaulate web sites. I have been collecting sites with my LiveBinder account, Internet Literacy  and Deb had another link to add to mine. I just loved the site that she uses to teach students about Internet Use and Explorers at the same time.   The site she has found is called. All About Explorers. This site is to teach students how to search better on the internet. It is fantastic as the information on the first pages is obviously NOT accurate, but the pages look wonderful. The students will figure out quickly that it is not a good source for information. If they dig deeper in the information, they will find links to Reliable Resources on their explorer. There are lesson plans connected to this site. It is really a fun place on the web and very appropriate for beginning researchers.

Life Magazine Photo Archives

http://www.life.com/ I read an article about this in the latest Edutopia and had to go and see it. There is a huge archive of photos from the Life magazines. There are a lot of very meaningful pictures on this site. I found the Real or Fake pages fascinating and thought there were so many possibilities for this resource. Whether you are looking for a great picture for a writing prompt, a way to start a discussion about a time in America's past this is worth looking at. There are so many photos that it is important for students using it to have good search skills.

Live Binders

Live Binders - http://www.livebinders.com
This site is my newest and possibly my best find. I love it. I have embedded a "binder" here that will explain it a bit more. It is such an easy way to keep track of bookmarks and make changes easily to them.

Blog Links

Fractions - Paper Folding Books to teach

Fantastic Flexible Foldables  - You won't need an internet connection to use this resource with your students. Instead, you download the worksheets  that can be used to teach fractions. I think that the Fraction Flipper is great to introduce the concept of fractions to kids.  I found it easy to make and would give the students something fun to do with fractions. I also think that the Fortune Teller Fraction Game is a good idea. You might think of other ways to use these booklets. If you are teaching fractions, check out this site - http://pages.sbcglobal.net/cdefreese/foldables/

WatchKnow

WatchKnow - This is a great site that has taken videos found on the internet and put them in an easy format for students to access without all the comments from YouTube showing on the side or advertisements. The motto is - Videos for kids to learn from. Organized. There are not LOTS of videos out there but it would appear to be a growing site. It has a very easy interface to find out what videos are on the website. There is a search engine, but also categories are there on the side that will expand when you click on the green squares. I wish there were more videos, but it is a great place to be able to send students to, much safer surfing than Google.

Tutput Math Practice

I found a new site that I am going to use with my students next week to practice math facts. It is called Tutpup. Teachers can set up a site for their children to use that will track their progress in the program. However, it does NOT collect names of the students. The only name connected on the site will be mine, so I am not 100% sure how I will know what student is WHO. It gives them all different types of drill games that they play against students from other countries. There is a win wall where students can see how they are doing. The word games are spoken to the student, there is a word list that you can print out so you can see what words are on each level. If you are at my school and want to use it, contact me for the class code that I have entered!

OCR Recognition

Online OCR  This is the best news for many of us that do not have a powerful scanner. This site will take documents that have been saved as a .pdf - something that our school scanner can do - and you can upload them to the site and it will make an editable copy of it for you!
If you want it to save it in a formats, like Excel or Word,  you need to set up an account, but it is an easy process to get an account. This would allow you to keep the formatting in the document. There is a small fee for processing the files this way, but if you have a lot of work to do, it might be worth it!
Without signing in, you will have to reformat your document, but it seemed to be quick to get all the text in. The pages that I tested came out perfectly. I think this is a good site to know about.

Downloading Pictures from Groupwise

I had a question about how to take pictures that were sent in Groupwise and put them into a document. I thought I would post the answer here so others could reference it. When you are reading a message in Groupwise, when you go to save the message, you can choose to just save the photos. As you can see on this clip, the text of the message is there, but there is a .jpg file that contains the picture. You would click on that .jpg file and save it. You might want to rename the file as something that would be more meaningful to you than img_5691.jpg.
This will give you the file that you will import later on in the document you are making.

Selenia - Science Cartoons

This is a great science site that has 10 lesson plans for science built around comics of a student. There are downloadable investigation sheets that go with each of the comics. There are topics on density, insulation, and geysers to name a few of them. Selenia is a fun loving girl who can work magic, but still is keeping to science topics.

Google Earth and Literature

I was reading about a workshop offering about Google Earth and literature. I don't have time to go to the workshop, but thought I would investigate it myself. It turns out there is an amazing blog about this GoogleLit. If you have Google Earth installed, you can go to this website and download virtual tours of books. It looks as if this site is being added to all the time by teachers.If you had access to a projector and a computer, this would be a wonderful way to lead a discussion about literature. Give yourself some time to really explore this site. I love it and am trying to find a way to include it in our curriculum. They have titles about the Civil War, Revolutionary Way, Paddle to the Sea and Big Anthony. There is a really interesting mix of books and I do expect this will grow to a great resource.

Books for beginning readers of all ages

This site, Tar Heel Reader has books that have been created by others on a wide range of topics. These would be great for the older student who is just learning how to read or for younger students to read with the class. There are some books that might be inappropriate for the very young, so make sure you have read the book before you recommend it to others. You can sign in and make a favorites page so you can access your books that way.

There is a program that lets you make a book that you could post. This might be a good exercise for students to do on their topic.

Time Zone Experiences

If you are looking for a project to do with your class around time zones and times of years, this would be a good place to start. Time Zone Experiences is the name of the wiki. Students follow other classes in other parts of the world to compare what they are doing with students in other time zones. Schools that are participating are encouraged to write each month to the wiki to say what they are doing in school and what is happening in their area.

Ideas to Inspire Web Site

I found this website, Ideas to Inspire through a recommendation of a friend. It is a collection of collaborative presentations that have been made by many teachers. They are all done in a powerpoint fashion using Google Tools. I found the curriculum ideas about writing and math to be really full of great links that I might use. This site was done in Great Britain so it gives links which often don't show up as quickly in our web searches - and they are really great. I recommend you spend some time poking around this web site.

Game Classroom http://www.gameclassroom.com/

This website Game Classroom features many different types of educational games. The webmaster takes good games he has found from other places and puts them all on one web page. The great part about this web site is once your student is here and plays the game, it takes them back to Game Classroom. It is much harder to get off of this site by accident than a lot of the other sites. The games can be sorted by grade level or by content. It is a good site to have bookmarked for your class. There is also a nice homework helper component to this web site. I recommend highly. You will probably see it being used in this classroom sometime this year!

Typing game online

I found out about this game while reading another blog and decided to try it. It is certainly NOT a substitute for teaching typing, but if you want a fun way to get the students to think about knowing where keys are located on the keyboard, this is it. I spent quite a bit of time with Pacman Typing! The actual name of the game is Keyman and if you start from the home page of typing games, you can customize it to either just work with home keys or random keys. I plan on putting this link on the school web page when I work on that again. Try it and find out how difficult it really is!

Great Source for Math Games

I found this site I Play Mathgames.com and thought it was something that teachers might want to know about. All of the games are in .pdf format, they are not computer games, but the site has a well organized way to find good paper games to play with the students. These games are all from different types of workbooks that could be purchased, but I think that there are enough games on the site to make it worth your while to check it out!

Article about why to use Open Office and how to set it up!

I found this great article on another blog. This is written by Solveig Haugland, an author of a blog I follow that is called Open Office .org Training. It has great ideas for how to install Open Office and how to use templates in Open Office. If you are really interested in using Open Office, this is a good place to start.

Make Your Own Font

This is a great site. Fontcapture will allow you to create your own font and use it in your writing. I would think this would be a neat way for students to practice their own handwriting and design their own font to use in any word processing program. All you need is to print out the sheet that is found on this site and fill it out using a fine black pen. Then you scan the sheet, upload it to the site and it will translate the information into a font that you can use on your computer.

Good Math Tool - Geogebra

I was hunting for new programs for the school year and came across Geogebra. It has apparently been around for a long time as it has won many awards, but this was the first time I have ever heard of it.
It is available for download on your computer for Windows, Macs and Linux. It has a great web site that accompanies it to show all the ways that you can use this program in your math classes. You can use it to show how to do something as similar as perimeters and area. (This is probably the main way I will use it.) Students can "play" with the graphs to see how changing the shape will impact the area and perimeter. You can also do much more, such as showing complex math formulas or playing with a Kaleidoscope in Geogebra. There are many examples from elementary school to college. I recommend you take a minute and download the program just to see what a good FREE program could do for your understanding of math.

Test of a Widget -

I found this widget and thought we might want to put it on the school pages for students to work with parts of speech. I thought I would test it on this blog first.

Recommended web site for Maps

I found this web site, recommended by a blog that I have been reading that I do think would add much to the student's understanding of history. The David Rumsey Map Collection has over 20,000 maps and other related images at their site. As far as I could tell, all of the maps could be downloaded to use. Some of these maps (now over 150) can be opened in Google Earth for further exploration. You can overlap maps of ancient globes or Civil War sites onto Google Earth.
A very different type of map is The Breathing Earth. This is a simulation that shows how many people are being born and die, the population of countries and the world and the CO2 emissions of each place. While it is just an approximation, it is very interesting.

Open Office School - Free

There is a great resource for anyone that wants to improve their spreadsheet skills and it is free.
It focuses on Open Office, but in actual fact, much of what is here could easily be used for Microsoft Office Excel as well. You can find the information here at OpenOfficeSchool. I really do think that for serious students of spreadsheets, this is the place to start. If you subscribe to the blog that accompanies this, you will be notified when they have posted another lesson. Right now, the course at Open Office School is only about their spreadsheet program, Calc.

Numbers Web Site - A break from Open Office/Word

I just found this site all about numbers. It has a lot of information in it, a good place for students to have a math dictionary with places to practice their math and it is able to be downloaded and placed on a computer so you are not dependent on a good internet connection. Numbers has many good features. If you are working on teaching students pictograms, you can go to the pictogram graph and have a wonderful interactive web site. At the bottom of the pictogram page, there is a farm animal pictograph link that would be good with a kindergarten or first grade.

Researching while working in document

This is another case of Open Office being a little more friendly than Microsoft Office. In both programs, you can check on word meaning or get a thesaurus. In both programs you can also do web searching of any phrases that are in your document. In Microsoft Office, you can use Encarta or MSN to do your research. Click on the toolbar in Microsoft Office and click on the Reference Tools. It will probably be set to scrapbook. The Reference Tool looks like a set of books. You can then choose your highlighted phrase to either use the dictionary, thesaurus or Encarta or MSN. In Open Office, go to View > Toolbar. Locate Hyperlink bar and put a check beside it. A new toolbar will now appear. Whenever you highlight a word, it will appear in the new toolbar. On the extreme right, you will see a glove and magnifying glass with a dropdown option. click on your favorite search engine and that will open up. If you want to add new sites for Open Office, go to Tool>Options>Internet>Search. Click on New button to add your favorite sites.

Sending your document as email

You have to have a non web mail account to do this, but many mail programs can be configured as a pop account so you can use your mail program, Outlook Express or Mail.
If you do have this type of mail program, you can easily send your work right from the program. In Open Office, you would go to File>Send>Document as email. In Microsoft, you go to File>Send To> Mail as attachment.
I find this much easier than trying to later find the exact document I was working on. Quick and easy.

Making Number Lines for Math Worksheets

I was helping a teacher make math pages for her class math assessments this summer. I was trying to draw lines using word and was successful with it, but found it difficult to get the lines exact! I was talking to my daughter who uses Excel all the time and she assured me, I was going about it in a more difficult way than I needed to.

Open Excel.

You want to select a group of cells. I did this by highlighting all the columns from A to Z. When they were selected, they will be a different color, put your mouse on the line between any two columns. You can drag that column line until it is about 3. When you release the mouse, you will see that all of the columns that you selected are now exactly the same size.

Open the Toolbar that is drawing. Go to View, select Toolbars and then select Drawing. You can make a line with arrows on both end. Put in your gridlines and even change a tool to make lines a different color.

This is a new use for me using Excel. I made this graphic by removing the gridlines before I went and printed the picture.

I will say that I should have known this before I struggled with the drawing. Having the gridlines really does make a difference in being able to be exact about the number line.

Just for Fun - Total Nonsense

I have been doing a lot of reading about Open Office and Microsoft and did discover that Open Office has a hidden Easter Egg in the Calc program. If in a spreadsheet cell you type, =GAME("StarWars")

And then hit enter - it will open an old fashioned space invaders game, in German. However, everyone knows how to play this game.

If you open a Microsoft Word document and type in =rand() and then hit enter, it will type a very famous line of typing for you. This might be interesting if you had a bet with someone about typing speed.

I know, nothing useful, but still enertaining.

Powerpoint /Open Office Templates

I have been continuing my research on presentation tools in Powerpoint or Open Office. I haven't found any other real differences between the two of them except for the links within the document. I did find a nice site that has a lot of different templates. A lot of the templates are in .ppt format (Powerpoint) or .odp format (Open Office Impress). I really recommend that if you are looking for a place to start - Presentation Helper for Open Office or use any of these powerpoint templates, which will open in either Microsoft Office or Open Office. I really recommend that you spend some time looking at the entire site.

First Incompability with Office/Open Office

I opened a Powerpoint that I had done for students showing them how you could hyperlink within a Powerpoint Presentation in Impress. Hyperlinking allows you to link text from a presentation to another page in the same presentation or to a different document or web site. In this case, it was a link that took you to another card in the presentation. I have the students create these to learn how to think non-linear and also write some amazing Choose Your Own Adventure stories.
Anyway, this is not a good sign that Open Office didn't recognize the Hyperlinks I had made in Powerpoint. I was able to go into Open Office and change the links to make them work. This doesn't take long if you know where you wanted to link them to. Both programs allow you to make the hyperlinks in the same say. You highlight what you want to click on to make the choice, in the Choose your Own adventure scenerio, you highlight the choice that you want to make. When the text is highlighted, you go to insert and choose Hyperlink. You can then select what card you want this link to go to. This is going to require some extra research on my part to see if I can find a way to get the kinks out of this project.

Powerpoint Slides - selecting small or hidden objects

I have been neglecting the Powerpoint /Presentation part of Microsoft Office/Open Office. I have found a great tip that works exactly the same in both programs.

If you have an object - text or writing - that is in the powerpoint and you can't easily find the object to move it or edit it, you need this tip. First, press escape so you are sure you don't have anything selected. Then press the tab key and you will see that the program will toggle you through all of the pieces that are on your slide.

I wish I would have known this trick earlier! Instead, I was moving the pieces around to find something that was hidden or not easy to select.

Text Box in Word Document

Recently, I was asked to help make a graduation program. The teacher wanted to have a text box in the document to highlight people she wanted to thank, but didn't know how to do it. I thought it would be a good idea to write the process here and check and see if it worked similarly with Open Office.
First, we changed the orientation of the page to landscape, not portrait. You do this by going to File - Page Setup - and changing the page orientation. Then we went to Format - and added two columns to the page.
We typed in the information, but then, wanted to add the box of information. You go to insert text box and the cursor will change to a cross hairs. This will allow you to draw whatever size of box you want. You can then put any information you want into the box.
In Open Office, my first problem was finding out where to change the orientation of the page. You can do this, but it is found in a different place. You go to FORMAT - Page and then can set the landscape piece there. The Columns were found in Format exactly as in Word. The text box is called a FRAME - You go to insert a frame, it will put a box on the page that you can resize to exactly what you want. If you go through all the options, it will allow you to change the look of the box.
The other amazing feature about OpenOffice is that while I was using it, it let me know that it had an update available to another version. I will soon be using 3.1.0 for Open Office!

Saving Paper by using Word Comments

I am not sure why I didn't know this before, but in an effort to save paper, I am going to ask the writing teacher to use this next year. By using Microsoft Word, the teacher can open up the document and make comments on the page without changing the students work. If the paper needs to be printed, it can be printed without the comments, with the comments, or only the comments. When you are reading the document in word, you can highlight what you want the student to notice, insert a comment and your comment will be on the left side of the page with a line going to where you want the student to notice. I think that this will make it easier for the students to keep track of the comments.

In Open Office, it isn't called a comment, but a note. However, I did think that the notes in Open Office were even clearer to see.If I save a document with notes in Open Office and open it in Microsoft, the notes are still there.  After a student has dealt with a note, they have the option of deleting the note. Hopefully, I will see this being used more in the computer room next year to save some paper. I also think that when something is being collaborated on, this could be used.

Powerpoint Slides - Arrange

The fifth graders are making powerpoints that are a series of postcards that they are creating about the Oregon Trail.
My fifth graders are working on powerpoint and I was trying to think how to arrange the slides in powerpoint. They would put the slides in the wrong order and want to straighten them out. I KNEW that you could do it, but couldn't think about how to do it.

Well, it is quite easy when you know where to look. Almost embarrassingly easy, but I figure if I write it here, I will find it the next time I can't remember where it is.

Go to View and choose the Slide Sorter. This will give you a visual representation to the presentation. You can just move the slides very easily in that. You just have to physically move the slide with the mouse.

In Open Office, you can move the slides when they are on the left side in the normal view and they also have the slide sorter in the exact same place as Powerpoint. So far, I have not found anything really that you can't do in Open Office that you can do in Powerpoint, but I have been hearing that the presentation mode is not as strong in Open Office. Stay tuned to find out what I do discover.

Inserting Excel Worksheet into a Word Document

When you want to insert a chart into a document, you can do this. Take a document that has been written in Word, and insert the chart.

Go to Insert Menu – Choose Object, then the Microsoft Worksheet. You can toggle on the document to switch from a graph or a chart of the numbers. Because it is a worksheet inside of the document, you can double click on it and make any changes to the number or whether it is viewed as a spreadsheet or a graph.

In Open office, it would seem that you first have to have the spreadsheet made to insert. You copy the cells you want and then paste them into the document. You can make changes to any of the numbers in the document. I can't seem to get the graph to show up in the Open Office however that can make changes. I can import it as a picture, but not as a changing piece. This might be something I am missing, but it is the first time that Microsoft Office has been better than Open Office.

Formulas in Excel - cell references

Spreadsheets are used to store data, they are also used to make calculations. When you enter a formula into a spreadsheet, the best way to make a formula is to use a cell reference. Using a cell reference allows you to change the data and Excel will recalculate for you without having to change the formula.

Let me know if you need exact information on how to write a formula, but using a cell reference in a formula will look like this

=A1+A2+A3+A4 instead of =2+5+7+9

Excel has a Sigma button - which simplifies making a formula for working with numbers. With OpenOffice, the autosum is still the Sigma sign, but you don't see it until you are in the formula bar.

Auto Complete - Excel and Open Office

Excel and Open Office have very similar features in the AutoComplete. This is to help you enter data quickly. This is different from the Appleworks Spreadsheet program. When you are entering data in a column, if AutoComplete is turned on, if you start typing something that looks as if you have entered it before, it will come up in a black box. Click on the black box and it will enter it for you.

This only seems to work for information in the columns, not not rows.

If you want to AutoFill in Open Office, say you are making a list of predictable titles, like the days of the week, you would type in the first one. Then click out of that cell, click again in that cell and a black box will show up around that cell. There is a small black box that shows on the lower right side of the box. Pull that box down as far as you want and it will "magically" fill in with a series.

The Microsoft Office has a similar feature, but the fill box doesn't show as clearly as in Open Office. When you hold down near the lower right side of the cell, it does change to a fill box.

Sorting in Tables and Spreadsheets

As I was making a spreadsheet with dates, I realized that I had not put them in the correct order. Fortunately, you can sort in a spreadsheet by date, alphabetical order or numerical order. After your data is in the spreadsheet, you select the column that you want to sort. If there are numbers or information that need to stay together, then you need to select both columns before you do the sort. In Excel, you find the sort under the Data heading.

In Open Office, you will find the same exact sorting ability under tools.

It turns out that you can also sort lists on the word processing side of these programs. In Open Office, you can sort just a list in a document. If you are in Microsoft Word, your data would need to be in a table. If you find another way to sort in Word, please let me know. Thanks.

Gridlines

This has come up more than once in the lab. Today, a visitor to the lab wanted to just drop in and print a grid to use. He knew to open the spreadsheet and then was surprised that when he printed, there were only blank sheets.

Well, I remembered from other teachers having this need to print a grid - that there is one thing you need to know.

On Microsoft Office -

Go to File - Page Setup - and then check what you do want to print.

On Open Office - the setup is slightly different. You go to Format - Page - Sheet and then check what you want to have printed.

This is a very simple tip, but one that I get asked often. If there is nothing on the page, you need to put a period at the very end cell to get the gridlines to print for the whole page.

Correct the dictionary

If your dictionary in Word or Open Office has been corrupted by well meaning students that while checking their document add the incorrectly mispelled word to the dictionary.

Go to Tools - Choose spelling and grammar. Click the Dictionaries button and click edit. Edit the list of words, deleting the incorrectly spelled words and then close the file. Then select options from the tools, click the spelling and grammar tab and then put a check next to check spelling automatically. Otherwise, you will have turned off the automatic spell check as you type. If you want it turned off, this is where you would turn it off.

Trust me, this is something you could do almost anytime in our computer lab as I have people who love to click before reading!

Fractions in Microsoft Office

Judy E. came and found the next problem we need to solve in Microsoft. She was typing a paper that required fractions and she wanted to type the fractions so the children could read them the way they are used to seeing them. Some fractions automatically format correctly in Microsoft Office - 1/2, 1/4 and 3/4 - but if you want anything else, they type just the way these fractions appear in this text.
If you want them to look more professional, here is the way to do it in Word.

Method 1: Use an Equation (EQ) Field
To insert a fraction as an equation field, follow these steps:
1. On the Insert menu, click Field.
2. In the Categories list, click to select Equations and Formulas.
3. In the Field Names list, click to select Eq and then click Options.
4. In the Switches list, select \F(,) and then click Add to Field.
5. In the box with the EQ \F(,) text, type the numerator of the fraction in before the comma and the denominator for the fraction after the comma within the parenthesis.
For example, for a fraction of 1/2, change the EQ \F(,) field to the following:
EQ \F(1,2)
6. Click OK to close the Field Options dialog box.
7. Click OK to close the Field dialog box.
Your fraction field should be inserted into your document. If you do not see the fraction, but see {EQ \F(1,2)} instead, then press ALT+F9 (Windows) or OPTION+F9 (Macintosh) to turn the field codes off.
If you are trying to do this in Open Office - you are in luck. They have an equation editor on it. You go to insert - object -formula - and the fraction is made. I have a graphic of what it will look like. In this case, in my humble opinion, Open office wins. I know there is a plug -in you can get for Microsoft Office to do this, but it comes in Open Office.

I am going to start with Excel tips. I thought the obvious place to start was to find a good place that had a basic tutorial for Excel. This site from the University of South Dakota has a very straightforward tutorial.

I found another site that has similar tutorials for Calc, the spreadsheet program for Open Office.

I hope to spend some time comparing the two spreadsheet programs and also looking for tips on ways to teach and use the programs.

Do let me know if you have any questions that you want to me to explore - or if you have found something that helps you.

Changing save default in Open Office

Recently, Bob Owens spent a lot of time at Ferrisburgh - Thank goodness, thank you Bob. Anyway, the tip he gave me is one that I think Open Office users need to know. He only uses Open Office for his work - and has the preferences save everything as if it was written on Microsoft Office.
Here's how you do it -
Go to Tools - Options - Load/Save and you will get this screen. Scroll down to find the Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP. This way what you save for others will be more readable by those that haven't discovered the joys of Open Office.

When we were working on the program for the artist in residence, I realized that I have not done much work with Microsoft Word or Office in making a page that has a header with  columns. This would look like a newspaper banner with columns. I always have used Appleworks for this in the past, so now I need to know how to do it easily in Microsoft Office.

It turns out that the only reason it is more complicated in Office is because there are so many ways you can format the page. Here is the quick way to start making in Microsoft Word  a page that looks like a newspaper.

• Go to View menu and select Header and Footer. Create your title in the header. Center, change font and/or insert an image if you want. When finished close uncheck the Header and Footer in view - your header will be a light gray.
• Go to the Format menu and select Columns. Decide how many you want - you can also decide if you want the columns to be for the whole page or just a portion of the page. Your text will fill down in one column first.
• Insert pictures as you go along. Put your cursor where you wish to insert the picture. Resize the picture if needed.

In Open Office -

• The Header and Footer are separate under View. Visually, this seemed easier for me than the way Microsoft handles it.
• The Format menu also has the ability to select Columns. It appears to have as many choices as Word does.
  

Adding art to a document

I was asked about inserting a picture in Word or Open Office, I quickly realized I hadn't tried it in both. It is quite simple in either program. You would go to insert and either choose clip art or a file. I have found that on the Mac platform, clip art is fairly limited. To the right of this text, is an example of how you would place a picture in Open Office. I find this program to be the easiest to make modifications. Really this is one thing you just need to practice and look around to see all the ways you can change the look of your graphic. It is very similar in Microsoft Office.

Forgot your glasses? Make font bigger instantly

Today at our tech leadership meeting, I learned that if you hold down the control button (Windows/PC), and scroll up or down with the wheel on your mouse, the font will get smaller or bigger!!!! Hooray! Even with 20 pairs of glasses stored all over the place, this will still be a huge help to me.

Word Art /Fontwork

Open Office has just released a new upgrade which makes for a much nicer drawing program. I haven't totally figured out how it compares to Microsoft Office, but I did compare the Word Art/ Fontwork feature. They are very similar, just found out in a different place on the programs.
You can read all about how to use Fontwork in Open Office at the web site http://www.tutorialsforopenoffice.org/tutorial/Fontwork_Gallery.html
It is as clear of an explanation of how to add fontwork in your documents.
For Microsoft Word, I recommend this site http://www.uwec.edu/Help/Office07/wordart-w.htm
Let me know if you try any of these tricks. I am very impressed with the recent upgrade to Open Office, so do remember to periodically look for updates for your programs. Let me know how this is all going and if you have any questions or suggestions as to what you are interested in next, let me know.

Making a Table in your document

Making a table is very easy in Word or Open Office. In both cases, Table is at the top. When you choose it, you can say how many rows and columns you want it to be. It is very similar in both programs.
The difference in the two programs comes when you try and make changes to the border. In Word, you will notice a small plus sign in the top left corner. Right click - or Option click on this sign and you will get a screen that gives you more options
for your borders. In Open Office, a screen pops up on your page once you have made your table that gives you choices to click on to change the borders. I would recommend you play with this sometime to see all the different formatting styles you can get.
Do let me know if you have any other questions or if you are having any success with this process. Thanks.

Creating Bibliographies

When the sixth grade came in to make bibliographies, I realized quickly that while I knew how to make bibliographies in Appleworks,  I did not have the same skill level in Word.

So, it is actually very easy, before you start to put in the entry, you go to format paragraph and you will see this tool bar. You chose indentation, special  and then hanging under special -  and it will automatically put your bibliography in a correct format.

Open Office does not have this exact feature. I am still trying to figure out hanging indents in that program. However, I did notice that Open Office has a bibliography database that you can make your bibliographies in and insert them into a document. I will work on this later and let you know. For people how are writing a lot of papers, this might be a great solution!

Do let me know if there is something you want me to be looking to figure out or post a tip that you have found here. If this is all something you have heard before, then let me know that as well. I am hoping for some discussion about these programs. Thanks.

Third Grade Teaches Me about Change Case and Drop Caps

I had a third grader accidentally change her whole paper which was perfectly formatted to all caps. Fortunately, she knew what she had done and we were able to undo it after a bit of time. However, it was a nice piece of learning for me and I thought I would share it.

If you have a student that has typed the document with the caps locks on or is just being perverse and typed a document with random caps, this is an easy way to format the work correctly.

In Microsoft Word, under Format there is a command that says Change Case. You can make everything all caps. 

The same feature exists in Open Office but it does not as many options. You should still be aware of this capability as I am pretty sure the students find it, but don't always know why.

While I was there, I also noticed that Office has the ability to Drop case. This would look like this.

Both versions of Office also have this capability. I thought it was a fun thing to know about. In Microsoft Office it is found under format. In Open Office, it is a little harder to find, but the ability to Drop Case also exists with Open Office.  In Open Office, you go to format and then choose paragraph and drop caps can be found there.

I think this might be a nice effect to use with poetry or some story writing. Let me know if you find out anything accidentally like this!

Moving Paragraphs Easily in Documents

Just found this tip on the pcmag.com website.

If you want to swap paragraphs in a document, you COULD drag your text around - OR you could click on a paragraph you would like to move - using Shift-Alt on Windows machines or Shift-Control on a Mac and then using the arrow keys, the entire paragraph will move either up or down a paragraph. 

You might want to find a document that you have already created to try this - it works great!

Send me a comment if you do try it!

Toolbars - Open Office

As you can see, Open Office pretty much mimics Office. Here is a screenshot of the Open Office toolbars.

Toolbars -Microsoft Office

Probably the first place to start in Office is learning how to use the toolbars effectively. In Microsoft Office, there are many toolbars that are available to you. If you go to View you can see all the different toolbars and formatting palette.

This is the standard toolbar.

If you go all the way to the right, then there are even more things that you can do with the standard toolbar.

The image on the right is the other options that are on the standard formatting bar. 

Try using the views and click on different toolbars to see how they can help create a more professional document.

Questions

Before we really begin the lessons, I am curious as to what version of an office program you are using. Do you use Microsoft Office or Open Office? Also, if you have any questions at all, please feel free to post them here. Together we should be able to figure them out.

Welcome!

This looks as if it is a group of fairly competent computer users.  It is my intention to post some tips that I find and some general information about Microsoft Office and Open Office on this space. I would greatly appreciate any feedback or tips that you can give to me. 

I plan on starting with  Word Processing sometime this weekend. 

I hope to post a few times a week and hope that you will find the time once a week to read the information, comment if you want and try the tips.