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.