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I was recently putting together a PowerPoint 2010 presentation that had a lot of charts in it. I wanted to reveal the data gradually, so I looked for a way to animate. It’s easy to do, if not entirely intuitive. After creating the chart, switch to the “Animations” tab. Click on the chart to select it, then click the “Add Animation” button. Choose the animation style you like; I chose “fade”. Now, with the chart still selected, click “Effect Options.” Here I can choose how I want the data to appear. When you mouse over each option, your chart will preview what it will lookRead More →

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I’m attending a workshop at a nearby college in a couple weeks, and the organizer has already emailed me a parking pass to print and bring with me. As I was thinking about where to save the parking pass so I won’t forget it, I thought, “I wish I could just save it in my calendar.” After a little investigation, you can do that in Google Calendar. Go to settings by clicking on the cog icon, and select “Labs”. Scroll down to “Event attachments” and click “Enable.” Now when you create a new event or edit an existing one, you have an “Add attachment” option.Read More →

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I’m often asked about the easiest way to set up a website. While the course management systems are fine for, well, managing courses, if you want students to access information before or after the course a personal website is a logical way to go. Last week I was at the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology (NITOP), the best psychology-focused teaching conference. During a participant idea exchange on favorite tech tools, one person suggested Weebly.com. (I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name! If you read this, please email me. I want to give you proper credit.) Go to Weebly.com, and set up an account.Read More →

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My favorite appointment scheduling service, YouCanBook.Me, lets people book themselves into your calendar. (See this earlier blog post for more about how YouCanBook.Me works.) One hesitation in using the service I’ve heard from faculty is that they want students to request appointment times, not have the appointment automatically confirmed. You now have that control. Choose your YouCanBook.Me calendar you’d like to edit. On the “advanced” tab, at the very bottom, check “make new bookings tentative”. The next person who selects an appointment time will get text at the top of the confirmation screen that reads “**This booking is not yet confirmed**”. You may want toRead More →

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Print Friendly lets you print what you’d like from a webpage. For example, let’s say that you wanted to print a post from my blog. If you used the print capability of your web browser, you’d get something like this. In addition to the content that you want, you’d also get the header, menu tabs, and the right navigation bar. Using Print Friendly, you get the name of the website, the URL, and the content of the blog post. That’s it. Try it out yourself. At the bottom of this post, there is a Print Friendly button. Click on it to print this article. HowRead More →

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ZoomIt was designed to let a presenter zoom into a particular portion of the screen. For most presentations I don’t need a zoom, but I would like to be able to draw. Of course PowerPoint gives you drawing tools, but the menu system is a hassle. If I’m showing, say, a webpage, then the PowerPoint drawing tools are of no use. When I press CTRL + 2, my cursor changes to a red plus sign. I click and hold to draw on the screen. When I’m done, I press ESC. It’s pretty straight forward. After downloading ZoomIt, run it on your computer. Look for theRead More →

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For some of my assignments, students are asked to write them in a word processor and email them to me as an attachment. In the most recent batch of student papers, one arrived with a .pages extension. Since I don’t have a program that can read that file format, I went to Zamzar and converted the file. In step 1, I clicked “choose file” and navigated to the file I wanted to convert. In step 2, from the dropdown menu I selected .doc. In step 3, I entered my email address. In step 4, I clicked convert. In less than 30 seconds, Zamzar had sentRead More →

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Like having different wallpapers for your desktop? I have 110 different images that change every 15 minutes on both my work and personal laptops. (You’re right. This has nothing to do with teaching. But it is fun.) Here’s one. How to do it Create an account at Desktoppr. During the registration process give Desktoppr permission to access your Dropbox.com account. (Don’t have a Dropbox account yet? Sign up here.) Desktoppr will add an “Apps” folder to Dropbox if you don’t already have one. Inside of that folder it will add another folder called “Desktoppr” where it will sync the wallpapers you select. I filter byRead More →

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Since I wrote about Join.me in February 2011, the developers have added some new features. For those who missed that post, Join.me is a desktop sharing application. Run Join.me, and the program generates a URL. Share that URL with whomever you’d like, and they will see your computer’s desktop in their web browser. In the free version of Join.me, you use your computer’s microphone to talk with those who are seeing your desktop.  To listen, use headphones, not your computer’s speakers. If you use your speakers, it will sound okay to you, but the others who are participating will hear an echo of their voices.Read More →