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When someone knocks on your office door, you may have a sensitive email or student work on your screen. Rather than figuring out if what is on your screen can be safely seen, use a keyboard shortcut to minimize everything so only your desktop shows. Windows Windows key + D (“D” is for desktop). When your visitor leaves, that same key combination will bring back everything where it was. Mac Command + F3 (“F3” is for F3). When your visitor leaves, that same key combination or just F3 will bring back everything where it was.  Read More →

Windows 10 emoji menu

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Windows 10* has a built-in emoji menu. Go into any program where you can type, like Word or a new email message. Press Windows key + semicolon. Choose an emoji from the menu. The first page (clock icon) shows your most recently used emoji. The magnifying glass is for search. Type what you’re looking for, like “smile.” You’ll see all of the emoji tagged with that word. Click on the other icons to browse emoji by categories. To close the menu, click the X in the top right corner, press the ESC key, or click anywhere that is not the menu. Choose a skin toneRead More →

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Select the entire web address Mouse fans: single click on the web address Keyboard shortcut fans: CTRL-L Click and drag into your Windows folder Double-click on the bookmark in your folder to launch the page in your web browser “Can I rename the link?” Yes. The default name for the link is whatever that website’s webmaster called the page. Just as you can rename a file in your folder, you can rename your bookmarks. In your folder, right-click on the link, select “Rename,” and, well, rename it. “I use Dropbox/Google Drive/OneDrive. Will my bookmark links synchronize across my devices?” Yes. “That means that when IRead More →

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I first wrote about PhraseExpress in 2009. My new policy: if I’m still using a particular technology 10 years later, it deserves a new blog post. PhraseExpress is a text expander (and more) for Windows, Mac, Android, and iPhone. The reviews for the mobile versions are mixed, so I’m going to limit the post to Windows. (Mac functionality is similar, I just don’t have a Mac.) PhraseExpress is free for non-commercial use. The pay-for upgrades give you more functionality that may or may not be useful to you. They’re a one-time fee – not annual subscription – for that version. For significant version upgrades whichRead More →

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In my last post, I wrote about how I use the news feed reader Inoreader to keep up with what’s new. I promised at the end of that post to write about how I use Inoreader in combination with the free task management tool Trello to track the content I want to add to my psychology courses the following term. This is my Trello board as it currently stands for my Psych 100: General Psychology course. (Create as many Trello boards as you have courses.) Notice that I have a list for changes I want to make to my “Syllabus and Canvas quiz” (currently empty),Read More →

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In addition to keeping up with what’s new in technology, I keep an eye out for content that is particularly relevant to my psychology students. Rather than dig through the Internet for content, I have Inoreader fetch the content for me. This is what Inoreader looks like. On the left, under “Subscriptions,” you can see some of the content I’m subscribed to. Inoreader periodically visits these websites looking for something new. When Inoreader finds new content, it drops it in here. You can see that I have a “News” folder that contains a subscription called “NYT > Most Shared.” These are articles the New YorkRead More →

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A lot of new tech stuff I learn is too often due to me making a bone-headed decision. In this case, I created an Excel file to look at some data. Thinking I had everything I needed, I closed the file without saving it. Not two minutes later it occurred to me that I wasn’t done with it. I didn’t especially want to enter the data again. Granted, it probably didn’t take me more than 10 minutes to enter that data, but there were other things I could do with those 10 minutes — like write a blog post about how I learned how toRead More →

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Do you know the most common way I learn about new technology? Something starts bugging me, and I go looking for a solution. Today’s problem? If I want to keep my existing Chrome tabs open, to open a bookmark in a new tab, I have to open a new tab and then click on the bookmark. I know. In the greater scheme of things, this isn’t a big deal. But I’ve done it a lot today. I mean, a lot. So, it’s time to learn something new. A pretty quick search gave me the answer. The solution(s) Hold down CTRL and left-click on the bookmarkRead More →

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A veteran colleague recently advised a newly-hired professor to not send students email at 1 am. Why? Because students will come to expect that all of their professors will respond to their email inquiries at 1 am. I don’t know if that’s true, but another colleague replies to messages late at night but delays sending them until the morning for that very reason. Outlook comes with the ability to delay sending emails. Gmail can do it with an add-in. Gmail users: Install Boomerang. (Try the pro version for free for 30 days. After that, use the pared-down free version or pay $4.99/month for more features.)Read More →

Spacedesk logo

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We are leaving in a couple days to visit my father-in-law. I want to work while on this trip, including getting my online courses ready for the fall*. Now that I routinely work with three monitors, the thought of trying to ready my courses with only my Windows laptop monitor made me a little twitchy. I travel with a small Android tablet, so surely there must be an easy way to extend my Windows laptop to that tablet as a second screen – easier that the software I used a few years ago. And there is. Spacedesk is free. Your Windows computer will be yourRead More →