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 look like as you step through your presentation. (Hats off to the PowerPoint 2010 team. I love this feature!)

In my sample chart, “By Series” will show the blue bars first, then the red, then the green. “By Category” will show all of the 5-minute bars first and then all of the 1-week bars. “By Element in Series” will show the 5-minute blue bar, then the 1-week blue bar, then the red bars in sequence, and finally the red bars in sequence. Lastly, “By Element in Category” will show the 5-minute blue bar, then the 5-minute red bar, then the 5-minute green bar, and this will repeat for the 1-week bars.

Click on “Animation Pane” to see the animations that were created. Click the down arrow next to the top animation in the animation pane to see all of the animations for the chart. The very first animation makes the chart itself appear. For my purposes, I wanted the chart already to be there when I advanced to this slide, so I clicked on the very top animation (“Chart 3: Background”) and hit delete on my keyboard. Done.

Side note

The data depicted on this slide comes from a nifty Roediger and Karpicke (2006) study. Participants in the study either had 4 opportunities to study a science passage (SSSS), 3 opportunities to study and 1 opportunity to do a free recall practice test of everything they remembered from the passage (SSST), or 1 opportunity to read the passage and 3 opportunities to do free recall practice tests (STTT). When they took the real test 5 minutes afterwards, the repeated study group remembered the most, but 1 week later, the practice test participants remembered quite a bit more. In psychology we call this the “testing effect” – the act of recalling information helps us remember it.

Roediger, H.L., III, & Karpicke, J.D. (2006). The power of testing memory: Basic research and implications for educational practice. Psychological Science, 1, 181-210.

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.

Clicking “Add attachment” generates a pop-up window. The initial view is your “My Drive”, formerly Google Docs. If the file you want to add isn’t in Google Docs, click on “Upload”.

If your file is on your desktop or in a folder, just click and drag it into this space. Click the “Upload” button, and the file will be automatically copied to Google Drive and attached to your calendar event.

Here’s what the event looks like with the attachment.

Other attendees

If there are “guests” associated with the calendar event and if you grant them access to the file by “sharing” it in Google Drive, then they’ll be able to download the file as well.

Closing note

I’ve also created a FollowUp.cc reminder for the day of the event that tells me to print out the parking pass that’s in my calendar. [Read more about FollowUp.cc in this earlier blog post.]

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. You can log in with the Facebook credentials or create a unique username and password for the site.

Next you’re asked for a title and choose the type of site you’re setting up.

If you select education, you’re give this choice of categories to select from.

Next, choose your domain. That’s going to be your URL. Since I already have a website, I chose to just go with a Weebly subdomain: http://suefrantz.weebly.com. If I didn’t already own the domain suefrantz.com, under “register a new domain,” I would enter suefrantz in the box. If you want something other than .com, use the dropdown menu to pick a different extension. Since I own suefrantz.com, if I wanted to move from my current host, I could enter suefrantz.com in the box under “use a domain you already own.” Weebly would walk me through everything I needed so that visitors to suefrantz.com would be directed to Weebly instead. Whatever decision you make here is not irreversible. More on that later.

With those decisions made, you’re now taken into the editor.

Paragraph with Title

It’s a drag-and-drop interface. Want to add a paragraph with a title, click on “paragraph with title” in the toolbar, drag it to where you want to put it, and unclick.

After dropping it in (below the default image), Weebly tells you what to do. Click on the big print to edit the title; click on the small print to edit the paragraph text.

After selecting “click here to edit” (either one), you get a familiar toolbar. The buttons are, from left to right:
Bold, italics, underline, font color, increase font size, decrease font size, remove formatting, add a link, align left, align center, align right, justified, undo, and redo.

When editing a paragraph instead of a title, you get two additional buttons on the toolbar: Bulleted list and numbered list.

Quick tip: Use TAB to move between elements. For example, when you’re done with the title, use TAB to move to the body of the paragraph. Use CTRL-A to select all of the text in that element. Typing will erase what was selected. If you added a second titled paragraph under it, hitting TAB again will move your cursor to the next title.

If you change your mind about an element, you can always delete it. Mouse over it and in the top right corner of the element you’ll see a little red circle with a white x in it. Click the red circle to delete.

Paragraph with Picture

After dragging this element onto the page, I can edit the title, the paragraph text, and add an image.

Clicking on the sample image, this box pops up. If the image is on your computer, open the image’s location, and drag and drop it to add it. Or, if you prefer, click on “upload a photo from your computer” to navigate to it the old-fashioned way. Click the search button to find photos, both professional ($5 each) and free. Mouse over the photos you want to mark as “favorites” or click “select” to choose it. Click the “favorites” button to see the photos you marked as such. For most images on the internet, you can right-click on it to “copy image URL”. If you go that route, be sure that you either own the copyright or that the copyright owner is fine with you using the image.

Custom HTML

When you drag this element on to the page, you can add any HTML content you’d like. Here’s where this comes in handy.

For most YouTube videos, you can get an embed code. Under the video, click “Share” and then “Embed”. Copy the code, and paste it your “Custom HTML” box. The video will play on the page.

You can do the same with TEDTalks. Click the “Embed” tab under any TEDTalk video. From the popup window, copy the code, and paste in your “Custom HTML” box.

Changing the default banner image

While we’re talking about images, let’s change the default image on the page.

Mousing over the image makes an “edit image” button appear. Click the down arrow to “edit image.”

Clicking the “add image” button gives you the image options discussed above. Or you can replace the image with text. Click the “add text” button multiple times to add multiple text boxes. If you decide you don’t like any of your changes even after saving them, click on “revert to original” in the top right corner to the left of the “Cancel” button.

Design Tab

Now that you have the idea of how the page elements work, let’s move on to design.

Flip through the filmstrip at the top to choose the layout you like. Click the arrow on the far right to see even more. Keep going. There are plenty to choose from!

Going social

At the very top of the page, are the social media icons. Mouse over them to add your contact information. Click the “x” to the right to delete it. To change the order, click the far left handle (the little box with the dots in it) and drag it. Click the “add more” button to add more.

Add a page

Since you may not want all of your content on one page, add a page. Click the “Pages” tab, then click the “Add page” button.

After adding a page title, click “Save” at the bottom. You’ll be redirected to the same page editor interface you started with.

Want to go back to editing your main page? Click on the “Pages” tab again, and select “Home,” and then click the “Edit Page” button at the top of the page.

Settings tab

Want to change the site address you set when you started this whole process? You can do that here.

Publish

When you’re ready to go live, click the orange “publish” button in the top right corner.

Pro version

For a reasonable sum of money, you can add a number of nifty features, such as the ability to password protect individual pages.

Conclusion

This is the drop-dead easiest way to create your own website.

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 to change the text that you displayed on the confirmation screen to reflect that the appointment hasn’t been confirmed. The email sent to the appointment-maker includes that same text at the top of the message. Also consider changing whatever text you’ve told YouCanBook.Me to include in the email message to reflect that the appointment isn’t solidified yet.

This is the email that I received from YouCanBook.Me. I now click on Accept or Reject.

Accepting

If I click accept, I get this screen in my web browser.

If I check the “send a message” box, the screen expands to this.

After clicking the “accept booking” button, I’m redirected to my “bookings profile” page, where I learn, for the first time, that I have a bookings profile page.

The appointment then appears on the calendar like it normally does.

Rejecting

If I click reject, I get this screen in my browser.

If I check the “send a message” box, the screen expands to this. I can edit all of the message components except the ‘to’ address.

My bookings profile page now shows the rejected appointment request.

This is the email the appointment requester gets.

Viewing tentative bookings

YouCanBook.Me creates a new Google calendar for you called “YouCanBook.Me Tentative” where it holds the appointments that are in limbo.

To see that calendar, visit your Google Calendar page, and click the down arrow to the right of “My calendars”. Select “Settings.”

In your list of calendars will be your tentative calendar. Click on the checkbox to make the calendar available for you to see.

Now, click the “Back to Calendar” link at the top of that webpage. You can now view what’s in the tentative calendar. (The calendar name will have a white box next to it. To change the color, mouse over the name of the calendar, and click the down arrow that appears. Select the color you’d like those entries to appear in your calendar.

Accepting/rejecting from the bookings profile page

The easiest way to accept or reject an appointment is from the email YouCanBook.Me sends, but that’s not the only option you have.

Log into YouCanBook.Me. The page you see will list all of your calendars. If you’re editing a YouCanBook.Me calendar, you can always click on the “dashboard” button at the top of the page to get your list of calendars. Click the “bookings” button.

Here I can see that listing of all of my appointments. The most recent one is showing as undecided.

Clicking on the “undecided” button takes me to this page. I see the details of the booking, and I can decide to accept or reject it.

Conclusion

Are you a YouCanBook.Me user? What do you think about this new feature?

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.

How it works

Go to Print Friendly. On their website, enter the URL of the website you’d like to print.

Better yet, in the section labeled “Get the Bookmarklet”, click and “drag the [Print Friendly button] to your browser’s bookmark toolbar.” Any time you’re visiting a webpage you’d like to print, just click the Print Friendly button in your toolbar.

Whichever method you use, you will get a screen that looks like this. You can print, save as PDF, or email an uncluttered version of the webpage. Change the size of the font if you’d like. You can even remove the images from the page.

Don’t want to include some content? Mouse over the paragraph you want to delete and click. It’s gone.

When you save as PDF, the URL in the top right corner of the page is clickable.

Conclusion

If you are printing webpages or saving webpages as PDFs, this is a must-use tool.

[Note: I’ve previously recommended JoliPrint as a similar service. JoliPrint announced in mid-December 2012 that they will be closing up shop in early January, 2013.]

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 the ZoomIt icon in your system tray (bottom, right corner of your screen). Right click on the icon, and select “Options”. Here you can see the instructions for the various functions. Once you’re familiar with them, press “Cancel” and use the keyboard shortcuts to do what you want to do. (Note: The keyboard shortcuts won’t work if you have the ZoomIt options screen open.)

Zooming

The first tab shows the zoom functions. The default keyboard shortcut is CTRL + 1. After pressing and holding the CTRL key, press 1. You zoom in on the screen, and moving the mouse now moves the entire screen. Use the mouse wheel or the up and down arrow keys to zoom in and out.

Click on the screen, and the cursor changes to a red plus sign. You’re now in drawing mode. Click and hold to draw. (See the “Drawing” section below for more drawing functions.)

When you’re done zooming, press ESC.

The second tab is for LiveZoom. In regular zoom, the screen will freeze while you zoom. Usually this isn’t an issue, but if you’re showing video or other dynamic content that you want to continue to run while you zoom, LiveZoom is your better option. In LiveZoom, use the up and down arrow keys to zoom in and out.

To draw in LiveZoom mode, press CTRL + 2 to enable the drawing tools. At that point, LiveZoom will act like regular zoom in that the screen will freeze. Press ESC to exit drawing, and LiveZoom will be re-enabled.

When you’re done LiveZooming, press ESC.

Drawing

You can also have just the drawing functions without the zoom.

Press CTRL + 2 to enter ZoomIt’s drawing mode. The cursor changes to a red plus sign. Click, hold, and drag to draw.

Like in other Windows programs, CTRL + Z will delete what you just did, CTRL + C will capture the screen, drawings and all, and CTRL + S will save it. Want to erase everything? Type ‘e’.

Want to change the pen color? While in drawing mode, type “‘r’ (red), ‘g’ (green), ‘b’ (blue), ‘o’ (orange), ‘y’ (yellow), or ‘p’ (pink).”

Want nice clean lines? Hold down the Shift key for a straight line, CTRL for a rectangle, and Tab for an ellipse. For an arrow, hold down Shift and CTRL.

Switch to a white (‘w’) or black (‘k’) background.

Would you prefer to type? Press ‘t’. Use the up and down arrow keys to change the size of the font.

When you’re done drawing, press ESC.

It’s portable!

If you want to use it on another computer, such as a classroom computer or a conference presentation computer, copy the files onto a flash drive. On the other computer, plug in the flash drive, and run the ZoomIt program. When you’re done with your presentation, exit ZoomIt, and eject your flash drive.

Multiple monitors

ZoomIt works on multiple monitors. However you can’t just move from one to the other. If you want to use ZoomIt’s drawing tools on, say, a presentation monitor, you need to move your cursor to that monitor before pressing CTRL + 2. You will only be able to draw on that monitor. To draw on the other monitor, you need to press ESC, move your cursor to the other monitor, and press CTRL + 2 again.

Conclusion

Try it out in your office or at home. When you’re feeling comfortable (it won’t take you long!), put it on a flash drive and carry it to class.

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 sent me an email informing me that the conversion was complete. I followed the link in the email message, and the converted file was downloaded by my browser.

For those concerned about privacy, if you are an unregistered user, Zamzar holds the files for one day and then deletes them.

Quick Tech Tip for Gmail users.

Want to quote just part of an email message in your reply instead of the entire message?

Highlight the text you want, and then click the reply button or tap the ‘r’ key on the keyboard. Only the highlighted text will be quoted in your reply.

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 by “most downloaded first”. For the wallpapers you want displayed on your computer, click the cloud icon under the image. Here you can see that the wallpapers with white clouds are ones I’ve chosen.

The images you select will automatically be downloaded, via Dropbox, to your computer.

Displaying the wallpapers

Now that the images are on your computer, you need to tell your computer where those images are and to display them as wallpaper.

In Windows 7, right click on your desktop and at the bottom of the menu, select “Personalize”. Alternatively, go to Control Panel – > Personalization. (Mac users, see instructions here. I’m guessing that step 4 is where you’d choose the Desktoppr folder.)

At the bottom of the screen, select “Desktop Background”.

Click “browse”. Navigate to your Dropbox folder -> Apps -> Desktoppr. Next, decide how often you’d like the wallpaper image to change.

Changing wallpaper manually

While I have my wallpapers set to change every 15 minutes, I might not be in the mood for the one that is currently displaying. When I right-click on my desktop, I get this pop-up menu. About 2/3 of the way down, I can click on “Next desktop background” to cycle to the next one in the queue.

Deleting wallpapers

Go into your Desktoppr folder in Dropbox and delete the wallpapers you don’t want.

Adding wallpapers to Desktoppr

If you’d like to make your own images (where you own the copyright) available to other Desktoppr users, save your images in your Dropbox -> Apps -> Desktoppr folder. That’s it. If you decide you don’t want everyone to be able to use them, you will need to contact the good folks at Desktoppr and make that request.

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. The sound from your speakers is picked up by your microphone so anyone who is speaking will hear their voice through their headphones. If you want conference calling over the phone, sign up for Join.me Pro. Or use FreeConference.com. Or Speek.com.

Multiple monitor support

The center icon in the Join.me toolbar has been changed from a pause button to a monitor. Clicking on it still pauses your screen. Let’s say you want to do something on your screen without everyone seeing it, pause freezes your screen for everyone who is watching, but you still retain full control.

Clicking the down arrow under the monitor icon is magical if you are running dual monitors. Click on “Switch screen”. An orange outline will appear around your screen to show that you are currently sharing, say, monitor 1. Mouse over to your second monitor, and the orange outline will move with you. Click anywhere on that screen to share it. Repeat the process to move back to monitor 1. Okay, maybe it’s not magical, but it is pretty cool.

Mobile app (Android/iOS)

Visit Google Play/App Store, to add the free Join.me app to your smartphone or tablet. Run the app, and enter the 9-digit code (hyphens are added automatically). If you view someone’s screen from the app, you join the audio as a conference call via a phone number and access code (pro version is not required). The other limitation is that you do not have the option to control the computer screen you’re viewing. You can only look, not touch.

Teaching tip

I have an engineering colleague who teaches in a computer classroom where each student station has dual monitors. During class, the professor runs Join.me, and his students watch his screen in the web browser via Join.me on one monitor while they do the same steps on the other monitor.

How are you using Join.me?