For Windows users, there is free collection of utilities called PowerToys that add some functionality to Windows. While there are a dozen tools in PowerToys, there are two I’m particularly enamored with: mouse utilities and video conference mute.

Working with two or three screens, it can be a challenge to find my mouse pointer. Frankly, I’m tired of moving my mouse around and glancing from screen to screen hoping to catch the movement. With mouse utilities, pressing the left CTRL button on my keyboard twice darkens all screens and gives my pointer a spotlight. In the screenshot below, my mouse pointer was in the center of this circle. Because my screen capture tool doesn’t capture the mouse pointer, we’ll have to pretend that the poorly drawn red arrow is my mouse pointer. Clicking a mouse button removes the spotlight.  

The second tool I use from the PowerToys suite is video conference mute. Regardless of the conference app, on the keyboard, pressing WINDOWS + SHIFT + Q instantly turns off the microphone and the camera.

These are the other tools that may be useful to me, but I haven’t had occasion to use them yet.

Always on Top: Pin a window so that it remains on top of other windows

FancyZones: Create a layout for the different windows that you have open, and then quickly enable that layout whenever you need it.

ImageResizer: Resize a bunch of images in one fell swoop.

PowerRename: Change the names on a bunch of files, also in one fell swoop.

Shortcut Guide: With a keyboard shortcut, you can view all of the keyboard shortcuts available for a particular window.

The remaining tools as of this writing are:

PowerToys Awake: Keep your computer from going to sleep.

Color Picker: Get the color code (HEX, RGB, or HSL) for any pixel on your screen.

Keyboard Manager: Remap any key on your keyboard. Caution: Do this only if you have a very good reason.

PowerToys Run: This looks to be a quick search tool for your computer’s files, folders, and programs.

File Explorer add-ons: Preview uncommon file types in file explorer. One file type it lists is pdfs, however, Microsoft has added this functionality to file explorer. No need to use PowerToys to preview pdfs.

Because they add utilities to this suite, by the time you read this, there may be more options available than listed in this blog post.

Seriously, if you have more than one screen, being able to spotlight your mouse pointer will be a game changer.

Zoom has new question options available on in the latest version 5.8.3. This version is not an automatic update, so you’ll need to download it manually.

Account owners and admins can enable advanced polling to allow meeting hosts to build advanced polls or quizzes that contain multiple question/answer types, allow for images, and automatically record answers. New question/answer types include match combinations, rank answers, and fill in the blank. This feature requires version 5.8.3 or higher and currently must be enabled by Zoom. (https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201361953)

But big caveat: “Users using older versions of Zoom will not be able to participate in polls with new question types or take quizzes.” Anyone in your Zoom meeting who is not using an updated version of Zoom will not be able to answer the new question types. These question

To turn on the new poll options, go to settings by logging in at zoom.us. In the “In Meeting (Basic),” find “Meeting Polls/Quizzes.” Make sure the toggle switch to the right is set to on (blue), check the box next to “Allow host to create advanced polls and quizzes,” and click Save.

New question options are matching, rank order, short answer, and long answer.

We can make it a quiz, if we’d like. That allows us to include several questions in one quiz. For non-text-based questions, we must identify the correct answers.

One of the advantages of using the Canvas learning management system is that it is built on a platform that makes it easy to make it do things that its inherent programming doesn’t allow it to do. By “easy,” I mean easy for those who know how to write the scripts and easier for us who only need to install the scripts others have written.

Using a web browser add-in called Tampermonkey (yes, it is called Tampermonkey; download for Chrome; download for Firefox), we can run scripts in your browser that will change how Canvas behaves. For example, there is a Tampermonkey script that allows you to export data from your scored rubrics. There is a speedgrader enhancement that allows you to click one button to submit a comment and advance to the next student. There is another Tampermonkey script that allows you to reorder the criteria in a rubric. Yet another script allows you to add custom columns to your gradebook; I’ve added “preferred name,” “fun facts,” “challenges,” and “major” to mine.

The good folks at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) have a page that lists many Canvas enhancements. After you’ve installed Tampermonkey, take a look at their page. When you find an OIT-provided enhancement you’d like, click the “Using <name of enhancement>” bar directly under the enhancement’s description. Click the link to the “<name of enhancement> source page”. On that page, click the Install button. Done. You are good to go.

For example, I have installed the OIT Custom Columns Manager. When I visit my Canvas gradebook, I have two new buttons: + Column and Delete Column. Also, I can see the Tampermonkey icon in my browser’s add-on bar has the number 1 on it. That means that Tampermonkey is running one script on this page.

At the bottom of the OIT Canvas Enhancements page is a section titled “Community-Provided Enhancements.” Many of these scripts have been written by James Jones, a Canvas master (visit his GitHub page to access all of his scripts).

A quick troubleshooting note. Some Canvas courses are hosted by Canvas’s parent company Instructure. Those courses have an instructure.com web address. Other courses are hosted by institutions. Those courses have a canvas.xxx.edu web address. Since the scripts run on webpages, the scripts have to have a web address included in them so Tampermonkey knows when it should run a particular script. Click on the Tampermonkey icon in your browser and select Dashboard. Click on the script name to see the code.

Near the top of the OIT script for the Custom Column Manager, we see this:

// @include https://canvas.*.edu/*/gradebook
// @include https://*.*instructure.com/*/gradebook

This means that the script will run on both website sources.

Some of the community-provided enhancements, though, only have the instructure.com line. If your instance of Canvas is at instructure.com, you’re good to go. For the rest of us, we need to add the line:

// @include https://canvas.*.edu/*/gradebook [The ending of the url will be different depending on the script. Just make sure the ending matches the ending of the instructure.com line.]

One more caveat. If you use Canvas on, say, your home computer and your work computer, you will need to install Tampermonkey and whatever scripts you’re using on both computers. And if you move back and forth between Chrome and Firefox, again, you’ll need to add the scripts to both browsers.

If you run into any trouble, email me at sue@suefrantz.com.

Here are the scripts I have installed, if you’re looking for a starting place. Highly recommended: All Courses Sort, Custom Column Manager, Export Rubric Scores (a wealth of assessment data), and Sort a Rubric.

Some people, for a large number of reasons, have an easier time understanding written content when it is read aloud. The course management systems are getting better at this—such as Canvas’s Immersive Reader—but they still have a ways to go. Immersive Reader, for example, at the time of this writing does not work with discussions or quizzes.

The web browser add-in Read Aloud for Firefox (download here) and Chrome (download here) does a pretty good job at reading text on a webpage. After Read Aloud is installed, navigate to any webpage and click the newly-added loud speaker icon on your browser’s add-in bar. The pop up will show you what Read Aloud will be reading. Press the play button to start.

Pressing the stop button at the top of the Read Aloud pop up will get you a smaller pop up where you can access settings.

Voice options include Google Translate, but don’t bother. When I chose Spanish, only the numbers and symbols were rendered in Spanish. Everything else was read aloud in English, albeit by a Spanish-accented speaker.

Set the speed, the pitch, and the volume according to your preferences. Text highlighting may or may not be aligned with what Read Aloud is reading. If you find the highlighting distracting, turn it off.

Let’s start with the easiest solution.

Browser bookmarks bar

Your web browser bookmarks bar sits directly under the search/web address bar.

If it’s not there, turn it on. In Firefox, click the 3-line icon in the top right corner of the window. Click on bookmarks. Select “Show bookmarks bar.” To turn it on in Chrome, it’s the exact same process, except it’s a 3-dot icon, not a 3-line icon.

Or, in Firefox, right-click in any empty space to the right of the search/web address bar. Mouse over Bookmarks Toolbar and select Always Show.

To add bookmarks, visit the page you want to bookmark, highlight the url, click and drag to the bookmarks bar. The bookmark will be named whatever the webmaster for that page named it. Whatever it is, it’s probably too long or not descriptive enough for you to use. Right-click on your newly added bookmark, and click “edit bookmark” in Firefox or simply “edit” in Chrome. Rename it with whatever works for you.

Folders

Once you’ve added a bunch of bookmarks, you may exceed the horizontal capacity of your bookmarks bar. You can still access the ones that have fallen off to the right by clicking the double arrow icon on the far right.

Using folders, though, would be better. In my Firefox bookmarks bar, I have two website bookmarks and eight folders.

Clicking on my Psych320 folder, I see that I have three bookmarks there: the first link goes to my Psych 320 main Canvas, the second goes to my Psych 320 new announcement page, and the third goes to my Psych 320 gradebook page. If I click “Open All in Tabs,” all three pages will open, each in a new tab.

Other bookmarks solutions

With the start.me browser add-in (Firefox and Chrome), all kinds of content can be added to a new browser tab, including bookmarks. With your free start.me account, your start.me content will sync between Firefox and Chrome. Want your new tab content on your mobile device? Add start.me to your Android (search for it in Google Play) or iOS (Apple; instructions here) device.

If you’d rather keep all of your bookmarks on a webpage, a bookmark website like https://booky.io/ may be for you.

I’m also a fan of Shortmarks. When I type into my browser search bar the letter h, Highline’s homepage appears. When I type w, followed by a search term, the search results from Wikipedia appear. If that sounds useful to you, see instructions here. I’ve been using Shortmarks for 10 years, and the interface has not changed at all. But then it hasn’t needed to. Want help getting it set up? Email me or make an appointment with through the EdTech Bookings site.

Finally, if you are using Phrase Express, you create keyboard shortcuts that will open a webpage.

Chrome for Windows now has live captioning. (The same functionality is coming for Chrome for Macs.) For any video you play in Chrome, you can display captions for that video even if the video itself is not captioned. Chrome “listens” to the audio and captions as the audio plays.

This video was recorded in my pre-pandemic classroom using Panopto. Here, using Chrome, I’m playing the video from inside Canvas—our learning management system. At the bottom of the image you can see “Live Caption.” During this lecture, I was talking about interleaving and consecutive tasks. I know, because the caption reads, “Either the interleaved or consecutive tasks…”

Turn on Chrome Live Caption

Open Chrome. Paste this in the address bar and press enter: chrome://settings/accessibility

Flip the Live Caption toggle to blue. You can try setting your “Caption preferences” in Windows by clicking the boxed-arrow icon. My preferences weren’t recognized by either Canvas or YouTube. No harm in trying it, though.

That’s it.

Now, with Chrome, any website you visit that has an embedded video will display live captions. Unsurprisingly, the better the audio, the better the captioning.

Friends and colleagues,

I’m exploring offering Zoom-based Technology for Academics online workshops as a professional development opportunity. Each workshop would be limited to 10 to 15 participants, be no longer than 60 to 90 minutes including hands-on practice time, and would feature a tool especially useful to instructors.

For example, one workshop—Grading Hacks #1—would be an introduction to the text expander, Phrase Express. Using this tool to create keyboard shortcuts for long words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs that you use frequently will greatly reduce the time it takes you to reply to email and to mark student assignments. By the end of the workshop, you will have created several such shortcuts.

Grading Hacks #2 would cover clipboard managers. Between Phrase Express and a good clipboard manager, the time it takes you to score student assignments will be much less than the time it is taking you now. And the quality of your feedback will be better.

Inbox Zero: Getting There and Staying There would provide you with step-by-step instructions that will clear the thousands of messages out of your inbox by the end of the 60-minute workshop. And you will get to try out some strategies that will keep it that way.

For managing pdfs and citations, another workshop could feature Mendeley.

For tracking changes you would like to make to your courses, Trello and Inoreader work great together, so a workshop would get you set up with those.

If any of these workshops sound interesting to you—or if you have ideas for other workshops—please complete this 3-question form.

Thanks!

If you are not yet using a password manager, it’s time. It’s past time, actually. You are way overdue.

Protect yourself

There are three big things you can do to protect yourself online.

1. Use a different password for every website. If someone gets hold of your username and password for, say, gmail, the first thing they’ll do is try that username/password combination at more lucrative websites, such as bank websites. Having a unique password for each site guarantees they won’t be able to get into any of your other accounts.
2. Use a long password—at least 16 characters—that includes lowercase letters, capital letters, numbers, and special characters, like $@%&*. (Yes, I know that looks like I’m swearing. And I am. Because pandemic.) Enter different strings of characters here, to see how the number of characters changes password strength.
3. When a website has it available, use two-factor authentication. With two-factor authentication, to log into a particular website, you need something you know (factor one: your password) and something you have (factor two: such as your phone). After you enter your username/password on a given site, you’ll be prompted for that second factor, such as a number that was texted or emailed to you, or a number or approval from an authentication app on your phone.

“Hey, Sue, my web browser always asks me if it can save some new password I’ve entered. Is it okay to tell it yes?”

No. Saving passwords in your web browser is a bad idea.

If anyone gets into your computer, they’ll be able to access your browser—and have immediate access to every last one of your passwords.

Password manager features to look for

Unless your memory is way better than 99.99% of the population, there is no way for you to remember unique, 16-character passwords for every website you log into. If your memory is that good, email me. I know some memory researchers who would love to meet you.

If you’re like the rest of us, though, you need a password manager. A password manager securely stores your passwords.

In choosing a password manager, there are a few features you should look for.

• Ability to import the passwords from your browsers
• Two-factor authentication. All of your passwords will be stored here, so to be sure no one else can get in, you should have something other than just your password to access them.
• Ability to fill webforms. In your browser, you want your password manager to automatically enter the username and password. You shouldn’t have to type 16 random characters.
• Ability to securely store other information, like credit card information.
• Works across different devices—computer, phone, tablet—and across operating systems, for those of you who have both a Mac and a Windows PC.
• Password generator. Tell it how many characters you want (at least 16) and what kinds of characters you want, such as letters, numbers, and special characters, and it will generate the password and save it for you.
• Ability to share passwords with others. Even better, the ability to add people for emergency access. For example, my emergency contact can click a button in the password manager we both use, and I would have five days (time is customizable) to reply. If I don’t, because, say, I’m dead (!!!), my emergency contact would have access to all of my passwords.

Where to start

Personally, I use LastPass. Dashlane,
1Password, and BitWarden are all worth considering. Keeper is also worth a look, but some people find it less intuitive to use.

These are not the only kids on the password manager block, but they’re good options for anyone getting started. Take a look at the features of each, and pick one. Today. Do it today.

The clipboard manager I’m thinking about is not a manager who stands around holding a clipboard.

Your computer clipboard holds onto things you’ve copied, making them available for you to paste. Apps that manage this clipboard are called clipboard managers.

A little history

Historically, computer clipboards have not been very useful. The clipboard could hold one item. You would copy something, such as text or an image, and it was available for you to paste, until you copied something else. And then that first copied item would no longer be on your clipboard. From what I can suss out, this is how Macs still work, but I have an option for Mac users (and another option for Windows users) at the bottom of this email.

The new Windows clipboard manager

The new Windows clipboard manager will hold multiple things that you copied—up to 4MB of data. It’s hard to picture 4MB of data. For those of you who remember floppy disks*, the most common disk size was 1.44MB, so picture what could be held on 2.77 disks. If you don’t remember floppy disks, 4MBs would be the equivalent of two or three novels. If you’re copying images, it would be about two high resolution photos.

Windows calls this your “clipboard history.”

So, let’s get you access to your clipboard history.

On your keyboard, hit the Windows key and v. You’ll get this little pop-up. Click “Turn on.”

You are now good to go. Everything you copy will be available in your Windows clipboard history. To access it, click the spot in your document, email, etc. where you want to paste. Click Windows key + v. You’ll see a pop-up with the items you’ve copied with the most recent items at the top. Click on the item you want to paste.

Once the clipboard limit of 4MB has been exceeded, the items will start being deleted from the bottom of the list. If you want to delete an item now, click the 3-dots to the right of the item and select “Delete.” If you don’t ever want it to be deleted, select “Pin.” If you want to completely clear the clipboard, select “Clear all.”

This does not affect CTRL + v to paste. CTRL + v will still paste your most recently copied item.

If you try out this clipboard history, you’ll notice that it’s a little clunky to use. For example, there is no search function; the only way to find what you want to paste is to scroll. And scroll. And scroll.

Clipboard managers (for both Windows and Mac users)

There are a lot of third party programs… er, apps… that bring much more functionality to the clipboard. These are called “clipboard managers,” and that’s a fair term. They really do manage your clipboard. Or, rather, allow you to better manage your clipboard.

For Windows, I recommend Ditto (free). For Macs, I recommend Copyless 2 (free, but $6.99 for additional functionality). While I’ll be showing you Ditto, Copyless 2 works in a similar way.

When I use my keyboard shortcut to open Ditto, I have access to the last 2,000 items I’ve copied. The default is 500, but in Ditto’s “options,” I increased the limit. (Copyless 2 can handle up to 1,000 copies.)

When I use my Ditto keyboard shortcut, I get a pop-up that gives me access to my clipboard history. Below is my current Ditto pop-up. Items with a yellow sticky note icon are items that I’ve designated with a “sticky clip.” These are items that will remain at the top of my Ditto list until I remove the sticky setting. What I especially appreciate about Ditto is the live search. As I start typing in the “Search” box, Ditto will return all copied items that match what I type… as I type. It’s fast!

I have gold-starred some items. These are items that have been marked as “Never Auto Delete.” Ditto will not delete them until I remove the gold star, or until I manually delete them myself.  

Enough to get started?

Footnotes

* The floppy disk remains with us today as the “Save” icon in a lot of computer apps**. I found some 3.5″ floppy disks when I was cleaning out my office. I kept them. I also found zip disks, but I don’t think I kept those.

**In case you missed it, “programs” are no longer called “programs.” They’re now called “apps,” as in “applications.” “Apps” originally just referred to programs on mobile devices, but at some point the terminology made the jump to computers. I’m not completely on-board with that shift, but this is not the first time I’ve lagged behind an English language change. Nor, I am certain, will it be the last.

Zoom has two kind of updates: prompted and manual.

With the prompted updates, when you run Zoom on your computer, Zoom will give you a pop-up that says, “Hey! There’s a new version of Zoom. Download it.”

With the manual updates, Zoom doesn’t tell you that there’s a new version. You have to hear about it on the street. Or through a local tech newslettery-type publication, such as this one. The manual updates are for minor changes. Some of those minor changes bring useful features, so it’s usually worth doing the manual updates.

Which version of Zoom do I have?

Run Zoom on your computer. Click the gear icon in the top left corner, select Statistics. The version number will be at the bottom of that page.

The last prompted update from Zoom came on September 28^th. That gave us version 5.3.1. The most current Zoom version was released on December 21^st, giving us version 5.4.7.

What are some of these minor updates?

You can read them all here, if you’d like.

Here are some of my favorites (text copied from source).

• Enhanced nonverbal feedback and reactions:
  Nonverbal feedback options are moved to the Reactions button, and all reactions will be shown in the corner of the participants’ video. The host will see each participant’s reactions in the participant list, as well as the aggregate numbers of each reaction at the bottom of the list.
• Raise hand for host and co-host
  Hosts and co-hosts can utilize the raise hand feature along with meeting participants and webinar attendees.
• Poll reports available during live session 
  The meeting or webinar host will now have the option to download the full poll results when the poll has ended during the live session, rather than waiting until the meeting or webinar has ended. This will launch their browser and begin the download of the CSV poll report.
• Enhanced co-host privileges over Breakout Rooms
  Co-hosts have the same breakout room controls as the meeting host, such as starting or ending breakout rooms, assigning participants, etc.
• Move participants to main session from breakout room
  Hosts and co-hosts have the option to assign a participant back to the main session, rather than ending all breakout sessions.
• Share multiple programs at once 
  Users can select multiple desktop programs at once for sharing, instead of sharing their entire desktop. Other programs and unoccupied areas in the desktop will not be visible to the viewer. The sharer will always know which applications they are sharing by an extensible green border. Only the user employing this feature will need to be on version 5.4.3, viewers can be connected with older versions.
• Suspend participant activity 
  New option in the Security panel to immediately suspend all participant activities, which will mute all video and audio, stop screen sharing, end all breakout rooms, and pause recording.
• Pin chat messages 
  Users can pin a message in a channel, which is displayed at the top of the channel. Pins can be removed, replaced, or hidden. A log of pinned messages is accessible in the channel options panel.
• Virtual Background support for additional CPUs
  Virtual Backgrounds are now supported for i3 5th-gen and above, i5/i7/i9 3rd-gen and above, all including Y-series. These CPUs will support Virtual Backgrounds at 15fps and 360p.
• Scheduling with custom Join Before Host time limit 
  Users can schedule meetings with Join Before Host set to allow participants to join 5, 10, or 15 minutes before the scheduled start time.
• Search starred messages [in Chat]
  Users can search through their starred messages, or filter a search to only starred messages

I’m convinced. How do I do a manual download?

Visit this webpage. Click the first Download button (“Zoom Client for Meetings”). Open your computer’s Downloads folder, find “Zoominstaller.exe,” and launch the file.

That’s it. If you’d like, follow the instructions above to confirm that you now have the newest version, 5.4.7.