Weekly tech tip #9 - checking the SMUS SDS schedule/calendar

If you want to know what the official schedule is for a day, the best place to look is on SDS.

If you go to Staff Menu –Calendar – SMUS calendar and then click on the day of the month number (blue) (eg 11, 22 etc), it will show the events for that day and any timetable changes.

On a calendaring them, if you have an announcement (or event/resource booking) in the system, you can easily edit your announcement via Staff Menu – Calendar – Manage my calendar items

And lastly, the Academic schedule (Senior school only?)  item in the SDS calendar menu (https://sds.smus.ca/index.php?next_page=event/academic_schedule.php) shows you what is happening in these categories:

Blackouts & Schedule changes

General

Academic

Arts & Athletics

Chapel, HR & Assembly

Duties

And by the way, sunsets are now getting later! The earliest sunset was on Dec 11^th! If you want to know more about why the earliest sunset is not on the solstice (shortest day) have a look at: http://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/equation-of-time.html. You can see al the key “times” for Victoria here: http://www.timeanddate.com/sun/canada/victoria. Sunrise starts getting earlier around New Year’s eve, just in time for us to come back to school!

These tips are now being archived at the following location in a blog format: http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca

Also, please let me know if you have any tips you would like to share!

Michael Jackson, Academic Technology Coordinator

St Michaels University School

Weekly tech tip #8 - releasing papercut print jobs - options

If you want to release a print job at any of the papercut printers on your campus, you can do so using your “student card”. However, there are a couple of other options also available:

<![if !supportLists]>1)      <![endif]>Download a barcode app. Many of us are using “Stocard” which is available for iOS and Android phones.

<![if !supportLists]>2)      <![endif]>Print out your barcode and keep it in a useful place (like your box in the workroom!). You can do that by going to the following page in SDS: https://sds.smus.ca/index.php?next_page=printing/papercut_barcode.php (found by going: Staff Menu-Teachers-My barcode) and printing the page that results.

By the way, these tips are now being archived at the following location in a blog format: http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca

Also, please let me know if you have any tips you would like to share!

PS, I think I missed a week! J

Weekly Tech tip #7 - searching when there is no search bar

Quite often I find that I need to search a document or page for something and there is no search bar visible. Whether there is a search bar or not, you can always use CTRL-F (control-find). This is particularly useful if you want to search a web page for a word that you think is somewhere on the page.

There are many other CTRL key commands that can be handy such as CTRL-P for print, CTRL-S for save etc. You can find a list from Microsoft here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/126449 and an even more complete list of keyboard shortcuts on Wikipedia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_keyboard_shortcuts

By the way, these tips are now being archived at the following location in a blog format: http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca

Also, please let me know if you have any tips you would like to share!

Weekly tech tip #6 - Logging in and out of Chrome

This is tech tip #6 in a series that was originally started for the Senior School. I am now sending them out schoolwide in the hopes that they may be of use. For previous tips, see the blog link below.

One of the useful features of the Google Chrome browser is that you can “log into it” and then share favourites, apps, extensions and more between computers/devices.

One problem with this, however, is that many of us have a personal Google account as well as our SMUS one. For example, I have both mhjackson123@gmail.com and michael.jackson@smus.ca as google addresses. If someone shares a document with my SMUS address, this does not get shared to my non-SMUS one and vice versa.

If someone sends you a shared document and you are unable to access it, the chances are that you are logged in with the wrong account.

To change which account is signed into Chrome, you can follow the instructions here: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/165139?hl=en

By the way, these tips are now being archived at the following location in a blog format: http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca/ - let me know if this is of any use.

Weekly tech tip #5 - my google drive does not work properly

Many of us are using Google docs for ourselves and/or with our classes and a common problem has been “Google docs is not working for me”. The majority of these instances have been when a user is using Internet Explorer. Google docs do not work with Internet Explorer. We recommend using Chrome (or Firefox) but not Internet Explorer.

And, if you are having trouble logging in to Google, your password may  not be synchronized. The solution is to change your password. The process of changing your password will result in your SMUS password being synchronized with Google.

And if you missed last week’s special tech support video, here it is again “My Blackberry Is Not Working!”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAG39jKi0lI

Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Please also let me know if you have any suggested topics for future tips.

(please note that I am now sending these tips out to all faculty and am working on a location to archive the various tips)

Cheers

Mike

Weekly tech tip #4: my shortcut doesn't work any more

Many of us create shortcuts to programs on our desktops and occasionally these will stop working. The most likely reason for this is that the original program has been updated and is no longer in the original location. As a result the shortcut points to a file that is no longer there…

Items on your desktop are “yours” which means that the IT folks have no control of where your shortcuts point. To fix this you should delete your old shortcut and then copy a new one from the SMUS Network Menu.

On a related note, if you are in the habit of saving files to your desktop, this could cause your log in times to slow down dramatically since your desktop gets copied over when you log in. Please save files into your H: drive

For some lighter tech support information, check out “My Blackberry Is Not Working!”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAG39jKi0lI

cheers

Mike

Weekly tech tip #3: Copy/Cut/Paste - CTRL-C/X/P

There are many ways to copy and paste on a computer. You can select the content you want to copy and then right-click and choose cut or copy and then move to were you want to paste and then right-click and choose paste. You can also select the content and then use the  edit menu.

Probably the quickest way is to use the Control (CTRL) keyboard commands after selecting your content. CTRL-C to copy or CTRL-X to cut and then CTRL-V to paste.

On a related note, to select content you can also use the keyboard. Holding the Shift key down while moving the arrow keys will select an area of text. Double-clicking on a word will select the word. Triple clicking will select the paragraph.

Holding the Shift key while selecting will allow you to select a range of items from the first place clicked to the last. Holding the CTRL key down while clicking on a list will allow you to select multiple individual items.

If you want to explore more ways to copy/paste check out: http://www.wikihow.com/Copy-and-Paste

8 Ways to Copy and Paste - wikiHow How to Copy and Paste. The Copy and Paste functions are some of the most important fundamentals to master for manipulating objects on a computer. Once these skills ... Read more...

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask! If you have any suggestions for future tips, please let me know.

cheers

Mike

Weekly tech tip #2: My classroom screen is black/blank

If you come to a computer and find that the screen is blank (or not showing your desktop), the chances are that you have a projector connected to that computer and the projector has become the "main screen" and the desktop screen has been "lost" or "extended".

To fix this, 

1) turn on the projector so that you can see the other screen.

2) once you can see the screen, use the Windows-P keys to bring up the projector dialog box:

 and make sure that "duplicate" is selected. You should then get your screen back.

A related thing to note is that when people present PowerPoint presentations, PowerPoint will change your set up to "Extend", but will not change it back afterwards! This means that you will have to do "windows-P" afterwards to go back to "duplicate". Also, if you want to hide what you are doing on the screen from being projected, you can use "windows-P" and choose "computer only". To show the screen again, change to "duplicate"

If you are getting a black screen repeatedly, then please send a message to help@smus.ca and ask to have your primary display set properly.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask! If you have any suggestions for future tips, please let me know.

cheers

Mike

Michael Jackson, Academic Technology Coordinator

St Michaels University School

Weekly tech tip #1: If Chrome won't start for you

This is the first in what will hopefully be a weekly series of technology-related tips that specifically relate to technology used at SMUS.

Many of you may have encountered a situation where you try to open up Chrome on a computer and it won’t start. This happens because Chrome will only allow one “instance” to run at a time on the network and you have Chrome open on another computer (perhaps your office). The same also applies to Firefox and some other programs.

You should if possible avoid being logged into more than one computer at a time. Logging into multiple computers CAN result in “black desktop syndrome” and corruption of your user profile.

The short-term solution to this problem depends on how far away the other computer is. If it is close by, you may want to just go and close Chrome on the other machine. If it is not close by, or you do not wish to close the browser in your office, your best work around is to open a different browser such as Firefox or Internet Explorer (both of which are available on all SMUS computers).

By the way, Internet Explorer does not work well with Google Docs. We recommend that you use Chrome or Firefox for accessing Google Docs.

If you have any suggestions for future tech tip topics, please feel free to email them to me!

-------------------------

Mike Jackson, Science Teacher

Academic Technology Coordinator

St Michaels University School, Victoria, BC