SMUS Tech Tips: September 2016

Wednesday 28 September 2016

Tech tip #25 Getting a high resolution digital copy of your school photo

Hello all,

We just noticed that you can get a high resolution digital copy of your current school photo (if you want it!) by following the link at the bottom of the sheet that has your photos on it. You have to go to http://download.edgeimaging.ca and enter the download code on your sheet. The links expire on November 18th…

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

Monday 26 September 2016

Tech Tip # 24 - saving/printing a Google doc with comments

If you need to print or save a copy of a Google doc with the comments visible, it is not yet possible to do that from within Google docs. However, there is a workaround that involves saving the document as Microsoft Word. This would be useful if you want to have a copy of student work with your comments saved as a reference.

This 2-minute video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNV28QckhQw outlines a simple sequence for doing this.

Thanks to Janice McCachen and George Floyd for sending in this tip!

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!

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

Mike Jackson, Science Teacher

Senior School Technology Coordinator

St Michaels University School, Victoria, BC

Friday 23 September 2016

Tech tip #23 - Acrobat(ics)

Dear Colleagues,

One of our colleagues suggested that I send out a tip about using Adobe Acrobat (please let me know if you have any questions/ideas/suggestions for tips!)

Adobe Acrobat has been a standard format for sharing documents in a consistent format for many years now. PDF is the format to use if you want anyone else to see your document the way you want it. Pretty much every device and computer can read .pdf files.

At SMUS we have the Adobe suite of products installed which includes Adobe Acrobat pro DC (by the way you can get a license to install this software at home for $9.75 US instead of $600! See SDS for details: https://sds.smus.ca/index.php?next_page=admin/mis/access_adobe_hup.php ). This means that not only can we read pdf format files and fill forms etc that we are sent, but we can also create, edit and otherwise modify pdf files. If you want to learn more about how to use Acrobat, I recommend following the “learn Adobe Acrobat pro DC” link in the program’s help menu or following the links on the “get started page” (there is a short video on how to edit pdfs there).

Amongst other features, the program will read documents out loud to you!

Most programs installed on our network allow you to print to PDF, which is a great way to make a document suitable for emailing or posting to your MOODLE or Google Classroom site.

If you have a pdf that you want to convert to Word, Exel, PowerPoint etc, it can also do that via the “File-Export to” menu.

You can also take multiple single-page or smaller pdf files and combine them into one document or conversely split a larger document into smaller ones, or single pages

There is also a tool that allows you to compare the contents of two pdf files to see what differences there are.

If you need help figuring any of this out, please don’t hesitate to contact one of the ed tech specialists on your campus.

Cheers

Mike

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

Science teacher, Technology Coordinator

St Michaels University School

Monday 19 September 2016

Tech tip #22 - last year's tech tips

I decided that the first tech tip of the year should be a table of contents of last year’s tips. Each tip is linked to the original article on http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca/

(I also added a table of contents list to the blog page)

Please let me know if you have a suggestion for a tip, or a question you would like answered.