Useful Tech Tips
Use a Post-it for useful reasons
Keyboards are magnets for dirt and grime, especially if you eat at your desk. If you don’t have any compressed air handy, clean out your keyboard with the sticky side of a Post-it note.
Run it through each row of your keys. You’ll be both surprised and disgusted to see all the junk it picks up. If dust piles up the corners, use a pair of tweezers to get it out.
Use your voice in Google Docs
Use Google Doc to do speech-to-text to dictate text messages? It’s free and it works surprisingly well.
Open a new document in Google Docs, then enable Voice Typing from the Tools menu. Then start dictating. Voice Typing recognizes commands like “comma,” “period,” and “new paragraph” as well.
Unsend an email
Did you just send out an email to everyone that was meant for one person? Well, Gmail has the ability to unsend an email by adjusting one setting prior to writing your email. Tap or click here for the exact steps.
This recall of a message will also allow you to modify spelling errors, incorrect recipients, subject line and even append forgotten attachments.
Be sure to adjust the setting to a higher number than the default setting of five seconds. Let’s face it; five seconds isn’t even enough to realize you made an error, let alone hit the unsend button. Thankfully, Gmail settings provide the option of pausing an email delivery up to 30 seconds.
Applied Digital Skills from Google - Google for Education!
Before you head out, Google is excited to share their Stay Connected Over Summer Break Collection. This collection features lessons like designing a digital scrapbook, journaling about your experiences, creating a website and much more. Whether students are in summer school or working independently, these lessons help your students continue learning new digital skills. Link to Applied Digital Skills website
Use This Handy List of Keyboard Shortcuts
Keyboard shortcuts have been around for decades, but many folks still don't use them. For instance, if you hold the CTRL and A buttons down together, you can select everything on a particular page. Want to go back in your web browser? Hold the ALT and Left Arrow. Shift and F7 together will get you a thesaurus lookup in Word. On the Mac side, most of the commands are possible with help from the Command key instead of CTRL.
Check out our list of the 20 Best Keyboard Shortcuts. And when you master those learn how to create your own shortcuts.
Find Stuff Quickly on Your PC Using Natural Language
Trying to find files tucked far away in folders across your Windows PC or Mac can be time-consuming. So, try using Windows Search/Cortana on Windows 10 or Spotlight/Siri on the Mac to find what you're looking for. Just type in your query. Before long, your PC or Mac will find what you need and you'll be off.
Cortana in Windows 10 and Spolight (or Siri, if you want to talk) are both smart enough to understand natural language searches. So, for example, you can say "show me photos from last week" or "PDFs from December."
New in Google Forms
Options for styling fonts and rich text formatting is now available in Google Forms, enabling you to customize and add emphasis with new fonts, font size, bolding, underlining, italicizing, hyperlinks, and lists.
