Zoom!

Intellimouse software zooming

A lot of students don’t like to admit that they can’t see the board.  Some don’t want to look dorky by wearing their glasses, while others just don’t care enough about seeing the board to bother.  Eventually you can figure out who is who and seat them accordingly (not to mention mandatory school vision testing).

On the board, you can also just write bigger (which is what most teachers learn to do, anyway), but what if you’re using a computer and projector?  Zoom the screen!  This is particularly useful when you want to show the class how to do something on the computer or just zoom in on a particular sentence on a website.

• On Windows, there is a built-in magnifier (under Programs -> Accessories -> Accessibility) which will work just fine, but I prefer to use the zoom feature of Microsoft’s free Intellipoint mouse software.  The latter acts more like an actual magnifying glass, and allows you to easily change the size and dimensions of the magnifier.
• On Macs, hold command-option-8 to activate the built-in magnifier, then command-option-+ and – to zoom in and out.  I haven’t actually tried this because I don’t use a Mac, but I’ve seen it and it looks pretty good.
• For any computer (including Windows and Mac), you can give the free & open-source program Virtual Magnifying Glass a try.

Do Everything Online

As we know, teachers are not the most highly-paid professionals.  So, getting stuff for free is good.  Teachers also don’t have a lot of time to install and try out every computer program they might need.  So, using stuff you don’t have to set up yourself is even better.  The good: Free programs have been around for a long time, and the Internet has made them easy to get.  The better: In the last few years, a lot of alternatives have been popping up online.  You don’t even have to install them, they run right from your web browser.  This means you can use these on school computers, where the installation of random programs is usually restricted (and you often have to go through a lot of red tape to get something you want installed).  You can also recommend these to students who otherwise would pirate software because they can’t afford it either.  Here are a few suggestions:

Instead of Photoshop

• Sumo Paint.  Sumo Paint looks almost exactly like Photoshop, and requires no sign-up.
• Photoshop Express.  Photoshop Express is also by Adobe, and offers all of the basic photo-fixing features that most users need, including 2Gb of free online storage.

Instead of Word, Excel, Powerpoint

• Google Docs has most of the basic features of Word, Powerpoint, and Excel, plus even more, including collaboration.  You can save your docs online, pull them up on any computer, and even publish them as web pages… all for free.  I’m planning on a whole post on Google Docs, but let’s just say it’s awesome for now and leave it at that.

Instead of Inspiration

• Mindmeister.  Mind mapping software Inspiration is awesome, but in addition to being free and install-less, these online versions have one big advantage: online collaboration.
• Mind42.  This is of course the answer to everything (42).

Instead of Adobe Premiere, FinalCut, Movie Maker, iMovie

• JayCut.  Believe it or not, you can even edit and create videos online.  JayCut has all the basics of full video editing.
• Animoto.  Animoto can turn a bunch of photos into a 30-second music video.  Its not a full video editor, but is a cool way to document a school event if you only have pictures.

Instead of a Thumbdrive

• SkyDrive.  Are you always e-mailing your files to yourself just so you can have a copy that you can access from anywhere?  There are now a lot of online storage alternatives.  Microsoft’s own Windows Live SkyDrive allows you to store 25Gb of you files, photos, and etc., online for free.  You can then access them from anywhere and even share them with others.  This is also great for students who don’t have thumbdrives.
• DropBox is super easy to use, but is limited to 2Gb online storage and has an installed utility (for Windows, Mac, and Linux).  I’ll describe DropBox in a future post because it’s just that good.

Instead of Paperbacks

• Project Gutenberg.   Many times in English class, you’re reading the classics, which have long since been out of copyright.  That means they are free, as in free speech.  Project Gutenberg and Google have also made these works free, as in free beer.  You can download electronic copies of Huckleberry Finn, Hamlet, the Odyssey, and many, many more.  Even if you don’t want to use these to replace physical novels for your students, it saves you the trouble of transcribing or scanning if you want to include a passage on a test or quiz.
• Google Book Search.  Similar to Project Gutenberg, but also allows online viewing directly in your web browser, and has the original scanned pages.

Instead of Textbooks

• Wikibooks, These may not really replace actual textbooks completely, but they do provide great supplemental references that are easily searchable.  You can link topics on a web page and assign it as homework reading, for example.  In addition, some publishers provide online-accessible versions of some of their out-of-print books; check the publisher’s website.
• Wikiversity.  Similar to WikiBooks, but presented in a different manner.

Easy Scheduling

You want to collaborate with your fellow teachers, but it’s sometimes a pain in the butt to coordinate a meeting time.  Or maybe you’re trying to decide on when to have that Spring Extravaganza.  Rather than sending 5000 emails back and forth between all of the participants to make the decision (Can everyone meet at this time? No? How about this time? etc.),  Doodle.com makes it easy.  It’s free, and there are no sign-ups.

1. Go to Doodle.com and create a poll for the meeting.
2. Email the poll link to the participants.
3. Participants click on the link, enter their names, and check off which days/times they are available.
4. You pick the best time.

I did this recently to schedule a collaboration meeting with the other Sophomore teachers, and it worked out very well.  As you can see, we picked May 1 for the meeting time.

Dealing with PDFs

The main advantage of PDF files is that they are pretty much universal: anyone can view them with Adobe’s Reader and they are very web-compatible.  Also, if you’re trying to cut down on paper usage (either to save space or money) electronic versions of files are a great alternative.  Here are two apps that I have found really useful from time to time:

PDFTK Builder

I use this program mostly in one of two scenarios:

1. I used the school’s scanner to scan some pages from a book into PDF, but the stupid scanner only lets me save one page at a time, leaving me with 5 different PDF files for 5 scanned pages.  I also often end up with upside-down pages because it was more convenient (quick) to scan in that orientation.
2. I have a PDF worksheet, and want to post it for the students, but it has extra pages that I want to exclude.

Enter, PDFTK Builder.  This simple, free Windows program will combine, split, rotate, collate, and password-protect PDF files.  Its PDF-alicious!  Download it from the PDFTK Builder Site.

CutePDF Writer

Cute PDF Writer installs as a printer on your computer, so you can convert anything that you can print into PDF.  Potential teacher uses:

• You have a Word document that you want to distribute on a shared drive, but you don’t want any of the students to be able to modify it.  Make it into a PDF!
• You have files for programs that are not common or free, but you still want to share the content with your students.
• You want to back-up your grades from Easy Grade Pro (or other grading program) but don’t want to have to keep stacks of printouts.
• A particular reference web page that you want the students to use is blocked from your school.  Print it into a PDF and post that instead.
• You filled out some online form for administrative purposes and need to keep a record.  Print it to PDF and keep the file.

You can download CutePDF Writer from FileHippo.  Alternatively, if you want an open-source app that does the same thing, there’s PDFCreator, which is more powerful but also less easy to use.

PDF Hammer

If you don’t want to install any software on your computer (or you have a Mac), you can use the web-based PDF Hammer.  It has fewer features than PDFTK Builder, but will do simple combine, merge, reorder, and delete, of pages within multiple PDF files and let you download the result.  The same company also has a PDFtoWord web utility that does exactly as its name implies (which is useful if you actually want to edit an existing PDF document).

Acrobat.com

Although it’s still in Beta, Adobe (the company that is behind the whole PDF format) has released its own web application for dealing with PDFs called Acrobat.com.  Currently, it doesn’t let you edit existing PDFs, but it will let you upload other files, store them on their server, convert them to pdf, and even share them with others.  You can also create your own PDF documents from scratch with their “Buzzwords” app.