Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Helpful Ideas and Tools


WordTalk

WordTalk is a free text-to-speech add-in developed for use with all versions of Microsoft Word (from Word 97 up to Word 2010). It will speak the text of the document and will highlight it as it goes. It contains a talking dictionary to help decide which word spelling is most appropriate. [Site] This is an excellent tool for those students who may have difficulty reading.
http://www.wordtalk.org.uk/Home/


Thesaurus tool in Microsoft Word

Here is a keyboard shortcut to access the thesaurus tool in Microsoft Word. Click or highlight a word and press Shift+F7. The thesaurus tool will now open on the side of your screen. 




How To Clear Your Browser Cache

No matter what platform you use to browse the Internet, in order to speed up future visits, your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc) remembers pieces of information about what sites you visit . This is called a browser cache. If your browser is not set to update itself automatically, you may experience problems seeing curent information or changes to a web page. This WikiHow article discusses the methods required for the most popular browsers on how best to clear the browser cache.


In The News:
Cyber Bullying
The issue of bullying has been thrust back into the spotlight by Port Coquitlam, B.C., teen Amanda Todd who took her own life Wednesday, weeks after posting a YouTube video...
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/10/12/bullying-prevention-funding.html

What can parents do to stop Cyber Bullying?

For a week in the spring of 2012, CBC-TV's Connect with Mark Kelley set up a video booth in a school in Gatineau, Que. More than 150 students...
read more in this story here:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/interactives/bullyproof/