Tech Tips 13

 

 

Email “List-Servers” Teachers Can Join

Are you on email lists for professional organizations in the subjects you teach? I find these lists to be very helpful for hearing ideas from others, and posting an occasional question I need help with. Teachers all over the country participate. If you’ve never tried it before, and would like to, one place to start is: http://www.classroom.com/community/email/

You can choose from several lists that this organization sponsors. If you belong to professional organizations, visit their web sites to find their email list-servs, or let me know, and I’ll find them for you.

 

 

The Gateway to Educational Materials

http://www.thegateway.org/

Sponsored by the Department of Education. Basically, it lets you search for a particular topic you are teaching. The results are pretty good.

“The Gateway to Educational MaterialsSM is a Consortium effort to provide educators with quick and easy access to thousands of educational resources found on various federal, state, university, non-profit, and commercial Internet sites.”

 

 

Print Examples of All Your Fonts

This is a tip for Power-Users

Ever wish you had a quick reference sheet for all those fonts you feel you simply have to have in your system? Launch Microsoft Word then choose Tools > Macro > Visual Basic Editor.  That opens the Visual Basic Editor window. Now choose Tools > Macro… Type a name for your macro (e.g. “ListFonts”) and click the ‘Create’ button.  Then copy the following script and paste it into the window for your new macro (delete all existing script: e.g. ‘Sub ListFonts -End Sub’ when you paste this script into that window):

Sub ListFonts()
'Speeds macro processing and suppresses display.
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Documents.Add Template:="normal"
For Each aFont In PortraitFontNames
With Selection
.Font.Bold = True
.Font.Underline = True
.Font.Name = "times new roman"
.TypeText aFont
.InsertParagraphAfter
.MoveDown unit:=wdParagraph, Count:=1, Extend:=wdMove
.Font.Bold = False
.Font.Underline = False
.Font.Name = aFont
.TypeText "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"
.InsertParagraphAfter
.MoveDown unit:=wdParagraph, Count:=1, Extend:=wdMove
.TypeText "0123456789?$%&()[]*_-=+/<>"
.InsertParagraphAfter
.InsertParagraphAfter
.MoveDown unit:=wdParagraph, Count:=1, Extend:=wdMove
End With
Next aFont
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

After you've pasted in this script, choose File > Close And Return To Microsoft Word. Then choose Tools > Macro > Macros. Find your macro (you may need to change which set of Macros you’re viewing), find the Macro named “ListFonts” and run it. When you do, Word takes a few moments to run the script, leaving you with a nicely formatted example of all of your fonts.  You can print it out, or save it. You can format your document with two columns to save some space. If you want to see an example of my list, it’s online at: http://library.norwoodschool.org/pix2/font.htm
Of course, when viewing a web page, you only see fonts properly if you also have that particular font installed, so some of the fonts you see on my page, will probably appear on your screen with a substituted font set. If you're looking for a font, Norwood has a collection of fonts in the faculty SharedDocuments.

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