Replace these every slider sentences with your featured post descriptions.Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these with your own descriptions.
Replace these every slider sentences with your featured post descriptions.Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these with your own descriptions.
Replace these every slider sentences with your featured post descriptions.Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these with your own descriptions.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2008/01/30/s1b_skscience_0130.html?imw=Y
That article was mentioned in today's ASCD Brief. It talks about one school that is scrapping fully seven weeks of the usual science study to focus on reviewing for the FCAT test. How sad is that?
As the one administrator says, it's not what they WANT to do but that test is their reality. Score low on that test and it costs you money - and a WHOLE lot of time for a whole lot of people.
I mentioned this to some teachers yesterday when referring to our state's 21st Century Teaching and Learning program which is part of the Classrooms for the Future program. Bottom line - if it comes down to teaching content while honing collaboration skills, or creative expression, or authentic assessments, etc - all at the expense of NCLB considerations, then it's no contest. The NCLB HAS to win. It IS their reality - much as we might disagree with it.
But, it ISN'T a mutually exclusive proposition. One can still teach the content while using current tools and teaching collaboration and teamwork, etc. And, I think that it might be good for us to remember the line from Daniel Pink's "A Whole New Mind" which says, "When facts become so widely available and instantly accessible, they become less valuable." The reason is, of course, that ANYBODY with an internet connection can locate and recite those facts. What does THAT mean to anyone? Will Richardson and others have spoken about this before, too. Why teach the state capitals when the students could find those using their cell phone browsers? It's the valuable person who can make the connections between those capitals and their history and who can then tell why the state may always vote a particular way, or what role geography played in the decision to put the capital there, etc. Yet, until we find a way to test that, we'll test the student's ability to recall our facts. It's just the way it is, I suppose.
So, while we can all stand by and condemn that school for its decision to scrap the new content in favor of reviewing for the test, we all know WHY they're doing that. Let's just hope that they are also spending the time and resources to train their staff on how to COMBINE the teaching of the facts with the ability to use the tools which will get them a LOT farther along in their life's goals than the recollection of those facts will.
What do you think?
Just read this in Robin Martin's blog: http://cfpmsram.blogspot.com/2008/01/new-widget-shelfari.html
Shelfari. Look at her sample on the left margin when you scroll down the page. This is something that you should send to your favorite English teacher or librarian. You can post a virtual bookshelf on which you show the book covers of the latest books you're reading, or those you are recommending to others. What a cool tool!
Want to know more about blogging? This workshop may be for you. Starting tomorrow (Feb 1), this course: http://www.atomiclearning.com/blogging will be offered FREE for the Month of February.
There are over 100 short movies in that course, ranging from some basics, to setting your options, and much more. It focuses on the blog tool at Blogger. The movies appear to average about a minute and a half in length each, so they’re easy to digest.
If you’re new to blogging, spend some time here. MANY of your questions will be answered right up front.
tasks and if an idea or an action items comes into my mind I can quickly open GyroQ and add the idea to the queue without breaking my stride. GyroQ has a number of built in tags that lets you categorize your entry as you quickly type it in. Some of the tags included are: Idea, Information with Clipboard, Action Item, I Owe, and I'm Waiting for. When using GyroQ you simply press the Control-Q to bring up the GyroQ window, select your tag and then press enter. Now you can return to your work and not be distracted by looking for just the right MindManager map to place the information into. At the end of the day you simply open up your GyroQ Daily Capture Map and click on Send Queue and all of your ideas, actions and entries are automatically consolidated and added to your mind map. GyroQ is a wonderful addition to MindManager and its power is in the simplicity of the application. You can download a trial version of GyroQ at the Gyronix website.
Posted in: Keyboard shortcut
I just heard this story and I'm hoping that by the telling it will lower my blood pressure a bit.
A group of middle school teachers got together to create a cross curricular lesson. Each one would appoint a scribe for the day who would post information to a google map. The basis was that kids were going to "Walk to California" for wellness. They would do laps around the track, adding up the miles they walked and then plotting it on a google map where they stopped at each day. Other areas of the curriculum were involved, as well. Geography. Social Studies. Foreign language. It was going to be all the 6th, 7th and 8th graders building this project. Teachers were primed and ready to go.
In steps the tech director who says, "What if someone posts something inappropriate on there - and other kids see it? It's on YOUR web page!"
Full stop! End of idea.
A couple teachers wanted to go ahead with it, offering some suggestions on how to deal with that possibility. No go. It died a quick death.
By the way, that person who raised this fear factor is NOT an educator and never WAS.
Did you hear me screaming?
http://producten.hema.nl/
Make sure your speakers are on (and turned down a bit) when you go here. You'll laugh out loud at it.
Many thanks to Ken Pruitt for sharing this with me just now on Skype.
This won't raise any test scores - just the corners of your mouth.
For those of you that read Jonathan Sapir's Blog, MindMapping 2.0 today he announced in a post that he has been working closely with BOSSdev in bringing Spinscape, a mindmapping 2.0 product to market. This is a description that I found on the Spinscape Blog about the product.Spinscape™ is a collaboration tool that introduces a completely new way of gathering and managing information. This tool provides a compelling solution to the problem of finding, visualizing, organizing, and sharing information by enabling individuals to collaborate and navigate over the web.
With an easy-to-use interface, users have the ability to auto-discover information from multiple digital sources, create meaningful relationships between nodes of information, and then securely share and collaborate over those nodes with selected users.
Spinscape is in private beta at this time but if you are interested in an invitation to the beta, please send an email at jasapir@gmail.com.
I received this email today from CS Odessa about some new features in ConceptDraw MINDMAP 5.3 that I thought would be of interest to you. You can upgrade your copy of ConceptDraw MINDMAP 5.X for free at the Odessa website.CS Odessa’s ConceptDraw MINDMAP 5.3 Creates Visual eBooks
Odessa, Ukraine, January 29, 2008 – CS Odessa today announces the release of ConceptDraw MINDMAP 5.3, a new version of CS Odessa’s mind mapping business productivity software. The 5.3 update adds a new unique capability of creating visual eBooks based on mind maps and several other important additions.
Visual eBook is an electronic book where all the information is presented as a mind map rather than text paragraphs. Each page of a Visual eBook is a mind map that is grouped by chapters and paragraphs like in a text book. Visual eBook is a great solution for preparing learning materials within academic and business environments.
ConceptDraw MINDMAP 5.3 has everything that users need to create Visual eBooks. The software features a comprehensive visual mapping toolset that gives customers the ability to create multi-page maps with hyperlinks to other mind maps as well as a PDF export that creates multi-page documents and preserves all of the links between maps and topics. Visual eBook creation guide can be found at
http://www.conceptdraw.com/pg?id=mm_5.3_press-ebook
Yury Varbanets, Product Manager of ConceptDraw MINDMAP notes, “The ability to easily make multi-page PDF documents from the mind maps with all the hyperlinks and interrelationships preserved is essential for many coaches and educators. We’ve developed ConceptDraw MINDMAP 5.3 to help to convey information in a format that is easy to learn from by creating a visual book.”
There were other additions introduced in ConceptDraw MINDMAP 5.3. These are the ability to send a map via email from inside the application and the option to turn off the background from printing. Map style presets were also redesigned and now they look more professional. All the enhancements can be found in both the Macintosh and the Windows versions of the software.
ConceptDraw MINDMAP 5 is an easy-to-use tool that supports mind mapping and brainstorming techniques, as well as many other personal productivity methodologies. It is supposed to provide businesses and individuals with creative way to increase the efficiency and productivity when organizing ideas and projects, or when communicating with people.
More information about the ConceptDraw MINDMAP 5 can be found at:
http://www.conceptdraw.com/pg?id=mm_5.3_press-about
The update to ConceptDraw MIDNMAP 5.3 is free for all registered users of ConceptDraw MIDNMAP 5.x. ConceptDraw MINDMAP 5 is available at the price of $199 USD for the Professional edition and of $119 USD for Personal edition at:
http://www.conceptdraw.com/pg?id=mm_5.3_press-buy
Posted in: become a computer consultant
For those of us who are moving toward more collaborative tools on the Internet then you should take a look at Buzzword, a collaborative word processor from Adobe. I had a post earlier last year about the features and my first impressions but now it looks like with the support of Adobe that it is really becoming a unique product to take a look at. Once you are in the Buzzword environment you will find that the application is both fast and very visually attractive. I just received and email today about some feature enhancements which I thought you would be interested in knowing about.New features in Buzzword Preview 7
Remember to clear your browser cache
before you try out the new version. If you would like instructions on clearing
your cache, go to: http://about.buzzword.com/support/emptycache.html
Colors in Tables
You can now add color to tables in
Buzzword - the background color can be set cell-by-cell or for the entire table.
You can create the look you want using both border colors and table cell colors
to enhance the contents.
Text Highlighter
Highlighting
text is one of the new features many of you have requested. Select the highlight
color from the font menu - for any color in our palette. It's a useful way to
draw attention to words, phrases or sections either for you, for others
co-authoring or reviewing a document.
User Information on Shared
Documents
When you're sharing documents, it's sometimes important to
know who has opened the document, which version they read, and so on. You can
now find that information by hovering over each user icon on the collaborator
bar. The new information tells you whether the person has opened the document
and, if so, whether he/she opened the current document or an earlier version. If
you want to send out a quick reminder, copy the document URL and email or IM
your team to remind them to read the document or review changes.
Sharing Invitation Links
Sometimes email inviting
colleagues to share a document can be delayed, or even worse, caught in a spam
filter. There is now a quick, direct way to invite people who are new to your
sharing list. On the collaborator bar, you'll see the option to copy the link
when you hover over the user's icon. Once you've shared a document, any new
documents you share appear in their Document Organizers automatically.
More Import and Export File Formats
Great news -
Buzzword now imports and exports .docx file formats for Microsoft Word 2007.
We've also added import/export plain text (txt), and export to HTML so that you
can use Buzzword to create documents that can be used with Wikis, web pages and
other applications.
Some Small Features and Tune Ups We Hope
You'll Like
Buzzword is a work in progress. We've made a number of
improvements based on user feedback. For example, the Font menu shows a sample
of the font; we've added strike-through; and Buzzword remembers the sort order
in the Document Organizer from the last time you used Buzzword.
And, there's a very cool new list type - check boxes. The list
gives you empty check boxes when you first create the list. You can check things
off just by clicking on the check box!
And, please, keep the
feedback coming!
We're very interested in your feedback - not just the
good news, but also any areas you think we need to improve. Please let us know
what you think! (http://forum.buzzword.com or feedback@buzzword.com.)
The Buzzword Team
Posted in: Jargon
I just read about this in Vicki Davis' blog (http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com) in reference to some live blogging being done at EduCon this weekend.
http://www.coveritlive.com/#
This tool lets you embed your live blogging right into your own blog page, and the result is there to be watched live or replayed later. Embed polls, videos, images, links on the fly.
This is a cool tool for a couple of reasons. For those of you who are lucky enough to allow your students to have a blog, think what this would do for your literary circle lessons. Think of how this tool can turn your students into "on-their-toes" thinkers. Imagine a mob of bloggers at a conference (like PETE&C??) informing the world of the great sessions they're seeing.
VERY COOL!
P.S.
My bet is that this will become a VERY popular tool. Live blogging has been a popular pastime of MANY bloggers. It's now become easier. This is taking us one step closer to documenting everything!
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/209
How's this for a teaser: The speaker, Bill Strickland, has Herbie Hancock playing a little piano accompaniment to his speech. Want more? Bill tells his story about growing up in one of the worst sections of Pittsburgh, PA. He was befriended by his art teacher who got him into college. Now he's building centers in those same poor neighborhoods that inspire and bring hope to the same kinds of kids that he once was.
Watch this video.
MANY thanks to Alma Row (no E) for sharing these. I laughed out loud with both of them.
Supertimer is great for when you’re giving your class a fixed amount of time to complete a task. Sure you can have a bell on a timer, but Supertimer is too much fun. Set the time, select the kind of music you want, and click start. The music plays while a balloon inflates closer and closer towards an awaiting push pin. When the time is up they make contact and POW! Time’s up. What fun! Bookmark this one to keep it handy.
Blabberize lets you upload a picture, say of a pig, highlight the lower lip and jaw, then record your message. When it plays back the jaw moves with the words. Watch the demo. Am I just punchy tonight or is that funny? (I’m willing to accept either answer to that question) The only problem is that you must adjust your microphone carefully, since louder sounds make the jaw move a greater distance. With my voice the jaw was dropping off the bottom of the image. But, it’s hysterical. Just takes some practice. Oh, and you can embed your message into your web page, too.
Posted in: Key Board Shortcuts
I have to tell you about the experience I just had yesterday afternoon as I "live blogged" with Anne Smith's 5th period class of 9th graders. It was outstanding!
Her 9th graders, as well as fellow English teacher Maura Moritz’s classes, are reading, "A Whole New Mind." Yes, THAT one. Not exactly on the top of a 9th grader's reading list, is it? But they did just fine. Today we discussed the Story chapter. Oh, and before I forget, they even managed to get Daniel Pink himself to pay a virtual visit to the class to discuss the book. Can you say “MAJOR COUP?”
A few weeks ago, their Technology Coordinator, Karl Fisch, sent out emails to folks he thought might be interested in in participating in this experiment. He described the project and our potential roles in it. I jumped at the chance (in my mind, at least, as I had neglected to confirm it with him, but I was still able to participate. Whew!). When you see the posts you will, I’m sure, recognize many of the names of those who participated. I was in the room with Dan Maas and Christian Long. We were to join via the mebeam.com site, one I'd not heard of before. In my session, since I was the only one with a camera (built-in isight camera in my macbook), I was the only one that the kids could see. I could both see and hear their class, however. The connection was choppy at times, but really quite acceptable.
The class was a live literary circle, with a moderator who began with the questions. They were the inner circle. As they responded with their feelings of what this story chapter was about, the outer circle posted their thoughts to each other and to the outsiders via the comment feature in Anne's blog. We had the comment window opened to full screen to make it a little easier. We would post a comment, then refresh the screen to see what others had typed. We'd respond to those folks, often using the @mattw convention found in twitter.
I was very impressed with the willingness of the kids to talk about this chapter. Sure, maybe sometimes they were missing the point, but they are 15 yrs old and I’m sure they were feeling the pressure of the camera and live audience. They would soon come back to the focus of the book. (As you would expect in ANY class, yes?) The blog discussions were a different story, I think. I think we had a very good discussion. Overall, the willingness of the class to speak freely and candidly and intelligently about this topic was impressive. Here’s some of the exchange:
Me: I like this comment from the book, "when facts become so widely available and instantly accessible, each one becomes less valuable.
Do you agree with that? Cite an example?
Macm: Mr Gates-
I do agree that rarity increases the value of items. It's the basic theory of supply and demand. But with ideas and facts the case could be different. Perhaps having a bunch of facts that coincide are more valuable and certifiable than a single fact on a subject. I think that when you put them together they increase each other's value.
Morgant: Mr. Gates- I definitely like that quote. It jumped out at me when I was reading. It is very true. I don't know if I can cite an example, but I can try to bring real life into it. If someone finds out a fact, say about a celebrity, and nobody else knows about it, then that is a valuable fact. But, if someone knows a fact about a celebrity, and everyone knows it, that's old news. Everybody knows about it, so it is not as valuable.
Me: @macm - but the point is, everyone has access to the facts, so the person who stands out will the one who can put it together, right?
Macm: Mr Gates-
Exactly. And to relate it back to the book I believe that putting together facts and seeing the big picture is a strength of the right brain.
Morganw: @
While knowing facts straight facts becomes considerably less important, or well-to-do, with the increase of technology I believe that the facts themselves become much more important because everyone has access to them. We tend to over-look them. Just because we have more facts out there doesn't mean we don't need them. But with this comes the problem of knowing the facts. That’s where twenty-first century learning comes into play. We need to incorporate story, play, meaning, design, empathy, and symphony into our learning so we can remember and apply all that we have learned.
An example of this would be problem-solving. You cannot teach problem-solving, but in order to problem-solve you need a background of facts and knowledge to work from.
Melissaz: Jim- I think these 2 quotes from the book can support that idea.
" Story represents a pathway to understanding that doesn't run through the left side of the brain."(115)
"...what stories can provide-context enriched by emotion, a deeper understanding of how we fit in and why it matters." (115)
These quotes I see show how stories have more value than a plain fact. Stories add other aspects that facts can't supply. Also,
"Story is high concept because it sharpens our understanding of one thing by showing ot on the contex of something else."
If one can take the facts and add a story, it shows an even higher level of understanding to be able to apply it to another aspect.
Me: Try this: How does THIS NOTICE from NASA apply to the idea of stories?
Christian Long (adult blogging): @melissaz: When you speak to Dan Pink, ask him about the combination of right and left-brained skills/senses...rather than a left vs. right decision. My gut tells me (as well as having read the book several times) that Dan is in favo of an 'and/and' choice where we are 'response-able' to use both/either sets of senses to respond when we need to any situation in the future. I like your "need each other" point very much.
Morganw: @Jim- I agree with you, the creative person would get my vote to be hired, but his creativity would have been a waste had he not already known the 50 states. What I mean is, facts do not become obsolete, they merely take a step back to creativity.
Dan (adult blogger): @Alexf
You got it! Your GPA, your test scores, your transcript gets you the interview (the left-brain piece still matters, as Dan Pink suggests), but it is the story you tell in the interview that gets you the job, the scholarship, the college entrance...
Here's another thought to trip your noodle. The interview questions are not terribly important. I see them as openings for you to tell your story and why you are the best choice...
Me: @macm - Did you catch this line: "Creativity. Ambition. Teamwork. A sense of daring. And a probing mind. That's what it takes to join NASA,..."
Macm: Mr Gates-
I did actually. That was the line which was the most surprising, because to me, jobs in NASA are left-brained. Although, if you have read the book Deception Point by Dan Brown, there is much more to NASA than meets the eye. Is it a good thing that they want to hire people with creativity and ambition instead of those with expertise? This could mean the loss of important discoveries or the loss of lives.
This is really cherry picking from the comments, but isn’t it an interesting exchange? The actual list is a bit harder to read as you must scroll to find the original posts, sometimes. But, after all the sifting is done, are you as impressed as I was with the conversation? Check this out for yourself. Here is Anne’s blog: http://smith9h0708.blogspot.com/2008/01/awnm-story-period-5.html You can see all the sessions with Anne's classes so far here: http://smith9h0708.blogspot.com/ Read the comments, of course. That's where it all happened. Here is Maura’s blog: http://moritzhonors0708.blogspot.com/ Check out the names of the folks who participated in this.
What did I learn from this? First, I didn’t do a good job following the conversations of the other two adults in the “room.” I was too concerned about trying to follow the students and being able to reply back to them quickly so that my conversation wasn’t lost in the shuffle. I really wish I could have responded to some of the things that THEY had said. I missed as much if not more of the conversation that I picked up.
Second, I would like to know if Anne and Maura will go back through the comments to find some of the good points that the kids had made and bring them back to the whole group when they debrief the event.
Third: the technology for showing the live broadcast is GREAT to have!
Want to hear what some of the others had to say about their experience? Here are some of the other links:
http://drapestakes.blogspot.com/2008/01/live-blogging-pink-fisch-style.html
http://123elearning.blogspot.com/2008/01/world-is-fishbowlcome-on-in.html
http://edutrails.edublogs.org/
You bet! Check it out. I, of course, learned about it from my blogs. http://123elearning.blogspot.com/2008/01/and-now-for-something-completely.html
Want to see more, check out: http://vegetableorchestra.org and explore.
What? You say you can’t read blogs in school? Question: How much longer do you think this should go on? Isn’t it time we get past this misplaced fear?
I have already mentioned Real Alternative, which enables you to play RealMedia files without installing RealPlayer, in a previous post, and in a recent post I drew attention to the slim image editor Paint.net; although, you may have install Microsoft's .Net Framework, which is quite bloated too.
Posted in: Freeware
http://www.twentyfortech.com/?p=7
Many of you read Dave Solon's blog, the k12geek (http://k12geek.com/blog). Dave is a teacher in PA and a GTO (Getting To One) mentor. Well, he has begun a weekly podcast called Twenty For Tech. Twenty minute podcasts - short enough that you can listen to them on the way to work.
This week I had the pleasure to talk with Dave for his podcast. I was pleased with how it turned out. Usually when the mic turns on my brain turns to silly putty (look it up) but I didn't stammer too much this time. :-)
Check out his podcast for a few weeks. I think it's going to be a good one.
Powered by ScribeFire.
Today Inspiration, Inc. announced that Kidspiration 3 will be released on February 6th. Kidspiration 3 adds lot of new features which really make this a very substantial upgrade. Kidspiration 3 will now allow students to use the expanded Symbol Library with over 3000 pictures as well as searching the symbol library for pictures when connected to the web. Kidspiration 3 now included Word Guide which is an online dictionary and thesaurus which is great for language development. Kidspiration 3 now includes an extensive visual math tools which makes it an ideal tool for interactive white boards. Teachers will have access to color tiles, pattern blocks, base ten blocks, fraction tiles and fraction boxes. Once I have had a chance to use Kidspiration 3, I will give my thoughts
I LOVE my network of friends. Just hint that you're not sure of something and someone helps you out. Wonderful.
So, when Alma Rowe read my post about flying through Google Earth she sent me this link to a page that will give YOU the controls to fly through Google Earth. http://earth.google.com/intl/en/userguide/v4/flightsim/index.html
Alma is also doing a PETE&C pre-conference workshop on Google Earth. If you're going to the conference, she's a pre-conference you may want to check into.
I stumbled upon this today while looking for something else. What a find. Perhaps the English teachers already know this one, but I'm guessing not ALL of them do.
http://www.writersdigest.com/writingprompts.asp
The Writers Digest site puts out a weekly writing prompt on that page. They're very good, too, as you might expect. I don't know that I should republish any one of them here, but I CAN HIGHLY RECOMMEND that you go to check them out.
I LOVE the one for January 15th. A mysterious text messager. How would YOU handle that situation? Check it out.
http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2008/01/musicians_in_google_earth.html
The gearthblog is fantastic for learning about the great work being done in Google Earth. This article talks about a project that is working to plot the birthplaces of the world's most famous musicians. It's well under way and this should be one that music teachers around the world will want to watch.
Pass this along to YOUR favorite music teacher.
It happened again today. I received another email SUPPOSEDLY from Skype, asking me to update my profile. That's at least half a dozen such emails of one kind or another. They were all hoaxes. Hovering over the link that you're supposed to click to update your profile shows that it's going SOMEwhere, but NOT to skype.
This is just a little FYI. NEVER NEVER fall for emails like those. NEVER click the link in the email. If you think it may be legit, go to the website YOURSELF, by typing the address in manually. DO NOT CLICK THAT LINK IN THAT EMAIL!!
When you are using Windows Explorer - the file management program that opens when you double-click on 'My Computer' and the like - you can move to the parent folder by clicking the back-space key.
http://www.fi.ncsu.edu/initiatives/havingoursay/video.html
Many thanks to a post from Jennifer Dorman at Cliotech (http://cliotech.blogspot.com/2008/01/having-our-say.html) for this one. It takes a while to load, so be patient.
I’m curious as to your reaction to it.
Posted in: virtual IT
This is a fully featured image editor with an interesting name - it stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program (apparently). This is an incredibly powerful application with features that rivals professional software like Photoshop. Whilst this software was originally developed for a Linux environment there is a Windows version available; however, in my experience it does not work well on Windows. Nevertheless many people do use it on Windows machines and enjoy its powerful features although for the novice user it's stark interface may take some getting used to.
Whereas the GIMP's interface may take some getting used to Paint.net's is friendly and intuitive, and while Pain.net is not as feature-rich as the GIMP it is still a powerful image manipulation tool with many of the features found in commercial image editing packages. Because it is quick and easy to use it has become my image editor of choice.
IrfanView is an image viewer which has few editing features, but it is still a worthy inclusion on this list; although, not even as an image viewer (the one built into most versions of Windows is good enough). The reason I have included it is the batch image process feature, with which you can change the format of many files in one go, say from 'bmp' to 'jpeg', rather than open and save each file separately.
This application can be used to create animated GIFs. I used it myself to create the animated advert for a friend's website - the one for younilife that you can see at the top right hand of this page. The software works on the same principle as a flipbook: draw the pictures in an image editor such as paint.net; open them all in Beneton Movie GIF; select the order in which they are to be shown and set the length of time each frame is to be shown for. This may sound a little complicated but it is quite intuitive after a while. The software includes some fancy transition features to create dynamic looking animations.
IcoFX is an icon editor. I used it myself to create the favicon for Bloody Computer! (the yellow exclamation mark that you see next the this webpages' URL in the address bar). This software supports all the various Windows icon formats, including those for Vista.
To see the cause of this problem, press the 'Show/Hide ¶' button. As shown, the original text has carriage returns - as indicated by the '¶' marks - at the end of the original lines. When this text was pasted into word the lines were no longer the same length, so, the carriage returns were in the wrong place.
The solution to this problem is to replace the carriage returns with spaces. You can do this manually, or use the replace feature in Word. To open the 'Find and Replace' dialog box, pull down the 'Edit' menu and select 'Replace' - you may have to click the double arrows at the bottom of the menu to display all the entries on the menu - or you could hold down the Ctrl key and press H.
With the separation of paragraphs marked we can now remove all those superfluous returns. Enter '^p' in the Find what: field and a space in the Replace with: field.
We need to return the paragraphs to their original form. To do this replace all the occasions of '~~' with two carriage returns, as in the following image. Again, press 'Replace All'.
To remove these, go to the 'Find and Replace' dialog box again, and enter two spaces in the Find what: field and one space in the Replace with: field. Keep pressing the 'Replace All' button until there are no more examples to replace. The text should now look like this: nicely formatted with all the separate paragraphs maintained.
Posted in: Word Processing
This is the first guest article here at Bloody Computer! It was written by James Ricketts from Instant Registry Fixes. I hope you enjoy it and find it useful. K
Windows errors can occur at any time due to several reasons. Most of the time, these errors leave us helpless and may even cause us to lose important data and spend large amounts of money on expensive computer repairs.
We end up going through a lot of trouble, when in fact, there are some very simple steps that can easily help prevent these problems from happening in the first place. The top two causes of computer errors are malware and registry errors. Let’s take a look at some of the methods to deal with these problems and fix computer errors.
Keep Your Computer Malware Free
To keep your computer free of errors and other problems, it is essential for all PC users to have anti malware tools installed on their PCs. Primarily, there are three tools that are crucial for all PC users—Anti-virus, Anti-spyware, and Anti-spam.
Antivirus tools help you keep your PC free from malicious programs such as Virus, Trojans, worms, and backdoors. Antispyware tools help prevent and remove spyware and adware programs that steal personal information from your computer and then utilize it to display pop-ads on your PC without your consent. Many adware programs may lead you to dubious Websites or download virus infected programs on your system. Anti-spam tools help you prevent the download of unsolicited, junk e-mail to your system. These tools basically plug-in to your e-mail program such as Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express and weed out spam mails and help you block them.
There are many anti-malware products available in the market today that incorporate all three tools and provide you with a one point solution to all your malware related problems. However, these products are expensive. And, if you don’t want to spend that much you can look over the Web for freeware and shareware tools and download the ones that have good user reviews and are compatible with your operating system. After you have installed these anti-malware tools on your system, you must be sure to do the following:
Maintain an Error Free Registry
Several Windows errors are generated due to registry problems. Before you learn how to cleanup the registry, you must know what the registry is. The registry is basically a hierarchal database that comprises information related to user preferences, hardware and software configuration and system settings. This is the reason why, there is not a single activity that can be performed on your system without accessing the registry. Registry problems occur when it starts getting filled up with unwanted, obsolete, and erroneous information. Some of the reasons why this data creeps into the registry are:
This unwanted information causes the registry to grow at an uncontrollable rate and eventually causes registry damage and fragmentation. These registry problems give rise to several computer errors such as runtime errors, dll errors, and driver errors. In severe cases, registry problems may even render your PC unbootable.
Although troublesome, you can easily deal with registry problems with the help of a third-party registry repair tool. There are several tools available on the Internet. You must be sure to look at the features each of them offer, and see what other users have to say about them, in order to download the one that best suits your requirements and is compatible with your operating system.
Some of the tasks you can perform using a registry repair tool are:
Regular system maintenance goes a long way in keeping your PC healthy and error-free. In addition to malware and registry scans, you may also use the Disk Cleanup tool to remove junk from your hard disk and use the Disk Defragmenter to consolidate any fragmented files.
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