Tech Tutor Mark

I had heard that you could have Adobe Reader read a PDF to you, but I had not tried it until today.  The Read Out Loud feature reads aloud the text in a PDF document, including the text in comments and alternate text descriptions for images and fillable fields.  It uses the available voices installed on your system.  These voices may have been installed from text-to-speech or language applications, and you can choose them to read your PDFs by going to Edit>>Preferences .  Here you can stick with the default voice, or pick one of remaining voices.  You can also control pitch and speed settings directly below the voice choice.  This article published online by Adobe takes you through the steps .  After activating Read Out Loud, don't forget to go back to the View menu and click on  Read Out Loud again, and choose whether you want it to read the entire document, or just the rest of the text left on the page. 

The newly-revised " Best Free Tools & Tips for Busy Educators " is now available for free download in PDF format.  The links work in Adobe Reader, too.  These are my favorite sites, Web tools, tips, tricks, free software, and a getting-started introduction for each.  Let me know what you think. 

By Becky Waring One of the best ways to increase your computing productivity doesn't cost a cent: learn the keyboard shortcuts for your most-used commands. To help you stop mousing around and become a keyboard maestro, I rounded up the best resources for finding, using, and creating shortcuts. Lincoln Spector struck a nerve with his Jan. 13 column , "Twenty-six ways to work faster in Windows 7." Many of those tips involved keyboard shortcuts. After all, almost any time you can use the keyboard instead of the mouse, you work faster. But there are lots more shortcuts where those came from. This article aims to show you where to find the ones that can speed up your workflow. In case you can't find the shortcuts you need, I'll show you how to create your own. You probably already know that you can invoke many menu and dialog-box items via the keyboard by pressing the Control or Alt key plus an underlined letter. For example, pressing Alt + F in m...

How to take a screenshot of your iPad – Simple Help

The Snipping Tool was introduced in Windows Vista for the first time and also exists in Windows 7 . With the Snipping Tool you can capture text, graphics, and any associated annotations and then save them in your desired format. Unfortunately, Microsoft has not defined a default keyboard shortcut for the Snipping Tool in Windows 7.  It’s a pain to have to dig into the Start menu to find the tool quickly. To create a keyboard shortcut for the Snipping Tool, use the steps below: 1. Go to Start , Accessories , right-click on Snipping Tool and select Properties . 2. Move to the Shortcut tab. 3. Select the Shortcut key box, and then press any desired key as your shortcut to the program.  For example, press the S key. 4. Windows will define the new shortcut to the Snipping Tool and will also add Ctrl + Alt as the prefix to the shortcut. 5.  If you have assigned the “ S ” key to Snipping Tool, then you will need to press Ctrl + Alt + S to launch it. 6. Click Apply ...

Google search is a wonderful tool for students of all ages, but the search giant takes it a step further with Google’s Wonder Wheel.  This fascinating visual search tool helps students refine searches, and learn about connections between terms.  Using Wonder Wheel is easy!  To begin, go to http://www.google.com and type in your search term(s) as you would on any other search.  Once you click the Search button, your results will be listed.  Above the results list is a small hyperlink that says Show Options.  Click on this link to open a sidebar with more options. Once the sidebar has opened, click on Wonder Wheel under the Standard View menu: Clicking on Wonder Wheel will open up your search term as the center of the ‘wheel’ with related terms branching off: Clicking on one of the related terms opens up a new branch of the wheel, and lists search results for that term along the right side of the screen: You can continue clicking on related term...

Zimbra: A Faster & Easier Way To Download Email To Your Desktop