Snowladies.com

Meet Doris Snowlady and Her Friends

Well, as the snow has fallen again, I thought I would share this website with you! It is hilarous, beautifully crafted snow ladies adorn the internet. Set your heart a-racing with the female snowlady form!

Meet Doris (right) and her friends skiing, drinking a latte, and snow bathing…

Date Window

Always have the date displayed whatever application you are using

Are you fed up with searching for the date on your computer or are you a teacher who wishes the date would automatically appear on the Interactive Whiteboard, then Date Window is your solution.

Great for Interactive Whiteboards

Date Window will display the date in your chosen colour and system font, is moveable around the screen, hideable and will always be on view for you.

Choose the:

• font
• font colour
• background colour
• font size
• date format

Date Window keeps the date 'on top' of any application or program

Visit Date Window at Fresher Schools

Tiny Font Viewer

Tiny Font Viewer Screenshot

What font should I use?

Now you can view all your system fonts. Increase the size, change the colour and background to choose the right font for your next project.

I can never remember the name of the font I want!

• View all your Windows system fonts
• Increase and decrease the font size to make them larger and smaller
• Double click on as many fonts to open and view in a  new window to compare with other fonts
• Change the font colour and background colour to try out your desired font
• Use short cut keys to quickly navigate around Tiny Font Viewer

Find more out more about this nifty FREE tool Systems Font Viewer

Tiny Site Watcher

Keep track of the websites that are important to you, get notified that your website/s are down with Tiny Site Watcher.

Tiny Site Watcher Screenshot

The FREE version:

• Monitors a single website
• Check by issuing a TCP/IP PING
• Alert by playing a user specified sound file (mp3 / wav)

The Standard Version has loads more features including:

• Monitor up to 5 different sites or servers
• Configure automated regular checks and alerts
• Pause / resume all checking with a single click
• Open individual history windows for each site / server being monitored
• Check any site on demand
• View overall status of all sites at a glance
• AND MORE

Double Click and Triple Click

In many digital documents, you can use the double click or triple click to select words and paragraphs.

A double click will select a whole word
A triple click will select a whole paragraph

To select a whole sentence click in the sentence & then CTRL click

Easy peasy and useful too!

Reciprocal Reading Group Cards for Guided Reading

After teaching reading for many years and trying to teach children good skills to analyse and understand the text, I was delighted to find the specific strategies of Reciprocal Teaching. Obviously, most of us use many of these strategies but I really like the explicit nature of the named prompts.

Reciprocal Reading Prompt Cards

I’ve developed these prompts cards and have added a variety of cues to each reading prompt card so after a few lessons the children become more competent and familiary with each role, the children can actually work independently on a piece of text.

Each card can be laminated and used as a book mark or to section the page if one paragraph is being used at a time.

Reciprocal Prompt Cards include:

Reciprocal Reading Prompt Cards

The Boss
The Predictor
The Questioner
The Clarifier
The Summariser

The Boss. Decides who will do each job, introduces the text and makes sure everyone is joining in.

The Predictor. Makes logical predictions. Uses information in the text & personal experiences to predict where the text is going.

The Questioner. Thinks what do you know, need to know or would like to know. Who, what, where, why, then, how, what if, will…?

The Clarifier. Identifies confusing words, sentences and ideas. How can these be solved?

The Summariser. Identifies the most important ideas in the text. The problem was… The resolution was…

The cards are suitable for display too!

Download here

Viewing two applications simultanously

We all know how to minimise and maximise our Windows applications and use the top bar to move them around the screen to view more than one or easily switch between them.

Split your screen for 2 Windows Application

BUT… did you know if you use your mouse to move the Windows Program / Application to one edge of the screen, the Window will automatically be forced to fill 50% of the screen. Do this with one program to the left of your screen and the other to the right and you can look and edit either screen without the annoying graphics overlaying the other.

Split your screen by dragging your Windows Application to the edges of the screen

The benefits of this is that you can work from one document whilst viewing the other.
Simply double click on the top bar again to expand to full screen.

Loftbag Bean Bags

Loftbag cow bean bag floor cushion

I just love the Loftbag bean bags, they are huge comfy bags for your home and garden. The faux hide floor cushions have a velvety texture.

Bean bags bring glamour

Loftbag Gold Bean Bag (also available in Silver)

The gold and silver luscious bean bags offer glitz and glamour to your room, nightclub or students union bar.

If it is animal instinct that is driving you wild, then you choose from the leopard or tiger options.

Inner liner bean bags

Each Loftbag Animal has an inner liner, is fire resistant and 350l of micro beans.

Bean bags are a great extra chair with excellent supportive values. The kids will prop them against the wall, lie flat or upside to find the right position.

There are lots of beanbags at Magic Bean Bags including bean bag chairs, bean bag cushions, outdoor bean bags etc. Visit MMB for a huge selection of beanbags for your home, school, office and club.

Loftbag Animals - Dalmation

Use Google for much MORE than Searching the Internet

Did you know that Google does much more than indexing the internet ready for your fact finding missions

By simply typing directory into the search query bar you can instantly find out the temperature in Dubai, the time in Sydney, convert inches to cm, define a dodecahedron, solves crosswords with the synonym search etc.

Take a look and see for yourself !

Calculator:

Enter the sum and hey presto! e,g, sqr 5 or sqr 81 or 4 + 7 (23 – 9)

Maps:

Need a map? Type the town, city or postcode and ‘map’ e.g.  Wellingborough Map

Weather

Enter ‘weather’ and the town, city or postcode e.g. weather Kent

Queries

As Google usually ignores common words such as and or where, you can force Google to include these words by using a ‘+’ e.g. Star Wars +I

Time

Type ‘time’ and a Town or City e.g. time Chicago

Dictionary

Use ‘define’ in your search – extend the definiton by clicking the ‘define in context’ link e.g. define rhombus

Unit Conversion

Convert height, weight, length, mass or currency etc. e.g. 250GBP to USD

Book Search

Search by Title or Author – e.g. One Who Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest

Synonym Search

Enter a phrase or word with a ‘~’ e.g.  ~healthy eating

Blanks / Wildcard

Use an asterix or ‘*’ in place of unknown words e.g. Alexander Graham Bell invented the *

Use ” “

Quote marks force Google to look for an exact search e.g. “My ferret scratches holes in my carpet”

Use OR

The OR function to find out something or something else (you can also use the vertical bar | for OR) e.g. paris OR marseille

Use AND

The AND operator forces Google to list searches with all the keywords you have entered e.g. paris AND marseille

Use –

You can force Google to omit certain keywords from their results (remember the – must sit next to the word to be omited, without a space) e.g. horses –shetland

REMEMBER

you can use a micture of the above to really refine your search e.g. sydney or canberra “package holiday”

Spell Checker

Type in a word and Google will offer you a suggested correct spelling e.g. hypnatherapy

Free to Use- Google Calculator, Dictionary, Unit Conversion, Maps, Book Search, Weather, Queries, Time Around the World… Just type your query into the search bar and hey presto complicated calculations, cm to inches or weather in Sudan appears!!!!

If you are teacher and want to display these in your classroom or ICT sute then you can download POSTERS from our Fresher Schools Website. Google Searches.

Essential Windows Keyboard Shortcuts

The reliant Mouse user often shys away from learning new keyboard shortcuts but it is really worth learning the basics as grabbing your mouse everytime you want to move to the next text field in a contact form or pointing at the refresh button to renew your webpage or hunting for the file menu to get your document printed is just time and effort not needed when you are tapping around your keyboard anyway.

Take a look at the followng keyboard shortcuts, print them out if necessary and try and learn a few – time is money, a second earned back now is an hour of leisure time later (OK – I made that one up but hey, do you get my drift?)

CTRL A	Select All	Select all content in a document or files in a list
CTRL C	Copy	Select objects or text to copy
CTRL V	Paste	Paste objects on a page or position cursor to paste text
CTRL X	Cut	Select objects or text and cut them to paste somewhere else
CTRL S	Save	Save the working document for many programs
CTRL I	Italic	Select text first to make Italic
CTRL B	Bold	Select text first to make Bold
CTRL U	Underline	Select text first to Underline
CTRL Z	Undo	Undo the last action
CTRL Y	Redo	Redo the last Undo action
CTRL P	Print	Print a document
CTRL O	Open	Open a document
CTRL F	Find	Launch the find window to search for words in a document NB F5 in some programs
Double click	Select a word	In a document select a whole word by double clicking
Triple click	Select a sentence	In a document triple click anywhere in the sentence to select
CTRL click hyperlink		Open in a hyperlink in new Internet Explorer window / tab
Tab		Jump to the next cell or form field
ALT TAB		Switch between programs
E		Open Windows Explorer Window
Windows Key D		View the computer’s Desktop
Windows Key F		Launches a Find Window
SHIFT insert CD		Hold down SHIFT whilst inserting CD to bypass the auto run feature
F1	Help	Launch the Help
F2	Rename	Rename a file from an Windows Explorer
F5	Reload	Reload or refresh a page
CTRL F5	Hard reload	Reload or refresh a page / Override Cache
ALT F4		Close the current program
F11		Force Web Browser Fill Screen and hide task bars
F12		Save As
Esc		Stop an action
CTRL ALT ESC		Launches Task Manager

Download as a pdf Useful Windows Shortcut Keys

[ I know, the time I have spent here on sharing these useful short cuts has just wasted all the time in my whole life using them in the first place! LOL]

Teachers:

Download a few of these as posters from Keyboard Shortcuts