Dear
Friday, January 30, 2009 // 2:40 PM
"It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare." - Mark TwainMr. Case taught us today in class abought Mail Merge. Since he wasn't going to be here on Monday, he taught us it all today.
Bascically we are going to create a letter that can be sent to multiple people at once with different pieces of info inserted into each place. This is something that a large company would use to address all their customers simply by inserting a customer's data into an already created template. At first I was quite confused about what we were doing but I definitely realized to usefulness of this later on. Instead of writing a new letter each time, you simply have to create a basic letter with data entry spots and then create data files for each of your recipients. I know it sounds quite complicated the way I explain it but trust me, it's much more basic than you may think.
For example, here's a basic template you could have:
Dear < First Name >,
You have been qualified for a new credit card! If you accept, the credit card will be mailed to your current address, which is < Address >. Thank you for being a valuable customer!
Sincerely,
Bank Manager
I'm pretty sure your parents get letters like that all the time from advertisers, companies, telemarketers and more. It is not one person typing a letter formally to you but rather someone simply typing out a fairly general template and inserting your name through it from a mailing list with your data on it.
This is quite useful for sending multiple letters to multiple people! So make sure to remember this handing task as I am positive it will come to use in the future!
Goodbye for now,
- Serena
Labels: Mail, Merge, Microsoft, Word
Further updates & finally, we have a title!
Thursday, January 29, 2009 // 2:24 PM
"A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends." - Baltasar Gracian Today, we are continuing on our Word Book. It is coming along, albeit quite slowly. We are handing in tutorials and retouching on some certain aspects. We voted on different titles such as
"Ms Guide for Middle Schools",
"Step by Step Guide to MS Word",
"The Ultimate Guide to MS Word",
"YES We CAN do MS Word", "Become an Expert at MS Word before you die" and
"MS Word for blondes". (JUST KIDDING about the last one! Me and Shehnila came up with that ;] )
Eventually we settled with
"Getting to Know Microsoft Word" even though I wanted
"Getting Acquainted with Microsoft Word". Doesn't acquainted sound much better than getting to know? But no one agreed with me sadly :(
Anyways have a great day! I hope we will have a great finished product and sell plenty! Then we can have a pizza lunch and donate the remaining to charity.
Yours truly,
- Serena
Labels: Book, Microsoft, title, tutorial, updates, Word
Word Boooook! :)
Monday, January 26, 2009 // 9:05 AM
"If the wind will not serve, take to the oars." - Latin ProverbToday in class we picked two editors for our Word Book! They are... *drumroll* Mohammad and Joanna! :)
They will be responsible for going through all the sheets and checking for plagarism, spelling, grammar, etc. We also thought of ways we could organize the sheets in to table of contents. Some ideas that came up was to organize them by alphabetical order, menu items, text, images, object, toolbar themes, skill level (beginner, intermediate, hard), and author alphabetical order.
Eventually we decided on Menu items! Basically we're going to be sorting all of the data by the Menu heading it's under. We'll have a seperate chapter all on Toolbars for those who want to focus on what the buttons on each toolbar do!
Alright, that's all for now!
Signing off,
- Serena
Labels: Book, Object, Word
Updates
Thursday, January 22, 2009 // 2:51 PM
"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." - Bill Cosby
Today in BTT class we continued on our "How-To" booklet for the teachers to use. I've gotten a third function to work on and I've edited my last post and included it. It is the Insert/Reference button. I'm not quite sure how this works yet but I will figure it out once I'm done the other two.
Remember, the more you make, the better marks you will get. That being said, you can't just do ten horribly written ones. You must also keep in mind that quality is over quantity!
On a side note, I know Chronicles of BTT has not update recently but we are working on an update and hope to get a few podcasts up by this weekend! Stay tuned! :)
Sincerely,
- Serena
Labels: Chronicles of BTT, Insert, Microsft, Reference, Word
Our latest project
Wednesday, January 21, 2009 // 9:28 AM
"If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much." - Donald H. RumsfeldIn class, we are making a tutorial book that may be printed for teachers to use. We need a minimum of one tutorial each to pass, and the more tutorials you make, the better.
The tutorials I'm doing are so far:
Insert/Object,
Insert/Reference and
Format/ThemeThe template for the tutorial can be found in the pick up folder. It is called
Tutorial btt.doc. To make screenshots, you can use
Lightscreen, found in the pickup folder under Case BTT. The file is called
Lightscreen.0.5.Setup.exe. In order to set it up properly, drag the setup.exe button onto the desktop and install from there. INSTALL IT TO YOUR
HOME DRIVE! Make sure that the
Start Menu Shortcut and the
Desktop Shortcut are NOT checked! They cause problems and you really don't need it since you can access the program simply by going into your home drive.
An alternate way to take screenshots, if you don't want to use
Lightscreen or you don't have access to it, press the
Print Screen/SysRq button usually on the right of your keyboard. Press it while your monitor is on the image you want to take a picture of and go into
Paint or any other image editing software and crop out parts or simply save the file. The quality is probably not as good as
Lightscreen, but it is definitely useful for those times when you're not at home or school and have no access to
Lightscreen. To install this to your computer at home, attach the
Lightscreen.0.5.Setup.exe in an email or on your USB so you can install the program at home or on any other computer that doesn't have
Lighscreen already.
I hope this has helped! Good luck! Let's make this tutorial book a huge success.
Goodbye for now,
- Serena
Labels: Format, Insert, Lightscreen, Microsoft, Object, Screenshot, Theme, Word
10 things I hate about you :)
Monday, January 12, 2009 // 9:35 AM
Okay, I don't HATE these 10 things, I just wanted to make a reference to the movie ;P These are 10 things I do not understand about Microsoft Word!
Numero Uno. Format/Change CaseThis brings up a box that says Sentence Case, lowercase, UPPERCASE, Title Case, tOGGLE cASE. This clever little thing allows you to basically change the case of your words. Just highlight some words, select one of the choices and BAM! Easy as 123 :) This makes life a lot easier if you don't have to go back to every single word and change the case (e.g. capital, lowercase).
Number Two. Insert/Field
A click of the button and pops up a box that allows you select from quite a few choices of what you would like to do with your text, whether it be SECTION or COMPARE or something else entirely different.
Number TROIS. Format/Frames
Think of dividers you use for a binder (e.g. for all your different subjects, math, english, etc) and this will be a piece of cake to understand! Create a completely unique layout of your content with this device by sectioning off bits of your text such as interesting facts, advertisements, table of contents and so on into little areas by themselves to give them a blast of emphasism.
Number Four. Tools/AutoSummarize
How did I ever live my life without this nifty invention?! Book reports are a hassle no more! Just simply select all the text, click Tools/AutoSummarize and VOILA! An instant-summary.
Number Cinq. Format/Theme
This one made me laugh xD I'm not really sure why anyone would want to have an electric blue background to their Microsoft Word but hey, if it's what gets you going to write a masterpiece, by all means :) If you haven't already guessed, this function allows you to customize your Microsoft Word to your personality by adjusting the graphics, colours, etc. Click on the Format/Theme button and just select the one that best suits your flair or feel free to install new ones. Go ahead and get a customized spongebob one if that's your calling.
Number Six. Insert/Object
Now this one I definitely could see myself using. Think of it as a collaboration between your two favourite softwares and you've got a match. This box lets you ignore the world of programming and filetypes for just a moment and allows a connection between Microsoft Word and many other programs such as Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Excel, Windows Media Player, and many others! Go ahead and insert a video smack dab in the middle of your content! Do it because you can and it feels so right. :)
Number SEVEN. Format/Styles and Formatting
I was a bit confused at first sight of what this is but then I recognized an old friend. When you click the button, it opens up a side menu that allows you to choose a variety of options for the way you want to display certain pieces of text such as Headings. It changes the font, boldness, italics and more! Very useful for titles and other important pieces of text.
Number Huit. Insert/Bookmark
Display is key to a successful presentation. Lets say your writing a newspaper and you like the way something fits on one column but you want to insert the content into another page of the newspaper. Have no fear! Bookmarks are here. Select the text, click it, name your bookmark and open the other document. Then insert the bookmark again and you'll see your text appear in the same place! Very practical for quick changes.
Number Neuf. Tools/Language/Translate
It's not that I don't understand this function, it's that I never even knew it existed! Now I don't even need to go onto some translating website when I'm doing my French homework... I mean.. Err well, simply open up this box up and enter what you would like to translate!
Number TENNNN! Insert/Break
Sometimes you just need a break away from somebody. What makes you think pages dont need a break away from other pages as well?! Certainly, if you need your pages to be more spaced out, or even just paragraphs, use this simple device to create a more neat, organized look.
WHOOOSH! FINALLY DONE :) I HOPED YOU'VE LEARNED SOMETHING. I know I definitely did ;)
Hitting the sack,
- Serena
Labels: Microsoft, Word
Legal Issues
Thursday, January 8, 2009 // 2:57 PM
Today in class we discussed in detail about the legal issues of uploading podcasts.
It's not exactly the most interesting topic in the world but I've come to realize it is quite important. We are going to have a test on it soon so please review guys!
- Serena
The Evolution of Mankind
Monday, January 5, 2009 // 9:10 AM
"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninty-nine percent perspiration." - Thomas Edison
The above quote is one from the article, "Work Ethic 2.0: Attention Control" by Mike Elgan. This particular article can be found
here.
I actually immensely enjoyed this article about the evolution of work ethic. This is because it has a lot of answers and questions that I had been questioning and searching for myself. I was delighted that this problem is not just a personal one - but an epidemic. Perhaps "delighted" isn't the word, since it is quite a serious problem, but I was relieved at the fact that there wasn't something wrong with me. In short, this article is basically a portrayal of how technology has affected us, in terms of our working patterns. He expertly describes the change, what the aftermath is and compares & contrasts our work ethics from nowadays to way back in our grandparents' days.
Instead of using the power of technology for good, we are constantly Facebooking, Twittering, Youtubing, Myspacing, and using the convenience of our technological advancement - for distractions. It's not like we purposely set out to do so, as companies worldwide aim to compete for our "attention". And from the looks of it, they definitely seem to have caught it. It's like waving a piece of candy in front of a sugar-obsessed diabetic.
Which brings me to another point he displays. Our need for attention control. What this means is that although technology is becoming so advanced and convenient for us to seek any amusement possible in just a click, we should possess qualities of self-control sufficient enough to ignore these distractions or at least limit them.
"Hard work is still a virtue, but now takes a distant second place to the new determinant of success or failure in the age of Internet distractions: Control of attention." Is a quote from the article that I firmly agreed with.
Another question he brings up, which I ponder as well, is the question of what the children of this technological era will grow up to be. As he stated, "Kids now grow up with the whole range of distractions, from big-screen TVs to video games to cell phones to PCs in their rooms." Which possesses great truth to the matter. How are these young ones to cope if all they've ever known is distractions? I had speculated this much before ever reading this article, due to my immense procrastination problem. I absolutely detest it, but there seems to be no end to it.
But Mike Elgan suggests otherwise. There may actually be a cure for all these distractions. And it's teaching an old dog new tricks. What this amounts to is that we must keep all the work ethics taught to us by our grandparents & parents, but elevate ourselves to a whole new level. Humans are superbly known for our adaptive states, so to beat this cause, we must adapt to a new
priority work ethic - and this is to control our level of attention. In order words, fight the urges to go on Facebook to check if your friend has a new profile picture, or Youtubing videos of people putting mentos in coke.
And this idea, it's so crazy it just might actually work. :)
Signing off,
- Serena
Labels: Work ethic