The question: Where is the PowerPoint presentation I was working on here yesterday?
The girl asking this seemed like she might be close to tears. I asked her if she had any idea where she'd saved it. She said she'd been working on a different computer, but that shouldn't matter, should it?
When we checked the computer she had been working on, there was the PowerPoint, saved to the Documents folder of the computer and not her user folder. I told her to be sure to save it to her own folder this time, and she'd be able to open it on any of the other computers.
A short lesson, but important nonetheless.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Making Flashcards in PowerPoint
This was the first task I was given in my job, and it's a really good way to quickly make a whole bunch of flashcards if you're learning a language. The way I made them, you end up with six flashcards on a page, that you can then cut out and quiz yourself with.
For every six vocab words you want to memorize, you have to create six slides immediately following them with definitions. However, if the words go 1 2 3 4 5 6, the definitions have to go 2 1 4 3 6 5. For instance, if you want to learn the Spanish colors, slide 1 could say rojo, slide 2 could be azul, 3 blanco, 4 negro, 5 amarillo, and 6 verde. Slide 7, then, will say blue, 8 will say red, 9 will say black, 10 will say white, 11 will say green, and 12 will say yellow. The reason for this is that when you're finished with your flashcards, you print them double-sided, which puts slide 7 on the back of slide 2, etc. Even if your total number of vocab words is not a multiple of six, your total number of slides has to be, so there might be several blank slides among your flashcards.
When you're done, print the slideshow, and in the print menu, go to the pulldown menu that says "Print What." It will probably say "Slides." Select "Handouts (6 slides per page)" and make sure that you are printing double-sided. Then you can cut out and use your new flashcards, and you won't have to write everything out on index cards!
For every six vocab words you want to memorize, you have to create six slides immediately following them with definitions. However, if the words go 1 2 3 4 5 6, the definitions have to go 2 1 4 3 6 5. For instance, if you want to learn the Spanish colors, slide 1 could say rojo, slide 2 could be azul, 3 blanco, 4 negro, 5 amarillo, and 6 verde. Slide 7, then, will say blue, 8 will say red, 9 will say black, 10 will say white, 11 will say green, and 12 will say yellow. The reason for this is that when you're finished with your flashcards, you print them double-sided, which puts slide 7 on the back of slide 2, etc. Even if your total number of vocab words is not a multiple of six, your total number of slides has to be, so there might be several blank slides among your flashcards.
When you're done, print the slideshow, and in the print menu, go to the pulldown menu that says "Print What." It will probably say "Slides." Select "Handouts (6 slides per page)" and make sure that you are printing double-sided. Then you can cut out and use your new flashcards, and you won't have to write everything out on index cards!
Monday, May 9, 2011
How to Make a Kanji Bingo Game Part 2: The Bingo Pieces
I won't lie, this part is time consuming. The most time consuming bit is cutting the kanji into two roots. There are websites with lists and pictures of roots, but because sometimes roots become distorted when they are made part of a new kanji, I recommend doing this in Adobe Photoshop.
All you need to do is to open a Photoshop document and type the kanji you want to cut up into a text box. Then crop out the root that you want. Because of the proximity of the roots in a kanji, you'll probably have to use the eraser tool to mop up some of the little fiddly bits of the other root that got caught up in your cropping field. Save that root, open up a new Photoshop document, type the kanji again, and repeat the whole process again for the other root. So yeah, easy, but takes forever. (Note: many kanji have more than two roots, but if you're using this bingo card pattern, you need to have two pieces. You can put two roots together as one piece, depending on how it is easiest to divide the kanji.)
Once you have all your pieces, it's time for another table! The cells in this table need to be as big as or a little smaller than the cells in your bingo card tables (for the obvious reason that whoever's playing the game is going to put these cells on top of the bingo card). Put each piece in its own cell, making it smaller to fit if you need to. Once all the pieces are in the table, putting your cursor on the table makes a small box appear in one corner, like so:
Right-clicking on this box and scrolling down to "Table Properties" will let you set the preferred height and width of your cells, so you can make each bingo piece the same size.
One more note: some kanji do not divide into a root on the left and one on the right. In some instances, one of the roots is above the other. In this case, you can either make a new table where these roots are horizontal, making sure that this table's height matches the other's width and vice versa. Or you could put all the roots in the same table, but rotate the horizontal roots to vertical so they match the left/right roots. This way, you can use the same bingo card for kanji that divide left and right and kanji that divide above and below. My finished tables ended up looking like this:
Now all that's left to do is print these and cut them out. Then we can print the bingo card and put these pieces together to make real kanji!
All you need to do is to open a Photoshop document and type the kanji you want to cut up into a text box. Then crop out the root that you want. Because of the proximity of the roots in a kanji, you'll probably have to use the eraser tool to mop up some of the little fiddly bits of the other root that got caught up in your cropping field. Save that root, open up a new Photoshop document, type the kanji again, and repeat the whole process again for the other root. So yeah, easy, but takes forever. (Note: many kanji have more than two roots, but if you're using this bingo card pattern, you need to have two pieces. You can put two roots together as one piece, depending on how it is easiest to divide the kanji.)
Once you have all your pieces, it's time for another table! The cells in this table need to be as big as or a little smaller than the cells in your bingo card tables (for the obvious reason that whoever's playing the game is going to put these cells on top of the bingo card). Put each piece in its own cell, making it smaller to fit if you need to. Once all the pieces are in the table, putting your cursor on the table makes a small box appear in one corner, like so:
Right-clicking on this box and scrolling down to "Table Properties" will let you set the preferred height and width of your cells, so you can make each bingo piece the same size.
One more note: some kanji do not divide into a root on the left and one on the right. In some instances, one of the roots is above the other. In this case, you can either make a new table where these roots are horizontal, making sure that this table's height matches the other's width and vice versa. Or you could put all the roots in the same table, but rotate the horizontal roots to vertical so they match the left/right roots. This way, you can use the same bingo card for kanji that divide left and right and kanji that divide above and below. My finished tables ended up looking like this:
Now all that's left to do is print these and cut them out. Then we can print the bingo card and put these pieces together to make real kanji!
How to Make a Kanji Bingo Game Part 1: The Bingo Card
Who doesn't like bingo? Especially in Japanese, where the kanji is based on putting several pictographic roots together to make new symbols, bingo can be a good way to start seeing kanji in terms of the roots they are made up of, which make them easier to learn.
One of my tasks in the lab last week was to recreate on Microsoft Word a kanji bingo game my boss had brought back with her from Japan. The first problem to be confronted is how to make the card itself. There needed to be rows and columns of squares divided in half, so each side could play host to a kanji root that, when next to each other, would make a whole kanji. The most obvious way to do this would be tables; however, there was a bit of an issue in the fact that I didn't know how to put two tables next to each other, side by side. So I had to come up with a kind of creative solution (that I'm rather proud of, hence the blogging about it).
If you want, for instance, three side by side sets of divided squares, you create a table with eight columns and one row (six columns for the three divided squares, two for the spaces between them). If you put your cursor directly over a dividing line between columns, it will let you move the line around. In that way, you can move lines around until the space columns are as thin as you can make them (or as narrow as you want the spaces to be) and the divided squares are all the same width.
Next, highlight one of the space columns and right click, then scroll down to "Borders and Shading." Under the preview, in borders and shading, clicking on the top and bottom borders will make them invisible. Your preview should look like this:
Select the option to apply it to the cell. Then do the same to the other space column.
Once the space columns are thus rendered invisible, you can highlight the whole table and copy and paste it all down the page, to make numerous rows of bingo boxes. My completed kanji bingo card looked like this:
One of my tasks in the lab last week was to recreate on Microsoft Word a kanji bingo game my boss had brought back with her from Japan. The first problem to be confronted is how to make the card itself. There needed to be rows and columns of squares divided in half, so each side could play host to a kanji root that, when next to each other, would make a whole kanji. The most obvious way to do this would be tables; however, there was a bit of an issue in the fact that I didn't know how to put two tables next to each other, side by side. So I had to come up with a kind of creative solution (that I'm rather proud of, hence the blogging about it).
If you want, for instance, three side by side sets of divided squares, you create a table with eight columns and one row (six columns for the three divided squares, two for the spaces between them). If you put your cursor directly over a dividing line between columns, it will let you move the line around. In that way, you can move lines around until the space columns are as thin as you can make them (or as narrow as you want the spaces to be) and the divided squares are all the same width.
Next, highlight one of the space columns and right click, then scroll down to "Borders and Shading." Under the preview, in borders and shading, clicking on the top and bottom borders will make them invisible. Your preview should look like this:
Select the option to apply it to the cell. Then do the same to the other space column.
Once the space columns are thus rendered invisible, you can highlight the whole table and copy and paste it all down the page, to make numerous rows of bingo boxes. My completed kanji bingo card looked like this:
Friday, April 22, 2011
Questions from the Great iMovie Scare of Block 7
On the last Tuesday of Block 7 what looked like the entire Intro to Art History class was in the Keck Lab panicking about their final iMovie projects. One problem that came up in two separate instances was that the images weren't changing when they were supposed to. When the movie was played, an image would linger on long after it was supposed to change to the next one. This was even happening for people who were working from iMovie projects saved to the computer itself, not to a flash drive or external hard drive.
The solution Nicollette and I found was putting a short transition between the images. That cleared the problem right up, though I'm still not sure why the problem was occurring in the first place.
The solution Nicollette and I found was putting a short transition between the images. That cleared the problem right up, though I'm still not sure why the problem was occurring in the first place.
Typing in Japanese on a Mac
Typing in Japanese, or any other language, is easy when you know where to go. The first thing is to open the System Preferences and click the icon of a flag. On some computers its called "International," on others "Language and Text," but either way this is what it looks like:
Once you've checked a language, a little American flag will appear in the bar at the top of your computer screen. Clicking that flag gives you the option to change to one of the Kotoeri scripts, hiragana, katakana, or romaji.
Most typing in Japanese can be done with the hiragana option. Hitting the return key after typing a phrase will leave the phrase in hiragana, but hitting the space bar will change the phrase into kanji. Hitting the space bar again will let you scroll through the possible kanji and pick the one you want. Even if you're typing a katakana word, typing it in hiragana and hitting the space bar will change it to katakana.
There are a lot of other scripts in the Input Sources to choose from. Apart from Japanese, I usually use Russian, which gives you the option of either using the keys as they would be set up on an actual Russian keyboard, or typing phonetically in the Russian alphabet.
Once into the Language and Text screen, click on the tab at the labeled "Input Sources." There'll be a list of languages you can choose. Check the box for "Kotoeri." Hiragana, katakana, and romaji should be the only ones you'll need, so make sure they're checked, as they are below:
Once you've checked a language, a little American flag will appear in the bar at the top of your computer screen. Clicking that flag gives you the option to change to one of the Kotoeri scripts, hiragana, katakana, or romaji.
Most typing in Japanese can be done with the hiragana option. Hitting the return key after typing a phrase will leave the phrase in hiragana, but hitting the space bar will change the phrase into kanji. Hitting the space bar again will let you scroll through the possible kanji and pick the one you want. Even if you're typing a katakana word, typing it in hiragana and hitting the space bar will change it to katakana.
There are a lot of other scripts in the Input Sources to choose from. Apart from Japanese, I usually use Russian, which gives you the option of either using the keys as they would be set up on an actual Russian keyboard, or typing phonetically in the Russian alphabet.
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