It’s not too late to register for the live demonstration of Read&Write happening tomorrow! Wednesday February 14th from noon to 1pm!
Join us in-person at the Notre Dame Campus in the Connected Classroom (G139) or virtually through Microsoft Teams.
Read&Write (also known as R&W) is an application now available to all staff and students at Red River College Polytechnic, and boy, are we excited about to spread the word about this resource!
R&W is available for free to all staff and students
R&W is an application with supports for reading, comprehension, writing, notetaking, translation, studying, and much more!
R&W is available for your laptop (Windows and Mac) and web browser (Edge & Chrome)
Interested in a live demo of R&W? Join us for a live demo on Wednesday February 14th Noon-1pm!
Why are we excited to spread the word about this resource?
There are so many supports, and reasons why R&W is amazing, that we can’t contain them all in this blog post! Think of this post as us trying to generate some “buzz” or some “hype” about R&W, and spread the word about the live demonstration. There will be more information about R&W in the next weeks.
Registration is recommended as there is a limit of 40 people for the in-person session:
Accessibility notice: The primary entrance to this classroom requires stairs, alternate entrance requires going outside. If you have any access needs for this, or require any other accommodations, please reach out to eament@rrc.ca (preferably with a weeks’ notice).
Last week we highlighted a great resource from the Academic Success Centre, and previous blog posts, all with supports for task & time management skills.
Time Management Skills (rrc.ca)
This week we’re going to build on those resources with a digital version of an office staple… that’s right, digital sticky notes (or digital post it notes)!
What we really love about using digital sticky notes is the fact that they automatically open when you turn on your computer. This can be really helpful if you’re one of the many who find their computer a major source of distraction. Instead of turning your computer on and surfing the web, online shopping, or scrolling through endless social media posts, that sticky note being the first thing you see when you turn your computer on might just convince you to start on your schoolwork first (and take a break later).
While you can put almost anything onto your digital sticky note, here are a few suggestions on how to use them to support your newly found task & time management skills:
Our friends over at the Academic Success Centre (ASC) are offering a four-part, totally online, drop in, no registration required, free, workshop series called Understanding How You Learn… and it starts tomorrow!
While this isn’t specifically technology related, it falls in line with our belief that everybody learns differently. This workshop explores four topics that impact learning in a very significant way, with the aim of understanding and leveraging the influence they have on learning.
For more information on the above topics please check out the ASC’s webpage: Understanding How You Learn Workshop Series
No registration is required for this event! Simply use this link to log on to the workshop!
email: tutoring@rrc.ca
Let’s do a quick check-in after the first week of classes – how are things going? Are you finding it difficult to stay on top of all of your assignments, find time to study, read your textbook, and, generally keep up with your studies… not to mention having a social life, working, or finding time for hobbies.
Yeah, we hear you.
The Academic Success Centre at the College has developed a self-directed LEARN tutorial that is designed to help you manage your time, make healthy choices, and prioritize your tasks. This LEARN tutorial will specifically help you to:
Register for the self-directed Time Management Skills LEARN Tutorial
For more resources on task & time management, check out these past blog posts:
Now, if this post and learning Time Management Skills is not the type of Tech Tips you were looking for, here’s two quick reminders that you can:
Welcome 2024, and welcome to new and returning students! Hopefully you had a refreshing holiday season. 🙂
To start the year we wanted to do another (yes, another) post to summarize the different supports we’ve highlighted. Maybe your New Years Resolution is to be more organized, read more, be more focused, or maybe just generally, get better grades. …and that my friends, is why we’re doing another summary style post!
This time however, we’re formatting things a little differently! What’s the application, where is it available, what does it support, and blog posts for more information, all presented in a neat little table!
Don’t like information presented in a table?
Check out our last post of 2023 for a different style of a summary post! Tech Tips Blog Post: 2023 Wrap-Up
| Application | Supports | Tech Tips Blog Posts |
|---|---|---|
| Kurzweil 3000 Available for: Windows, Mac & web extensions (Chrome, Edge) | Reading Writing Notetaking Thought organization Studying Translation | Kurzweil 3000 Reading Week – Reading Supports Graphic Organizers in Kurzweil 3000 Graphic Organizers + Voice Dictation |
| Immersive Reader Built into: Microsoft 365 products (Word, OneNote, Outlook, Teams, Edge) | Reading Focus Comprehension Translation | Immersive Reader |
| Edge (Web Browser) Available for: Windows, Mac, Android & iOS | Reading Focus Comprehension Translation Notetaking | PDF Files in Edge Collections in Edge |
| OneNote Available on: Windows, Mac & Online | Notetaking Writing Organization Studying | OneNote Top 8 Tips for OneNote |
| Voice Dictation Built into: Microsoft 365 products (Word, OneNote, Outlook) | Writing Thought Transferring | Voice Dictation Graphic Organizers + Voice Dictation Voice Commands for Editing and Formatting in Office 365 |
| Editor Built into: Microsoft 365 products (Word, OneNote, Outlook, Edge) | Edits for: spelling, grammar, clarity, conciseness, formality & vocabulary | Microsoft’s Editor |
| RefWorks Web based application & integrated into Microsoft Word | Research Citation Organization Bibliography creation | RefWorks |
| BrightSpace Pulse Mobile app available for: Android & iOS | Task & Time Management Organization | Brightspace Pulse |
| Microsoft To-Do Available on: Windows & Mac | Task & Time Management Organization | Microsoft To Do |
| Speaker Coach Built into: Microsoft 365 – PowerPoint | Helps develop presentation skills: pace, pitch, use of filler words, informal speech/profanity, euphemisms, etc… | Speaker Coach |
| Microsoft Word Available on: Windows, Mac & Online | Focus Organization Translation Reading Writing | Fun Features of Microsoft Word (Part 1) Fun Features of Microsoft Word (Part 2) Fun Features of Microsoft Word (Part 3) Voice Dictation Immersive Reader |
From January 2nd to 15th, there will be pop-up service desks at both the NDC (in DM18) and EDC (at the Lower Learning Commons Service Desk) campuses.
The pop-up service desks will assist Students, Faculty and Staff with their IT related issues such as: accessing Wi-Fi, setting up MFA and other account or IT issues.
All traditional channels for requesting support will remain operational alongside the pop-up service desk:
Read&Write (also known as R&W) is a new, and free, application available to all staff and students at Red River College Polytechnic! Features in the application support learners with reading, comprehension, writing, studying, notetaking, translation, and more! To help promote this new application, we’re holding a live demonstration!
Wednesday February 14th 2023, noon-1pm
Connected Classroom (G139)
Notre Dame Campus
Or attend virtually through Microsoft Teams!
Registration is recommended as there is a limit of 40 people for the in-person session:
Accessibility notice: The primary entrance to this classroom requires stairs, alternate entrance requires going outside. If you have any access needs for this, or require any other accommodations, please reach out to eament@rrc.ca (preferably with a weeks’ notice).
…and just like that, 2023 is almost over! But what a year it’s been! Tech Tips: Work Smarter, Not Harder celebrated its first birthday (there was no cake), we had snowfall warnings in April that were no joke, and, well I’m sure you all can fill in another memory of 2023.
As we move into the Holiday season, we thought we’d “wrap” things up by outlining the different types of supports we’ve identified, and the tech resources highlighted for those supports. Links to previous blog posts are included in each section, and you may even find a new resource (or 2)!
So far on the blog we’ve looked at 2 main supports for Reading – Immersive Reader (a part of Microsoft Office) and Kurzweil 3000 (text-to-speech software). While this may not seem like a lot of options, both of these supports are amazing resources and are free to use for College students (and staff).
…and if you’re the type that wants to compare and contrast the two supports to one another, we’ve got you covered!
Bonus Support – LEARN Self-Directed Tutorial: Reading
Now when we say “notetaking” we don’t just mean during an in-person live lecture, and these notetaking supports have your back for both in-person, online, and notetaking while reading!
Writing a paper is made up of many steps, and with each step, there is a technology resource available to support you!
Research
Organize your thoughts
Write
Refine/edit
References
Still looking for more help with Academic Writing and Citation? Check out the supports our friends over at the Academic Success Centre have!
Thought organization, time organization, task organization… *phew* Let’s just look at the supports we’ve highlighted!
Tech resources that are amazing, but didn’t fit nicely into the categories above 😛
Wishing you and your loved ones a relaxing and memorable Holiday season, from all of us here at the Tech Tips: Work Smarter, Not Harder team!
We’re at it again, round three of Fun Features of Microsoft Word! But first, we have to take a moment and say, Word is great, there are so many features and modes, ribbons, toolbars and sections, and fun buttons to click on… but, at the same time having all of those different settings may also make it difficult to navigate Word or to find a particular setting. In walks in Fun Feature #8…
One workaround for all of the different modes, ribbons, toolbars, sections, buttons, etc… would be to customize your Quick Access Toolbar with the most common features you use. This way you don’t have to navigate through the different ribbons and toolbars to find what you are looking for, the Quick Access Toolbar is always right at the top of Word!
LinkedIn Learning: Customize the Quick Access Toolbar
Word comes with predefined “Styles” that you can use to format your document. By applying one of the predefined styles, you can automatically adjust text in your document to have consistent font, font size, font colors, and even spacing. The “heading” styles also create a means of navigating through your document (and don’t worry if you’re not sure what we’re talking about here, it may just be explained in an upcoming fun feature).
Now maybe you have a very particular font format you need to use for papers submitted to your instructors that doesn’t match any of the predefined styles. Guess what?… You can either modify an existing style to match what you need, or create a brand new style with the formatting required! Use the “Modify” option to essentially “save” the style to be used in future documents!
Microsoft Support: Customize or create new styles
Did you use headings in your document?! Well, from an accessibility perspective, Thank you! Headings create a means of navigating through a document with a screen reader, but you can also manually navigate through a document created with headings! So with the use of headings, you are creating a means of quickly finding different sections of information in your document! Wa-hoo!
Microsoft Support: Use the Navigation pane in Word
If you often need to email a Word document you worked on, there is a very quick (single click) way to do it! Plus, you can send the document as a Word doc or a PDF file! All you need to do is add “Email” and “Email as PDF attachment” to your quick access toolbar (Fun Feature #8 above)!
LinkedIn Learning: Email Word or PDF Docs
As a Red River College Polytechnic student, you have access to the latest version of Office 365, including Word, and to LinkedIn learning!
That’s right Tech Tips fans, we’re back with another round of fun features of Microsoft Word! Today we’ll be continuing to highlight fun features in Word, this week focusing in on features that support those who speak multiple languages.
…and if you missed the last blog post we’d suggest you taking a quick peek at it before reading this one as some of the features build from the last post to this one!
Tech Tips Blog Post: Fun Features of Microsoft Word
Maybe you’ve been sent a document with quotes or sections of text in another language, or maybe you find it easier to understand information when it’s in another language other than what the document is written in? Did you know that with Word you can translate sections of text, or translate an entire document into another language? Well you can! …It would sure be silly of us to mention this if it couldn’t be done… 😛
LinkedIn Learning: Translate text in a Word document
We hinted at it in our last blog post, but there seems to be no end to the keyboard shortcuts in Word! In today’s table of shortcuts, special characters and characters used in other languages.
Microsoft Support: Keyboard Shortcuts in Word for Special Characters
| Character | Keyboard Shortcut |
| à, è, ì, ò, ù, or À, È, Ì, Ò, Ù | Ctrl + ` (grave accent) then the letter |
| á, é, í, ó, ú, ý or Á, É, Í, Ó, Ú, Ý | Ctrl + ‘ (single quotation mark) then the letter |
| â, ê, î, ô, û or Â, Ê, Î, Ô, Û | Ctrl + ^ (caret) then the letter |
| ã, ñ, õ or Ã, Ñ, Õ | Ctrl + ~ (tilde) then the letter |
| ä, ë, ï, ö, ü, ÿ, or Ä, Ë, Ï, Ö, Ü, Ÿ | Ctrl + Shift + : (colon) then the letter |
| å or Å | Ctrl + Shift + @ then a or A |
| æ or Æ | Ctrl + Shift + & then a or A |
| œ or Œ | Ctrl + Shift + & then o or O |
| ç or Ç | Ctrl + , (comma) then c or C |
| ð or Ð | Ctrl + ‘ (single quotation mark) then d or D |
| ø or Ø | Ctrl + / (forward slash) then o or O |
| ¿ | Ctrl + Alt + Shift + ? (question mark) |
| ¡ | Ctrl + Alt + Shift + ! (exclamation point) |
| ß | Ctrl + Shift + & then s |
Now if you’re left thinking “gee, it’s great that Word can translate text for me, and type in other languages, but, I’d really love to listen to my document be read aloud, in another language” … you’re not the only one who has thought that, and there is a way! Simply translate the text, either a section of text or the entire document (see Fun Feature #5 above), and then use Read Aloud built into Word! You can even use other features of Immersive Reader on your translated document such as line focus, text spacing, and even identify parts of speech!
Note: not all languages are supported, please check the below link to confirm if the language you would like to translate into and have read aloud is supported.
Microsoft Support: Languages and products supported by Immersive Reader
As a Red River College Polytechnic student, you have access to the latest version of Office 365, including Word, and to LinkedIn learning!
RRC Polytech campuses are located on the lands of Anishinaabe, Ininiwak, Anishininew, Dakota, and Dené, and the National Homeland of the Red River Métis.
We recognize and honour Treaty 3 Territory Shoal Lake 40 First Nation, the source of Winnipeg’s clean drinking water. In addition, we acknowledge Treaty Territories which provide us with access to electricity we use in both our personal and professional lives.