Thursday, March 19, 2009

bNetS@vvy: Gaming, Kids, and Responsible Parenting: A Tech-Savvy Dad's Point of View

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Safewave - Creating iLANDS of Safety for Kids Online

The FREE Solution to Internet Safety for Kids

The only FREE & SECURE internet safe haven for children aged 5-18 enriched with education, games and social interactions all in an age appropriate web site.

http://www.safewave.org/index.php

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

SchoolCounselor.com eNewsletter #103

This issue sponsored by:

Getting Ready for Middle School, High School and Life after School Transition Information and Guides www.schoolguides.org

Are you looking for free or low-cost and effective transition information for your students and their families? Our guides are on a CD that can be adapted to your school, district or agency and they are available in English and Spanish. Order forms, sample pages and additional free transition resources are available for preview at
www.schoolguides.org


SchoolCounselor.com eNewsletter #103

Welcome to SchoolCounselor.com, an electronic newsletter designed to advance counselors' level of technological literacy, application, and integration. You will find practical solutions and answers to technology related problems, especially as they apply to your job as counselor. If you would like to share a tip or trick, or if you would like to ask a question, e-mail Russ Sabella at newsletter@schoolcounselor.com.

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Posters
Beautiful ... Inspiring .. Motivational ... Touching
Counseling Posters for your Office and Home
http://www.schoolcounselor.com/posters



TIPS AND TRICKS

Can I view PowerPoint presentations without having Microsoft PowerPoint?
Click
here for the answer.

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How to Open a Jammed CD or DVD Drive on a PC or Laptop?
By Joshua Thomas
Sometimes if the CD or DVD drives are old they tend to get stuck for one reason or the other. But its very easy to open a stuck CD/DVD drive using a paper clip. Click here to
see how.

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Chart Advisor
Ever struggled to find just the right chart for your data? Chart Advisor was created as a concept test to explore new ways Excel users can create graphs quickly and effectively. Based on the data in your spreadsheet, it identifies, ranks, and displays an array of charts most relevant to you so you can make the most out of your presentation.
http://www.officelabs.com/projects/chartadvisor/Pages/default.aspx

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Microsoft Outlook: Defer your email sending (for many good reasons)
Source:
http://lifehacker.com/5151771/top-10-outlook-boosters
Maybe you've finally finished your magnum opus message, but you don't want to send it out at 2:13 a.m. and have your recipients wonder about your sanity. Perhaps you want to be out of the office when your message about the new coffee pricing hits inboxes. In those and many other situations, delaying your email sending can be a great idea. You can change the options on each individual message to delay a sending, as we've explained, but the How-To Geek (this guy really knows his Outlook, eh?) offers a compelling argument for delaying all Outlook messages by something like five minutes. That way, you've always got at least a few deep breaths' time to go back and fix Exactly What You Think About Steve and similar messages.
Here’s how you do it.

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Reduce Your Rent with This Simple Letter
Property values are down, times are tough, and the Wall Street Journal details how to use the current economic situation to significantly reduce your rent with this simple fill-in-the-blank letter to your landlord.
http://lifehacker.com/5152390/reduce-your-rent-with-this-simple-letter

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The Six Ways To Add A Chat Room To Your Website
In an effort to foster more real-time communication between users of your site, readers of your blog, or visitors to your social profile, a chat room is ideal. Fortunately, there are many free chat room services which allow you to create your own room and either provide a simple link to that room, or add that chat room to your site.
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/the-six-best-chat-rooms-for-your-site/

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Brupt - Online Document Search Tool.
Easily search for Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Adobe PDF documents indexed by Google. Simply select the document type you need, enter your keyword and click on “Search”.
http://brupt.com/

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eSurveysPro.com
Create free surveys online, gather responses and analyze results fast, easy, professional.
http://www.esurveyspro.com/

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Common and Helpful Keyboard Shortcuts
Source:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13880_3-10167362-68.html
• Print preview: Ctrl-F2 (also Ctrl-Alt-I in Word)
• Add hyperlink: Ctrl-K
• Increase font size one point in Word: Ctrl-[
• Decrease font size one point in Word: Ctrl-]
• Open the Format dialog box with Font tab selected: Ctrl-Shift-F (also Ctrl-D in Word)
• Open the dictionary (Word 2003) or the reference pane (Word 2007): Alt-Shift-F7
• Select a row in Excel: Shift-Spacebar
• Select a column in Excel: Ctrl-Spacebar
• Add a line to the current cell in Excel: Alt-Enter

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Exploring Ways to Embed Tables & Spreadsheets in Web Pages
http://www.labnol.org/software/embed-tables-spreadsheet-data-in-websites/7435/

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Create Animated GIFs for free!
Use the form below to upload the pictures you want to animate. Then click upload, and we'll do the rest. Once our system has processed the images and created an animated GIF out of them, you will be provided with a download link.
http://www.makeagif.com/

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WORTHY WEBSITES AND SOFTWARE

The Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool checks computers running Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows Server 2003 for infections by specific, prevalent malicious software—including Blaster, Sasser, and Mydoom—and helps remove any infection found. When the detection and removal process is complete, the tool displays a report describing the outcome, including which, if any, malicious software was detected and removed.
http://www.microsoft.com/security/malwareremove/default.mspx

Also, Watch this video to find out how viruses and worms can infect your computer. Learn about the three main ways you can help to protect yourself from computer viruses.

http://www.microsoft.com/protect/videos/virus.mspx

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Chart Tool
I would probably just use Excel although this may be easier for you. ... Charts and graphs are a great tool because they communicate information visually. On Onlinecharttool.com you can design and share your own graphs online and for free.
http://www.onlinecharttool.com/

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Outlook on the Desktop is one of those little software utilities that are tough for headline-writing Lifehacker editors—the name explains exactly what it does!—but great for anyone who uses it. The utility embeds a transparent calendar with all your appointments onto your Windows desktop, giving you the same kind of at-a-glance awareness as those giant paper calendars made for the physical desktop you put your computer on. The app requires .NET 2.0, but installs it if you don't have it already.
http://www.outlookonthedesktop.com/

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Posterous
A very simple way to start blogging!
http://posterous.com/

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FederalStudentAid on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/user/FederalStudentAid

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SnappyFingers
Want a new search engine to try out? Check out SnappyFingers, a Q&A search engine that has a data set of over 13 million questions. It limits its data pool to just FAQs. You can try it at
http://www.snappyfingers.com

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SiteLauncher is an add-on for Firefox that gives you a super-quick way to open your favorite websites using only your keyboard. One special hotkey brings up the 'Launcher', followed by a unique key to launch a site.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10127

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Dropbox
Have you ever wished that you could access your files from anywhere? We made Dropbox because we were tired of emailing files to ourselves or carrying around a USB key. I absolutely love this site as it has resolved the problem of working on files from work and at home. I save the file in a special dropbox folder and when I turn on my other computer, everything is updated! It’s the old computer “briefcase” although much better. Once installed, any file you drop into your Dropbox folder will synchronize and be available on any other computer you've installed Dropbox on, as well as from the web. Also, any changes you make to files in your Dropbox will sync to your other computers, instantly.
http://www.getdropbox.com/install

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FoxitPDF Preview Handler Loads PDFs in Outlook 2007
By
Jason Fitzpatrick
Windows only: If you're in need of a light-weight PDF previewer for messages in Outlook 2007, you can now plug FoxitPDF, the speedy and free PDF viewer, directly into it. Tim Heuer, software developer behind the Method of Failed blog, found that loading up Adobe Acrobat to do a quick preview of a PDF in his email was entirely overkill. To speed up his email workflow, he put together a plugin for Outlook 2007 that loads PDF files with FoxitPDF.
http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2007/02/27/14001.aspx

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Software Savings: Microsoft Office on the cheap
... But you can get a version of Office 2007 more cheaply, provided you can do without some of its business-oriented components, such as Outlook or Access (not to be confused with Outlook Express, which is part of Windows XP, and has been replaced by Windows Mail in Vista).

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WithTinyChat you can create your own chatroom and invite people through one simple link. Try it.
http://www.tinychat.com/

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FreeFileSync is an open source utility to compare and synchronize folders. It can be used for fast and easy configurable sync operations between two folders without restricted or overloaded UI interfaces. You can drag and drop the folders for comparing and synchronization. The application has a split window display by which you can see the list of file which are not available in the second folder selected.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/freefilesync/


Data Boot Camp for School Counselors
and Administrators - CD

Russell A. Sabella, Ph.D.

My newest CD is designed to help you become more proficient in using Microsoft Excel™ to make data an important part of your comprehensive school counseling program. From data-driven decision making, to monitoring progress, to reporting the positive impact you're having on kids -- this CD will demystify how it's done.

With the Data Boot Camp for School Counselors and Administrators, what you see and hear on the videos is what you do. At your fingertips, you'll have access to 30 videos and lots of graphics, tips, tricks, and resourceful links. This straightforward step-by-step approach makes learning how to use Microsoft Excel™ (and a bit of PowerPoint™) as easy and convenient as watching television. Data Boot Camp will help school counseling students, practitioners, administrators, and counselor educators to more easily unlock the power of data so you can more effectively support student achievement.

The content on the CD is equivalent to a full-day workshop in the computer lab!

Visit and learn more about the contents of the CD and view a couple of sample videos (Remember, these samples may take a few moments to load because you are online. However, on the CD, this is not an issue because the videos are all located on the CD itself!).
http://www.schoolcounselor.com/store/data-bootcamp.htm

Only $18.95 (FREE shipping)
Please allow 5-7 working days to arrive


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JUST FOR FUN

befunky
Turn your photos into incredible artwork with one click
http://www.befunky.com/

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Custom Tombstone Message
http://www.jjchandler.com/tombstone/

This site also allows you to make other mockups such as street signs and warning signs too.

If you like this, check out:
Fake magazine covers and comics with your picture
http://www.magmypic.com/

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How to Cure Someday Syndrome
Someday Syndrome: not doing what you want to because you don’t know what it is, probably because you’re procrastinating about it, or because you have too much stuff getting in your way.
http://www.wikihow.com/Cure-Someday-Syndrome

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The Newspaper Clipping Generator as the name suggests is an online utility that lets you create fake newspaper clippings. Just fill in provided fields with your text, and click on “Generate” button. Once the clipping is generated, you can easily download it to your computer and do whatever you want with it, i.e. add it to your social networking profile or post it on your blog.
http://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp

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The SchoolCounselor.com newsletter may contain links to sites on the Internet owned and operated by third parties. SchoolCounselor.com is not responsible for the availability of, or the content located on or through, any such third-party site. Information in this document is provided "as is," without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and freedom from infringement. The user assumes the entire risk as to the accuracy and the use of this document. SchoolCounselor.com will not be liable for any damages of any kind arising from the use of this information, including, but not limited to direct, indirect, incidental, punitive, and consequential damages.

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Copyright, 2009. All Rights Reserved. Contact Dr. Russell Sabella at news@schoolcounselor.com.