Category: Office Tips

Not quite 365 but

There are a lot of apps available with your Office 365 subscription.  Yes outlook groups are no longer functional but Teams are a handy way to collaborate not only with colleagues but students as well.  I have had a recent dialog about sharing calendar and have been reviewing the Planner App.  “With Planner, team members can create plans with assigned tasks, and then add automation such as setting due dates that send out reminders and notifications, updating the status of the project and individual tasks, easily sharing and collaborating on files.”

Here is a link to a plan I created if you want to see how it works.   Some options given is to view in Teams, add to Outlook calendar, share files, see progress charts, create “buckets” of items.

Migration has occurred

So now what, you have mailbox space of 100Gb so no more mailbox cleanup messages!  But sometimes too much is too good, how best to organize?  Here are some tips from Microsoft  

This is a helpful one:

Conversation Clean Up is most useful on Conversations with many responses back and forth, especially with many recipients.

Remove redundant messages

On the Home tab, in the Delete group, click Clean Up.
Click one of the following:

Clean Up Conversation    The current Conversation is reviewed, and redundant messages are deleted.

Clean Up Folder    All Conversations in the selected folder are reviewed, and redundant messages are deleted.

Clean Up Folder & Subfolders    All Conversations in the selected folder and any folder that it contains are reviewed, and redundant messages are deleted.

Not death by PowerPoint!

Try these I recently found on a random search

PowerPoint Presentation Hack #1. Use Poll Everywhere To Ask Your Audience Questions and Keep Them Engaged – available in all classrooms

PowerPoint Presentation Hack #2. Use Control + B to Make The Presentation Screen Black and Draw Attention Back to You – and see who is paying attention

PowerPoint Presentation Hack #3. Draw On Your Slides In Real Time During Your Presentation with Control + P – or use the display pen located on the display if presenting in the classroom at CAHS

Click this link to see more but one final

Hack #10. Zoom In and Out of Your Slides to Focus on Specific Areas – and I hope to have presenter view installed in all classrooms by fall to make this hack workable!

Teamwork really does work!

Went to a session sponsored by the College of Business about Microsoft Teams and found out how it might work well in your classes, departments and inter-departments.  Here are some of the highlights –

  • Can embed google drive, dropbox and has better integration with office 365
  • You can create teams, invite members both ECU and guests as well as students.
  • Within a team you can set up channels for students and their assignments.
  • Conversations are easy to start and files can be added and edited directly in the team area
  • Want to see more? Ask to join my team or go to the Microsoft Community for information and training.

A tip you will appreciate!

I am often asked how to convert a PDF to Word if you don’t have Acrobat Pro (which I do).  I found a very easy way to accomplish this task and it works quite well.

Open Word, click File, Open and locate the pdf file, acknowledge the pop up message and the file gets converted!

Full instructions can be found here, go to the Word conversion Method 2 section.  Try it out!

This and That

Email Evolves – From Information Technology and Computing Services –

Over the next few months, ECU is modernizing faculty and staff email. There are four steps to this remodel:

  • Enable the new cloud-based Online Archive folder
  • Switch to Office 365 Exchange Online Protection
  • Move Enterprise Vault items back to your mailbox
  • Migrate staff mailboxes to Office 365

Using your OneDrive – Alyssa De Santis Figiel our University Program Associate recently share the photos from the Scholarship Ceremony another way to share files with colleagues without having to set up special permissions, find out more about using Office 365 and what it can do here.

Working together?

At a recent meeting with the Instructional Technology Consultant’s (ITC’s) of the university we were introduced to Microsoft Teams.  Before I tell you what Teams can do think about this scenario you are involved in multiple projects with multiple people within and outside of ECU wouldn’t it be nice to have all correspondence, files etc in one spot which also allows you to quick chat/comment on something rather than sending emails? Well . . .

Microsoft Teams is a messaging app for teams where all conversations, meetings, files, and notes can be accessed by everyone, all in one place. It’s a place for collaboration and work to happen in the open.

Here’s why you should use it:

  • It makes communicating one-on-one and with groups a snap.
  • Collaboration happens in real time.
  • Everything your team cares about (all your files, docs, contact info, and more) is in one place.

One college has been using it and here is a quote from their ITC “Now that the planner can be integrated into Teams, it is a great way to use both tools at once. I have also integrated a notebook into the team, which also helps keep everything in one place. I haven’t gotten everyone into the chat feature, but the organization part seems to be a nice way to at least get people started in the right direction, at least for us.”

Spring Cleaning – Yes even at work!

Here are some tips for organizing your computer and Blackboard sites.

Remember to Update your Computer Windows and Mac

Hiding courses from previous semesters (they are not gone, just hidden)

Being a good steward of student information (make sure no grade files etc are on your hard drive, they should be saved to pirate drive)

While you are checking My Documents for student information perhaps sort by date modified and clean out those files that are over 5 years old!

Clean up your gradebook.

Organization of content.

Need help with course organization or development contact OET!

 

We have all heard

What’s in your wallet? Advertisement – I am asking a similar question which is “What’s in your Classroom”?  Are you trying something new this semester or have you tweaked something old?  Any light bulb moments?  Is it working or have you tried something that just isn’t going right?

Take a moment and share here or send me an email and I will blog about it!  What might just be old hat to you may be a treasure to some one else, please share!