SchoolCounselor.com eNewsletter #89

December 19, 2007

Recently, I went crazy trying to figure out why the movies that I inserted into my PowerPoints were not playing. Instead, I would get a white screen with nothing in it. I finally figured it out after quite some time and thought I would pass it on to you in case you have experienced the same thing.

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The Internet is a wonderful educational tool but as a parent you obviously want to protect your children from viewing pornography and adult websites. FreeShield is the simple, easy to use solution to change your PC into a safe educational tool by filtering out pornography. FreeShield is the only Software to help you maintain Parental Controls - for safer family surfing parental control software that gives you FREE complete control. It can be as strict or open as you want.

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Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing. It uses 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience.

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Parenting Moves Online: Parents’ Internet Actions and Attitudes, 2007, a new Cable in the Classroom/Common Sense Media poll conducted by Harris Interactive®

The majority of parents in the United States are taking action to ensure their children are safe and responsible while using the Internet, according to a new poll commissioned by Cable in the Classroom/Common Sense Media and conducted by Harris Interactive®. On September 26, Cable in the Classroom and Common Sense Media released the results of a survey of parents. Explore these links to learn more about the survey, recommendations and background information.

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Today’s kids know how to use the technology, but do they understand Internet safety concerns, cyber ethical dilemmas and how to think critically about the media and technology they use? Point Smart. Click Safe., a new cable initiative, helps you teach them how to be smart, safe and savvy in the digital world.

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Perhaps you want to put your school's logo, your name, a copyright symbol, or even a link to a website on every slide of your PowerPoint presentation. Most people would do this on the first slide and then copy and paste it on every other slide. This works although can be time consuming, especially if you have to change what you insert on each and every slide if you one day update your show. There is an easier way (of course). Whatever you insert on the Master slide shows up on every slide in the show! By the way, you can change color, font size, and other attributes of slide Titles or other areas of the slide across the whole show this way as well. Here is how you do it:

1. From the View menu, select Master » Slide Master. The slide master and Slide Master View toolbar appear.

2. To make changes to your slides, in the Slides area, select the Slide Master (slide 1). To make changes to your title slide(s), in the Slides area, select the Title Master (slide 2). HINTS: You can work on the master slide just as you would a regular slide. If there is no title master, on the Slide Master View toolbar, click INSERT NEW TITLE MASTER.

4. When you have finished making your changes, from the View menu, select Normal OR from the Slide Master View toolbar, click CLOSE MASTER VIEW. The changes will appear on all slides in your presentation.

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1. Open a New Word document

2. Pull down the Insert Menu

3. Click on: Object...

4. From the Object window scroll down to: Wave Sound

5. Highlight: Wave Sound

6. Click on: Okay

7. You will now see the Sound Object window (looks like a tape recorder)

8. Click on the red dot button to record. Default time is set for 60 seconds maximum. You can record longer by stopping and starting at the end of the first 60 seconds recorded.

9. Click on the black square button to stop.

10. A speaker icon will appear in your Word document.

11. To play back the sound file, simply double-click on the speaker icon. You may have to tell the recipient of the document to turn their speakers on and to double click the speaker icon to hear you.

By the way, if you are using an e-mail software program such as Microsoft Outlook (and not a web based e-mail program), you can send the document more quickly by going up to File >>> Send To >>> Mail Recipient (as Attachment). Of course, in the To and Cc boxes, enter recipient names, and add any additional information or select any additional options you want.

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Schools in New Jersey are buying into a new program that gives bilingual students with limited English ability iPods, reports Winnie Hu in the New York Times. The hope is that by singing along to popular English songs, students will sharpen their vocabulary and grammar skills. The program has already had an effect on Stephanie Rojas, who moved to New Jersey from Puerto Rico last year, as she now prefers to sing in English. Incorporating the devices into instruction began when Grace Poli, a media specialist, approached the district three years ago about buying 23 iPods for an after-school bilingual program. She then compiled an eclectic mix of music, typed out the lyrics and deleted the nouns -- and in turn the verbs and adjectives -- to force the students to fill in the missing words and thereby learn their meanings. Poli said her Spanish-speaking students were able to move out of bilingual classes after just a year of using the digital devices, compared to an average of four to six years for most bilingual students. After viewing the successes, the district plans to try iPods with students who have learning disabilities and behavioral problems. In addition, one of New Jersey's poorest urban districts, Union City District, will give out 300 iPods as part of a $130,000 experiment.

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bNetS@vvy is a bimonthly e-newsletter offering parents, guardians, and teachers tools to help kids ages 9 to 14 stay safer online. Please join our mailing list to receive future issues.

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Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, who is dying from pancreatic cancer, gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007, before a packed McConomy Auditorium. In his moving talk, "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals.

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Whether you're traveling for pleasure or business, TripIt makes life on the road easier by automatically organizing all your trip details into one master itinerary. Should you forget or lose your travel plans, no worries. No matter where in the world you are, all your plans are safe and at your fingertips. Plus, TripIt automatically provides helpful information like weather, maps, directions, and more, so you're always ready to hit the road. TripIt even makes it easy to share and plan trips with your friends, family and colleagues. TripIt. Organize your travel

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This holiday season, give the gift that saves lives. Almost 80% of out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrests happen at home. This holiday season, make sure family and friends know how to save the life of a loved one with CPR.

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Seasonal depression, often called seasonal affective disorder (SAD), is a depression that occurs each year at the same time, usually starting in fall or winter and ending in spring or early summer. It is more than just "the winter blues" or "cabin fever." A rare form of SAD known as "summer depression," begins in late spring or early summer and ends in fall.

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The Universal Encouragement Program (UEP) is an online guidance assessment designed to help counselors and other youth-serving professionals document students' career and education needs, interests, and experiences. ESI has designed the assessments for the purpose of informing guidance and encouragement efforts that lead to improved educational attainment and career decision-making. The UEP is a time-saving online tool that will gather and report critical data to inform guidance services, program development, and school improvement efforts.

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Print up some tags for those gifts. There are many different designs. You can even fill them out before you print them!

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With Pandora you can explore this vast trove of music to your heart's content. Just drop the name of one of your favorite songs or artists into Pandora and let the Genome Project go. It will quickly scan its entire world of analyzed music, almost a century of popular recordings - new and old, well known and completely obscure - to find songs with interesting musical similarities to your choice. Then sit back and enjoy as it creates a listening experience full of current and soon-to-be favorite songs for you. You can create as many "stations" as you want. And you can even refine them. If it's not quite right you can tell it so and it will get better for you.

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Editor alumnus Kyle Pott pointed us toward a collection of striking, high-quality wallpaper images, all available free from Microsoft Technical Evangelist Mike Swanson's blog

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In 2004 James Surowiecki wrote a best-selling book called "The Wisdom of Crowds." The book's premise is that diverse, decentralized people voting independently are better at predicting future events or trends than individuals, small groups or even domain experts. There are tools for surveying groups of independent voters, but they're either slow, expensive or both. We built Ask500People to gather input and opinion data in minutes instead of days, and to create a platform that other applications can integrate.

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Microsoft offers free templates perfect for this time of year. You simply download the template and fill in the blanks.

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The downloads are available in mp3 and in m4b audio book format for iTunes and the iPod. The advantage of using the iPod format is that it remembers where you stop in a file.

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A Holy Splash of Time

People throughout the world have viewed and been inspired by the three movies which make up our Cherished Blessings series. Combining soothing music with soul-stirring messages of inspiration, hope and love, our movies will relax your body, rejuvenate your mind and renew your spirit. We think of them as virtual therapy for the soul.

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Artsonia is the world's largest kids' art museum. Our dream is that every child will have an online art gallery, reflecting their masterpieces from pre-school through high-school, preserved forever!

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