How many times have you sat down in front of your computer with the very best intention of mastering the Microsoft Office suite of applications? Coffee cup at the ready while thumbing through a 1,200-page manual — there’s got to be a better way!
Sure, there are plenty of online training sites, both free and fee-based. But wouldn’t it be great if you could learn the ins and outs of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint while racking up points along the way?
Enter Ribbon Hero . According to Microsoft Office Labs, “Ribbon Hero is a game for Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, designed to help you boost your Office skills and knowledge. Play games (aka ‘challenges’), score points, and compete with your friends while improving your productivity with Office.”
If Ribbon Hero sounds like your cup of tea, download it for free.
Note: Ribbon Hero requires that you have Office 2007 or 2010 running on either Windows Vista or 7 (32/64 bit).
If you like to supplement your English classes with video content, you’re going to love this site. MovieClips contains a repository of over 12,000 popular movie clips and it is growing.
At the site’s core is a big search box that lets you query its database by actor, title, genre, and several other parameters, including dialogue. Not every movie is represented, of course. But you’ll be surprised at how many scenes turn up when you enter a famous quote. I got positive hits with “I’ll be back,” “Here’s looking at you, kid,” and of course, “How about a little fire, Scarecrow.”
The beauty is that the work of ripping films into segments and converting them to flash has been done for you. And the developers have apparently cleared copyright hurdles by keeping each clip under 2.5 minutes in length.
In the past I’ve created a number of listening and writing activities based on standard movie trailers. But I think that short, single-scene clips could provide more latitude in focusing on specific language forms and expressions, and cultural elements as well. In this sense I think MovieClips has loads of potential. Now, if they would just add an interactive quiz element …
PDFmyURL is a free online tool for converting any web page to PDF. To use it, simply visit the site, enter the URL of any website or blog, and click the orange “P” icon to the right. Presto! The conversion is virtually instantaneous, and you can download the file to your computer.
No software installation is required other than a PDF reader such as Adobe Reader or my personal favorite, Foxit Reader.
Why bother changing a perfectly good HTML file into PDF? I can think of several reasons. First, PDF files are small, portable and easy to share. Second, no Internet connection is required to view them. And since formatting is retained across platform, they display the same on PC or Mac. But another little known secret is that many e-book readers will display PDF files. Handy for reading news, blog posts, etc., on the go.
There was only one noticeable drawback that I found, namely that flash contents, including movies embedded from YouTube and Vimeo, were not visually represented 0n the pages I test converted. All other pictures seemed to display just fine, however.
I think this tool could be especially useful in non-wired class settings for displaying web content via projector or whiteboard or for distributing printed copies to students.