Handy hints & free software
We’ve put together some handy hints and free software suggestions to help Care and Learning Alliance staff, members, and anyone else who might be interested! We’ll update the list regularly – please get in touch if you come across a link we should add to the list. Email: [email protected]
Free online platforms to help with your creations
Mailchimp – create cool emails
Google Fusion Tables for creating maps from data
WordPress – create a free website
Piktochart – for creating easy infographics
Creative Commons – a nonprofit organisation that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools.
Purple Planet – royalty free music
Online colour picker – for choosing the exact colour for your creations.
Bitly – for creating a smaller url to insert in your documents
Keep Calm creator – for creating a Keep Calm slogan
Online Security
Online Passwords
Click here for advice on how to create a strong password.
Getting rid of photographic metadata
Care and Learning Alliance follow their own policy guidance rules for uploading online images but if you happen to be uploading personal images to the internet at any time, you might find the following advice useful.
Did you know that any photo you take on your camera or phone could have accompanying ‘metadata’ information, including the GPS coordinates of the location at which the photographs were taken, the date and time, the camera shutter setting details, and possibly even the name of the program you used to edit them? You can get rid of the metadata by following these instructions.
Documents
Inserting images in a Word document
If you right click on the image, choose ‘format picture’, layout, Tight, you’ll be able to move your picture around more easily on your page.
Inserting a line break in Publisher
It’s so annoying, isn’t it, when your words are hyphenated in Publisher? Well, you can move the word down to the next line simply by clicking where you want to break a line of text, and pressing SHIFT+ENTER.
Creating a QR code
Go to a QR maker, e.g. http://goqr.me/ Insert the url of what you what to link to, then download.
Creating a Wordle
You can create a pretty word cloud for your documents by following the instructions at http://www.wordle.net
Multimedia
Resizing an image
- Right click on a photo and choose the ‘Open with Microsoft Office 2010’ option, if you have that software.
- Go to Picture tab/Resize…
- From the dropdown menu on the right hand side, choose ‘Web Large’ then click OK.
- Choose File tab and then ‘Save as..’
- Save the file where you want it to be and then attach it to your email from there, or instead of Save as… you can also email it straight from there by choosing ‘Send to … mail recipient’
- Go to right hand side and tick the ‘Attached to the message’ then click create message.
- Either of these two will create a smaller file which is big enough for online purposes.
Inserting a video in PowerPoint 2010 watch a YouTube guide
Editing a video in PowerPoint 2010 watch a YouTube guide
Sending a folder by email
You can find out out to do this by watching this video.
Sending email to a list of people
If you don’t want everyone in your email list to see everyone else’s addresses you can send the email to yourself and then BCC everyone else in. Create a contact called ‘Undisclosed Recipients’ and insert your own email address.
Suspicious emails (also known as phishing scams)
Sometimes we get emails in our inboxes that appear to be from oragnisations such as banks, etc and they can look very convincing. You get to recognise these emails, the more you get, and the key is to DELETE the email, or flag it as spam in your mailbox. NEVER follow links on bogus emails or open attachments.