The whole thing is a lot easier to explain if you are a frequenter of Facebook and Twitter. On your initial visit you are asked to choose whether you are a teacher or student. Of course you choose teacher and go through the typical sign up. Once through you will be presented with this page.

Here you will notice the timeline similar to Facebook. Before you get to doing that you should create a group. Groups can be classes, small groups, etc and when you post items, only they will be able to see it, unless made public. Once a class is created a code is given for students to join the group. Students need only visit the site, sign up as a student, supply the given code and they are in. (Note. Students don’t need to supply email addresses.

Something you will notice above the posting bubble are several categories, leaving you plenty of options for items to send. (files, links, posts, events, assignments, etc…) When these various posts appear in the timeline students are able to store them in their locker for later retrieval.

I look to see several things added to the site. Mainly text messages to give it the complete twitter-esque feel. But for now I am very satisfied.

Here is a link to their guides. Edmodo Guides

After you have completed your slide show in PowerPoint and have typed the notes for each slide in the notes area, you can send both to Word to edit. In PowerPoint 2007 the option is under the publish option when hitting the start Orb. It should say something like “create handout in Microsoft Word”. In earlier versions you can find it in File>Send To> Word. After telling it you want to edit in Word, it gives you a few options. You can place your notes or blank lines next to your slides if you want three slides per page, or you can put the notes or blank lines under the slides if you want a larger, one slide per page. Editing your handout in Word will give you quite a bit more editing power as opposed to printing the handout straight from PowerPoint.

The fact is that Outlook, as do most email clients, has solutions for organizing your digital correspondance. Most of these solutions can be found in their Rules section.

A rule is simply a way of telling Outlook how to handle an email when it comes in. Some examples of rules include:

• sorting mail by contact or keyword and having it placed in a specified folder
• printing  certain emails automatically
• block email by keyword or sender
• Remove spam

Here is how to do it.

1. Click on Tools in the Outlook toolbar
2. Select Rules and Alerts
3. Select New Rule
4. Select whether you want to make your rule based on sender, keyword, or one of the many other setting available, then hit Next.
5. Select the condition. You can select multiple choices.
6. Define the condition. In the bottom box you will notice that the conditions you chose are now appearing like links. These can now be clicked to specify what you want. Hit Next when you are done.
7. Select your action. Here you can decide what happens to the email. Send it to a folder, delete it, or print it automatically.
8. Your final step is deciding if there is an exception. Place a check mark next to any exceptions, then click next.
9. You now have the option of turning the rule on, or deciding whether to use it on email that is already in your inbox. Click Finish.
10. You will now return to the Rules menu screen. Return here if you ever want to stop a rule by unchecking the box next to it. Click Apply.

That’s it. There are a lot of options to choose from. The best way to learn more is to just jump in and get your hands dirty. If you don’t like how a rule works you can always delete it by returning to the rules menu.

Easy Test Maker is an online test generator that has the ability to make multi-part exams with minimal setup time, and it’s free. Typically you only need to select the question type and begin typing your tests content. It handles multiple choice, fill in the blank, short answer, true/false, and matching.

Aside from ease of use there are a couple of added bonuses in using this solution. You also have the ability to quickly generate answer sheets, and saved tests can be easily accessed anywhere you have an internet connection.

If these features aren’t enough for you and you want to create multiple versions of the same test, and manage a question bank you can sign up with their premium account(14.95 per year).

If you are looking for a less web-based solution you could aslo check out the free templates available to you through Word. Word offers a pretty good test template for creating multi-part tests. These templates can be accessed via their website or through Word itself. To access the templates in Word, open a new document. Under templates select “more” and navigate to the quizzes and tests. There you will find a handful of useful templates for creating your tests. You won’t get the ease of generating answer sheets, or ability to access your work online, but you will find that you won’t have to do any more formatting than copy and pasting.

Other solutions? Let us know in the comments.

This guide assumes that you have Excel and Word, and that you have an Excel file with information that you would like to sort into labels. Let’s take a look at your Excel file first.

Mail merge works by analyzing your Excel data. It recognizes the first row(usually “A”) as the heading, and all information below it as the data relating to each heading.

Example. Cell A1 might have the heading of “First Name”. Below are Bob, Tom, Scott, Adrienne, etc. While doing a mail merge you might tell Word to place the data from “first name” on each label. So in order to do this, you will need to make sure that your headings are lined up in the first row, and all of the data relating to each heading is placed in the columns directly beneath them. If you have headings for other information in other rows or directly below any other heading, you are going to have trouble.

Now that we have it saved, lets move on to our guide.

1. Open Word.

2a. If you have an earlier version than Office 2007, you will find the Mail Merge Wizard in Tools>Letters and Mailings. Go there and select the Mail Merge Wizard, then jump to step 3.

2b. If you have Office 2007 you will find the Mail Merge Wizard in Mailings>Start Mail Merge

3. You will now have a wizard pane to the far right. Start by telling it that you want labels.

4. Click “Next” and then “Label Options” A box will pop up telling you to select your label type. By default, Word has most label types. You may have to install from a disk if you have labels that Word doesn’t recognize. Click OK when done.

5. You should now choose the location of where your data is located, so choose “Use Existing List”. Hitting next will bring up a browser window. Use it to find your Excel file, then hit OK. If your file contains multiple sheets, you might need to repeat this guide for each. If so, select the first sheet.

The next box to pop up will allow you to sort, filter, and remove any of the information contained in your Excel file. Click the header at the top of each column to choose sort and filter options. You can also manually remove data by removing the check mark from beside the content. Hit OK to leave the window, then hit “Next”.

6. You will now arrange the layout of your labels. The wizard can automatically format the data as an address block or greeting line. To do this select “Address Block”.

To tell Word where to place your date you will need to match the fields. Select “Match Fields”.

A new box will pop up. This box contains all the information that typically appears in an address block, with drop down lists next to each. Here you will select which header goes in it’s place. So if you have a header in your excel file called “First Name” you would probably want to select that from the list next to “First Name”(though you could put any data there).

When you have told Word where to place your information, hit OK, and then “Update All Labels”.

7. Click “Next” and you should now see a preview of your labels. If all looks well, then click “Next” to complete the mail merge. You will now have two options. You can either edit your labels, or print them.

Helpful? Other ideas? Let us know in the comments.