Improve Online Reading Comprehension with a Highlight & Right-Click!

Chances are you or your students come across words you don't understand when reading on the . Try as you might to discern the word's meaning using context clues, sometimes the necessary info just isn't there, or you are focused on the task at hand without adequate time to figure out what the word is. There's a super easy and quick way to figure out an unfamiliar word or term you come across online if you are using Google Chrome.

Just Highlight & Right-Click!

Click This GIF to View a Larger Demo of the
Highlight/Right-Click Process

A few minutes ago, I was reading an interesting article on how to get yourself or others to change their mind when I came across a word I was not familiar with: Schadenfreude. So, I did this:

• Double-clicked the word to select/highlight it.
• Right-clicked the word and selected Search Google for "Schadenfreude".
• Read the definition in the new tab that opened up.
• I also clicked the sound icon under the word to hear how it is pronounced.

After getting an idea of what the word meant, I returned back to the tab with the article I was reading and carried on.

Train Yourself & Teach Your Students to Use This Trick

I encourage you to train yourself and teach your students to use this quick trick for improving vocabulary and comprehension. Teaching a new skill in context when the need arises helps transfer it to long-term learning. Quick and natural in context ways to teach this trick include:

• When you and your students are discussing online information which you are projecting in front of a group or the whole class, highlight and right-click a word your students seem unfamiliar with.
• When a student approaches you to ask what a word they are reading online means, talk them through the highlight and right-click trick

I hope this tip has been helpful! If you know other quick tech tricks that enhance learning, please share in the comments below, so we can all learn together.

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All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Please see specifics on my re-use policy before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.

Shortcut for Adding Hyperlinks to Google Docs & Slides (Sheets & Drawings, Too!)

Have you ever discovered that something you usually do with a tech tool in multiple steps can be done far more easily/efficiently in fewer steps? It happens to me all the time! Sometimes, it's just not knowing there's always been another way, and sometimes, a new feature is added to tool and we are just so used to doing things one way we never notice the improvement.

A recent example for me: I discovered while helping facilitate a session on G Suite Basics earlier this summer that adding hyperlinks in Google Docs and Slides (and Sheets and Drawings) has been massively streamlined. Now, if this is old news to you and it's been around for years, please don't tell me. I don't want to know how long I've been missing out on this shortcut!

Up until recently, I've been adding links to Google Docs and Slides the same way I always have:

1. With doc/slideshow open in one Chrome tab, open another Chrome tab.
2. Search for site I want to link to in new Chrome tab.
3. Click on site to open it.
4. Copy URL from browser address bar.
5. Go back to doc/slideshow.
6. Highlight words I want to make into a link.
7. Right-click on words I want to make into a link.
8. Select Link from the menu that pops up.
9. Paste URL into link box and apply.

So, that's nine steps. Not a big deal or burdensome until you realize you could do it in far fewer steps in many cases! I finally noticed it this summer when watching multiple people add links to docs and slides during a professional learning session. 

Here is the new shortcut method I discovered:

1. Highlight the words I want to link in the doc or slide.
2. Right-click the highlighted words and choose Link from the menu that pops up.
3. NOTICE the opportunity to pick from a couple of sites Google nicely found for me. Or search from right within the link dialog for the site I want if the suggestions aren't quite right.
4. Preview the suggested sites if needed. See my quick tutorial video below for a demo of this.
5. Click on the link I want to use.
6. Click Apply. DONE!

That's three to four fewer steps, and a whole lot less clicking and tab switching!!!!

NOTE: It's still best practice to search ahead of time for quality online resources to link to, as this shortcut method only gives two results to choose from. The shortcut method works well if you are fairly certain of what you're looking for.

SECOND NOTE: This shortcut process works in Sheets and Drawings, too!

Because it often helps me to see a demo of a new-to-me skill, I made a short tutorial video on how the process works. You can view it below. I hope you find as much benefit from this shortcut as I have!

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All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Please see specifics on my re-use policy before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.

Time-Saving Tech Tips

You can eat, breathe, and sleep technology, and still not come close to knowing all of the short-cuts which could save you copious amounts of time at work or in your personal life. I was reminded of this when a David Pogue TED talk came across my radar earlier this week. I personally learned six new things from his less than six minute talk! The first tip he shares is my favorite.

Take a few minutes to watch Pogue's presentation. It's entertaining as well as informative. Then, take some time to leave a comment. What's something you learned from this video that you didn't already know? What's your favorite tech time-saver that you think more people should know about? Please share, so we can all learn together!

Been Thinking About CTRL+F & Technology Basics

I read an article, "Why Don't We Teach Kids How to Use CTRL+F?" a couple of days ago and it reminded me of two things:

1. We make a lot of assumptions about what people know about using computers.
2. No matter how much we know, there are always some basic fundamentals that we don't know. Technology has too many facets for anyone to know everything.

For instance, did you know that CTRL+F  is a key combination that works for searching a web page or document in every standard web browser and in Office and PDF documents? It's a shortcut that's been around for a long time. I think I learned about it a couple of years ago and still don't use it consistently. How much of my time has been wasted by scrolling when CTRL+F could have taken me to the info I need so much faster?

If you didn't know about CTRL+F, don't feel bad. According to the article, 90% of folks don't know about it. But now you know, so use it, and pass it on to others!

Why do 90% of us, teachers and students included, not know about such a fundamental computer skill? I encourage you to read the article, as it is relatively short and talks about more than just using CTRL+F, including a few observations about why basic computer literacy might be low on the priority list in education.

After you read it, come back here and share your favorite "computer basic everyone should know" and/or your thoughts on the conclusions drawn in the article.

Blog photo courtesy of Flikr user secretlondon123 with permission under a Creative Commons license agreement.