Adding Accent Marks

When typing in English, we often type in shorthand or abbreviated form (like OMG!, G2G, etc.). We usually ignore accent marks that we find in foreign words like résumé and replace them with regular a's, e's or i's.

However, when typing or writing in a foreign language, these accent marks are usually important, and can in fact be essential to properly understanding a word or phrase. So how do we add these marks? There's not a key on your keyboard for adding "é" to a word, right? Mine just has a regular "e."

Actually, your keyboard is all you need to add all kinds of accents to your typing. Pretty much every accented letter you need can be accessed and added to your type by entering its "keyboard code," which can be entered by pressing and holding the "ALT" key and entering the particular letter's four-digit code.

For example, you can type the letter "e" with an "accent aigu" (which is what the little line was called in my high school French classes) by entering the code ALT + 0233, which gives you "é."

As the French would say, voilà! It's that simple. Of course the trick is finding out all of these codes, but we've got a great link for you: Arnold Winkelried's Tip Sheet on Special Characters.

Here, towards the bottom of the page, Winkelried has created a table of pretty much every special character you need. Simply scroll through the table and find the accent you need, then look two columns to the right. That column is the code for Windows, which will be some combination of ALT + four numbers.

Three important notes:

• You must use the number pad at the right of your keyboard to enter these codes; you can't use the number bar on the top of the keyboard. Make sure your "Num Lock" is on before entering the codes, or they won't work.
• There are different codes for capital and lower case accented letters.
  
• These codes only work on Windows computers. If you have a Mac, you can still use the above link; you just have to enter a different combination of keys.

So there you have it. Next time you want to type in a foreign language, you'll have all of the proper accents!

New Tools for Back to School

While we all wish summer could go on for ever, school's now back in session for pretty much everyone. With school comes homework, and computers are becoming ever-more useful in helping kids and teens alike get their coursework done. Completing homework more quickly means more free time, and that's what we all want, right?

Aaron recently discovered this list of 50 open-source (i.e. free to use and download) software tools that could be helpful for students who are working on everything from math homework to astronomy projects.

From Aaron:

Here is a listing of 50 Free Tools that may be useful in the centers. Glancing over the listings, there is a graphing calculator program that will be useful, especially for the teens.

The graphing calculator program he's referring to is GraphCalc, a program designed to do everything hand-held calculators can do. These calculators are often essential in high school-level courses like Algebra, Geometry and Statistics, so this program could really come in handy for the older kids.

Check out the full list to see if there's a program to suit your needs, but there really is pretty much something for everyone on there. And best of all, it's all open source, which means it's all yours to use as much as you want.

Tech Tip: Install Your Software

Nowadays, nearly everyone prefers MP3 players to CD or tape players. Most of these MP3 players are really cool little pieces of technology, designed to be easy to fill with music and even easier to operate.

Most MP3 players use simple "Drag and Drop" technology, meaning once the player is connected to a computer (usually through a USB port), all the user has to do is drag a file (music, pictures, video, etc.) from the computer to the player file.

This makes transferring music and other files extremely simple and fast.

However, not all players support this technology. Most notably, Apple's iPod doesn't use "Drag and Drop," instead requiring that users install iTunes and sync their content that way.

We ran into a similar problem here in the CLC the other day. A teen had a new MP4 (music and video) player that he couldn't seem to get to work. We connected it to the computer, converted the video files to multiple formats and dragged them to the player, but nothing seemed to work.

Finally, he mentioned that the player can with a boot CD. After installing the software, we realized that the videos had to be converted and downloaded by that CD in order to work with that player.

A silly way of doing things, but a necessary step.

The moral of the story? Always install the software that comes with your hardware, whether it's an MP3 player, a printer or another device.