For the first real post in the -Rapid Fire- Blog, I thought I’d pass along some cool tools for anyone using Windows Vista. If you’ve turned on Vista or even walked past a machine with Vista on it at your local electronics store, you’re likely noticed a funny little sidebar full of gadgets that is usually vertically placed along the right hand side of the screen by default.
Well, this little gadget bar or sidebar stays there all the time and you can customize it by placing your own little gadgets into it. Personally, I like to have a memo pad, calculator, google search bar and a few other items in mine. So far, I’ve found that adding these little gadgets is entirely free.
Thinking about students, I’ve found 2 gadgets that might be useful:
1. The Launcher:
http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail.aspx?li=4ccdc564-3d94-48a5-82f6-4693940e4ab6
This is a little box that stays in your gadget bar. You are able to drag & drop icons from your start menu and from your desktop to this little box, clearing your desktop of visual clutter and also making each icon in this Launcher box a single-click access, rather than a double click, which can be tough for some students. The visual distractions of stuff all over the desktop can really bother some students as well. This is just one quick & easy (free) way of cleaning up the desktop and enabling single-click access to programs and files.
2. Text to Speech Bubble:
http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail.aspx?li=44b95b66-6383-41a9-b3aa-3cf7fc6d1fe3&bt=1&pl=1
This is a fun little speech-bubble that stays in your gadget bar allowing users to type or copy/paste text into it. The bubble will then speak the text! It’s not perfect, you can’t change the voice or the rate or the pitch, BUT its quick, its always on your desktop in your gadget bar and its free for Vista users.
More next week!
