Category — howto

This post is dedicated to Curlywurlygurly – I have a magic button for you!

When Microsoft introduced the new Office Suite 2007, I went right out and paid full price for a copy. I opened Word with my head full of feel-good marketing stuff about a new look and ribbons. It sounded pretty and superior to the old version

I was totally flustered when I saw it for the first time.

Where the hell were the file menus? What was all that mess across the top of the screen? Why are there tabs all over the place and why don’t they make any sense? Why did Microsoft have to so brutally kick me out of my comfort zone and take away all the stuff I was familiar with?

But I’m no complainer, so I gave it a try. I typed up a blog post in there intending to copy and paste it into WordPress. I generally use a lot of keyboard shortcuts when I type, so at first everything was OK – but everytime I wanted to use something from on of the old toolbars, it wasn’t there. I wanted to change the properties on the document and I couldn’t figure out where to go. I wanted to save the document so I could possibly retrieve it later – assuming Best Buy could sort of broken bits of laptop because I was ready to drop the thing off the roof of the house.

I wanted my damn file menus back!

But then, the fog of frustration rolled back to reveal this:

This is the Office Button – it’s in the upper left corner of the Word screen. Click it to reveal this:

And there they are – all those items you miss from the old File menu.

Look under Prepare for nifty things like changing document properties and encrypting documents.

I am ashamed to say it took me several weeks to realize that Office Button was a button that did anything. I figured it was like the Internet Explorer icon that I see in the upper left of my screen as I type this. Just a little picture to let me know which program I’m using – in case I forget. A mere decoration, but not something useful.

The Office Button is the only complaint I have about Word 2007 now. I like the ribbons – no more searching through menus and drop-down lists for basic stuff; it’s all in the open. I can do what I want to do much, much faster now.

I have let go of my Word 2003 blankie and I am taking my first steps. If I were several years younger, someone would be offering me a cookie and some praise right now – I’m still open to that offer at the ripe old age of 32 – especially if you’ve got chocolate chip!

I recently put together a Power Point presentation for a client. I used the MS Office 2007 version which took some time to get used to (mostly because I had a hard time finding anything on those ribbons).

So, I thought I might save someone out there a little aggravation and post a few basic tips on creating presentations using Power Point 2007. Please keep in mind these tips assume you have some understanding of Power Point already – if you’re a beginner, go here or here.

Choosing a preset design

1. From the menu, click Design.
2. Click .  This will show you all the themes available within Power Point
3. Click More themes available on Microsoft Office Online… for even more themes.

All of these themes can be modified to suit your needs, or you can simply create your own and make the Power Point slides look anyway you want them to. Here are some helpful places on the Design menu you might want to play around with if you want to get creative:

1. Design > Colors – Allows you to use built in colour themes or create your own.
2. Design > Fonts – Use a built in theme font, or create a new one.
3. Design > Effects – If you use Quick Styles to format the shapes in your presentation, choosing from the Effects menu will reformat those shapes for you using the new effect.
4. Design > Background Styles – Change the background colour using built in colour schemes, or get creative and create your own.

Creating effects is where I ran into trouble – getting things like graphics and text to enter and exit the way I wanted and when I wanted.

Effects: entering and exiting

1. Click Animations > Custom Animation.
2. A Custom Animation panel should appear on the right of the screen.
3. Click on the text or graphic you want to apply an effect to.
4. Click the Add Effect button.
5. Choose an effect from the drop down list.

Let’s assume for a moment you’ve chosen Entrance > Fade for your graphic or text. This means that your graphic will fade into view. To have the same graphic or text fade out, follow the steps 2 -5 above and choose Exit > Fade.

The Custom Animation panel on the right now looks something like this:

Figure 1. Custom Animation Panel

Click the green star in the Custom Animation panel to change the entrance or click the orange star to change the exit using the drop-down menus above to change how the effect starts and the speed at which the effect moves.

This is the point at which timing becomes important. The preset speeds you chose may be too fast – even on Very Slow – and pausing the graphic or text before it exits might be necessary.

Pausing an effect

In this case, I want to pause the graphic before it fades out so the viewer can look at it without feeling rushed.

1. Click the orange star.
2. From the drop-down menu, choose Timing…
3. Use the up arrow in the Delay field to add a 4 second pause to the graphic.
   
   Figure 2. Adding delayed timing.
4. Click OK.

Linking slides

If you want the presentation to play without needing to click something after every slide, you’ll need to link them together so they each slide will advance automatically. For the first slide:

1. On the Animations menu, uncheck the On Mouse Click option.
2. Check the Automatically After option and use the up arrow to put a 2 second (or so) pause between slides.

For subsequent slides:

1. Ensure that On Mouse Click option is unchecked.
2. Ensure that Automatically After option is checked.
3. Ensure the first effect in the next slide (and subsequent slides!) is checked to start After Previous. This will force the effect in the new slide to start after the previous slide is done playing.

These are a few of the basic tips I found useful in Power Point once I figured them out. Happy creating!

Title: The Explosive Child
Author: Ross W. Greene, Ph.D.
Publisher: Harper
Pages: 275 (not including resources or index)
Price: $18.95 CAD

I picked this book up from Odin Books as a way to better understand the child who lives above us. Joe and I rent the bottom half of a house and the child who lives above us is a bright and articulate child of three years old – except for his extremely explosive temper tantrums.

I don’t mean the normal crying or whining that happens when a child is hungry or tired, but the sort of screaming, kicking and all out tantrum of a child who is enraged. He doesn’t have a tantrum everyday, but we hear at least two a week on average in our downstairs apartment.

Obviously this both alarms and irritates us. I’m not a parent, but I do have a fair bit of experience with children and I’ve only seen one child out of the many I’ve cared for have a tantrum that bad – and that was because I wouldn’t let him hit his infant brother with a stick.

We’ve all seen a child throwing a fit in a store or playground and watched the parents try to scold, restrain or sweet-talk the child into better behaviour. Most people think “If that were my kid, I’d give him a swift kick in the pants! What a brat!” I’ve been guilty of that thought many times and after reading this book I have more empathy for both the parents of the explosive child and the child themselves.

Dr. Greene encourages readers to move beyond seeing the kid as a brat and to see them as a person with a very specific learning disability. These children are motivated to do well, they want to do the right thing and they understand the consequences of yelling, screaming, swearing, hitting and destroying things – but they lack the skills necessary for frustration tolerance, adaptability and flexibility.

What do you do for a child who has trouble reading? You get him a tutor to help him learn the skill. The same principle applies to a child who cannot tolerate any kind of frustration and cannot be flexible in their thinking; you teach them these skills.

The book then delves into the different ways of dealing with an explosive child.

First there is Plan A: “Do as I say because I said so.” This way of thinking usually causes the explosive child to completely lose it. They feel their opinions are not being heard and don’t matter and they’re right. Plan A thinking doesn’t allow for an opinion other than the parent’s opinion.

Then there is Plan B: “You don’t want to do that? How come?” This approach lets the child know they are being listened to and that the parent wants to work out a mutually satisfying outcome to the problem at hand.

Finally, Plan C: “OK, let’s do it your way.” A last resort when the explosion has already happened and the child is too far gone to be reasonable. This allows the child to calm down and Plan B can be revisited later when both parties are calmer.

Plan B uses Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) which is the cornerstone of this book and is explored and discussed in great depth.

Dr. Greene takes readers through many different scenarios, adds in the difficulties of siblings, spouses, teachers and other caregivers – all while showing the use of CPS to help a child move from exploding on the slightest provocation to a child who can say “I’m frustrated because…”

This book doesn’t cover your average child who really is just being a brat, or who regularly uses whining and crocodile tears to get a slightly over-indulgent parent to give them what they want. It is directed at parents whose child is regularly having total meltdowns over everyday things and who may have additional issues like ADHD. The issue of medicating an explosive child is also covered and Dr. Greene does talk about some of the medications that could help a child, but cautions against running right out and accepting the first drug offered. In his view, a prescription pad isn’t the solution to an explosive child – but medication can assist in using CPS by helping the child be calmer.

The writing can seem a little repetitive while you’re actually reading the book - he covers CPS/Plan B every way to Sunday – but the result is that when you’ve read the book, you really understand the issue and the solution. The tone of the book is friendly and does not lay blame. Dr. Greene simply talks about what’s not working now, why it doesn’t work and what will work.

My only complaint about the book would be that the information regarding different medications could have been presented more clearly – perhaps in a table – to make it easier to read and compare the types of drugs available and their possible side effects.

This book isn’t a quick fix to the perfect child, but it’s a great start for parents who are serious about giving their explosive child the skills to think more clearly in frustrating situations.

If nothing else, I have a better idea of how the child above us must be feeling – and the difficulties his parents must have in living with an explosive child. I doubt this will do a lot to curb my annoyance at being woken at 6:30 a.m. by an earsplitting screaming fest, but I’ll be less inclined to think they’re just letting him run wild above our heads.

More information is available at the Center for Collaborative Problem Solving.