There are things you do as an administrator that not only suck the life out of you, they also take away time. Valuable time that you could be spending coaching new teachers or helping struggling students. Unfortunately, TCEA can’t help you with those. But we can show you tips and tricks to make you more productive and help you gain back some of that lost time.
Screen Shots Made Easier
Want to send your colleague a quick screen shot? Don’t bother with the old school “Print Screen” usage. Pin the Snipping Tool to your tool bar and take a snip of just what you want to share. Mark up, copy/paste, save, or send in a matter of seconds with no cropping or editing needed. Advance features like “Delay” even let you capture images from drop-drown menus for instructional guidance.
Pivot Table Love
Excel has many amazing features like the simple Filter option or advanced Vlookup functions, but the love of excel really lies in the Pivot Tables. Learn how to dissagregate data in simple steps with easy-to-use Pivot Table functions.
Take a look at your data before creating your pivot table. Knowing your data before it is condensed is critical so you can correctly interpret it and make sure that is the story you want it to tell. And keep in mind that not all people are “numbers: people; some people respond better to stories. So, after you’ve created your pivot table(s), be sure to add the story of what your data says. This will help you better communicate to all your stakeholders.
So Many Words!!!
Stop typing into your presentation! TLDR (Too Long Didn’t Read) is a real thing. More than four lines on a slide, throwing everything into bullet format, getting lost in the details… Don’t lose your audience in a slide with too much content. Instead, add a short video or pictures.
You can enrich user experiences with multimedia. PowerPoint allows you to embed videos from YouTube and Vimeo, as well as any videos you may have on your computer. When embedding video, be sure to save the video and the presentation file (PPTx) in the same folder.
Pictures should tell a story. Once you have crafted an enthralling story for your presentation, you need pictures that illustrate each well-defined idea or concept. The simpler the image, the more impact it can have on the viewer.
Need More?
Check out other TCEA blogs on productivity, including this one with three more tips and this one for OneNote users.
