Archive
Step-by-step how to set up a delegate for your mail account in MS-Outlook 2010 on MS-Exchange 2010
We are just using the default options here – explore more on your own, as you wish (e.g. Let someone else mind your busyness). You need to use MS-Outlook – I don’t see an option in OWA to set up delegate access. But your delegate will carry over to OWA if you prefer to use the webmail client.
Next question: what does the delegate see/do?
How to merge PowerPoint 2010 slide shows
- If for example you work with class-size sets of PowerPoint slideshows – which may be unpractical -: The command for merging them is a bit hidden:
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And the process a bit clumsy (does not allow for simultaneous selection of multiple slideshows).
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Plus you have to double click the thumbnails of the slides of the show that you want to insert).
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But it works: Now you can e.g. print in one sitting, including multiple slides
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If MS-Exchange room mailbox does not auto-decline, but forwards conflicting requests
- This room should auto-decline conflicting requests, but forwards them:
- If you log in as the room and look under Options / See more options / Settings / Resource:
- You see that 433d has it wrong here:
- 434 has it set correctly:
Download for free Arabic diacritizer, romanized to Arabic script converter for Office 2013
- “The Arabic Authoring services help users read and write Arabic faster.
- Maren Reader helps users read Romanized Arabic by converting the Romanized script into Arabic script.
- Diacritizer restores the missing diacritics in the Arabic text, which allows users to write text without diacritics and have the service restore them.”
- These tools should be useful for fledgling learners of Arabic – but don’t solely rely on them, since computers processing human language still make errors.
- These tools were developed by Microsoft Research Labs Cairo, learn more about them.
Managing responses when organizing workshops with meeting requests
You can use “copy status to clipboard”
to move to and manage in excel:
Use an excel table autofilter to drill down to the actual participants:
and paste them right back into an outlook message:
Outlook can handle that (“check names”):
How to save your MS-Office files on SkyDrive
- Having to work on important documents from different locations – including office, classroom, and home – and getting tired of lugging thumb drives around (or worried about losing or inadvertently destroying them)?
- Use your university email and your password from last June (this one does not get force-updated every 90 days any more, you can manage it yourself).
- Upload your important files:
- Drag and drop, e.g. a PowerPoint file:
- Click the file – e.g. a Word file – to view it in your web browser.
- To edit the file , while viewing, click top menu: “Edit document”. Choose between editing it in the browser (has still some – ever fewer – limitations for complex documents)
- You will have to log in again (on a non-shared computer I prefer to choose to be “signed in automatically”).
- You have to click “Enable Editing” again, but then you are in your familiar MS-Word environment.
- No need to re-upload the file: Save and close your file, when you open it again in the web browser, it got synched automatically:
- To keep an additional local file backup, use the free MS-SkyDrive App which sets up a local copy of your MS-SkyDrive cloud storage – useful when you have to work offline (e.g. I used to travel every weekend on a plane, but needed to make good use of my travel time).
- Troubleshooting: If you run into problems, the first thing to try usually is a different web browser.
Exam integrity considerations during mock and proctored written exams in the LRC
The easiest way to hold a mock or proctor a written exam in the LRC is provide the students a printout of the exam. For larger classes preparing, and under some circumstances (writing impediment due to injury), providing the MS-Word file on a computer to the student would seem a more convenient solution.
However, the LRC prides itself in the large collection of MS-Office proofing tools it has installed and preconfigured – accessing which from within MS-Word could be construed as cheating during a writing exam. As a matter of fact, since MS-Word auto-detects language, under-waving of misspelled words and incorrect Grammar provides unsolicited and unavoidable extra help.
MS-Office proofing tools could be turned off by using a special MS-word template as the basis for the exam. Easier and quicker is using the SANAKO which can not only block internet access of the examined students, but also block use of entire applications like MS-Word.
Instead of in MS-Word, your students could write their responses in an application that is not part of the proofing tools infrastructure, like Notepad. Western language diacritics can easily be written in any application on LRC PCs thanks to US-International keyboard layout, and non-Western characters even easier than on paper.
For full security, the best environment for exams we can offer remains Respondus lockdown browser, integrated with Moodle, but this requires converting the exam to into a Moodle quiz (which Respondus has tools to facilitate). In certain cases, it might be easiest to create a “dummy” quiz with one long text input field, which your students could type everything in, without having access to any other resources (internet, proofing tools, chat, what not…). However, this quiz still would have to be in your Moodle course so that your students can access access, and their results get put into your gradebook.
Outside of Moodle – if you do not want to go down the Respondus-path – , you can rely on the SANAKO homework collection feature and my langlabemailer to receive the results.
How to compare two MS-Word documents for plagiarism detection
- You could start with the document properties
- some students leave even the author and editing time in. However, author does not prove any wrong doing, a student may have borrowed a laptop, including its MS-word installation, to author a document and submit it
- It may actually be more of an indicator of something illicit if document properties are empty.
- Students have likely used the “Document inspector”:
- (1): File / (2) Info, (3) view the properties (this document looks like it had its privacy information removed), you can use (4) to view even more.
- to remove all privacy relevant information, like so: (5) unfold “check for issues”, (6) “inspect document””,
- in the window: “document inspector”, click
, you will be given the option to “remove all”personal information: 
- (1): File / (2) Info, (3) view the properties (this document looks like it had its privacy information removed), you can use (4) to view even more.
- However, removing personal information can be perfectly legitimate, unless something else was assigned. And it does not help plagiarizers cover their tracks anyway, for…
- …there is the more substantial “compare” documents feature which (even though it was developed for the legal profession, as blackline) tracks what really counts: content changes.
- Access it form the ribbon’s “review” tab:
- point the tool to your 2 documents:
- make your life easier by selecting on the “review” tab to view only content changes (formatting comparisons is noise for plagiarism detection):
- You get a handy (here blurred, but still demonstrating the amount of similarity (=black), compared with changes (= blue), between the 2 documents ) overview of (from the left)
- list of changes
- view of changes in a merged document (which you can save)
- original document
- secondary (likely plagiarized) document:
- The feature is nice, but only moderately intelligent (see the first match, I would obviously not count that as substantially different) and best used with discretion, to make it easier for a teacher to decide how likely it is that these similarities are accidental.
- In this instance, even if the teacher questions are not counted, it seems obvious that only minor alterations were made to the original document and many responses, including quite lengthy sentences, are entirely the same.
- While this *is* an instructional use, you can find happier instructional uses of MS-Word’s reviewing/tracking changes feature here.
- Access it form the ribbon’s “review” tab:
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