Graphs of Inequalities

I just finished a unit on inequalities with my Algebra 1 students, and I remember in years past struggling to find a way to include number line graphs in my quizzes, notes, and slide shows.

 Over the years I've amassed a large number of these number line graphs, of different types, and thought I'd throw them up on the blog for the one or two other math teachers who might stumble across this and want them. They are in a PowerPoint format, because I found that working with shapes and lines in PowerPoint was easier than any other program I had.  If you're interested, here's a file containing them.

They are just a series of shape objects, which I alter by adjusting their size or orientation.  Once I have the graph I want, then I select all the objects, copy them, and paste them as a picture, which I can use in PowerPoint or Word.  

One thing I am still looking for is a good source of creating two dimensional graphs. If you know of something, post it in the comments below.

Keyboard Shortcuts

While teaching some women at church how to do things in PowerPoint, I realized there are a lot of keyboard shortcuts that I use on a daily basis and take for granted. This post is just my attempt to list them all in one place. There are way more than this, and other websites may have a more complete list, but these are the ones that I use on a daily/weekly basis.

If a sibling of mine wants to do a similar thing for Mac's, I would link to it here, or eventually when I have to learn a mac, I'll write a Mac for Windows Users guide.

Windows:
   Alt-Tab - switches from program to program quickly
   Ctrl-Tab - in programs with "tabs" like internet browsers it switches tabs
   Win-Up - Makes a program maximized
   Win-Left - Makes a program take up just the left half of the screen
   Win-Right - Makes a program take up just the right half of the screen
   Win-D - Minimizes everything so you just see your desktop
   Win-Tab - Cycles through your programs like Alt-Tab, but differently
   Ctrl-MouseWheel - Zooms in or out
   PrintScreen - Takes a screen shot of the screen and stores it on the clipboard
   Alt-F4 (don't do this one now!) closes your current program
   Ctrl-F  - Finds a word or phrase on a page

   Shift-Arrows - Selects words, text, cells, slides, etc.
   Shift-Click - Selects everything from your last click till now.
   Ctrl-Click - Adds whatever you clicked to the selection
   Right-Click - Brings up a list of different options
   Right-Click and Drag - Brings up a list of options for dragging, usually move, copy, or Create-Shortcut


Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and many other programs:
  Ctrl-X - cut
  Ctrl-C - Copy
  Ctrl-V - Paste (yes, v is paste because P is print)
  Ctrl-S - Save
  Ctrl-A - Selects (all) everything on a page or file
  Ctrl-Z - Undo!! Gets rid of the last thing you did -- like making a mistake
  Ctrl-R - Right aligns things
  Ctrl-E - Center aligns things
  Ctrl-L - Left Aligns things
  Ctrl-B - Bolds
  Ctrl-I - Italicize
  Ctrl-U - Underlines
  Ctrl-K - Makes something a hyperlink

Excel
  F9 - Recalculates all cells - useful if you have random digits in some cells

Powerpoint:
   F5 - Starts running the powerpoint
   Ctrl-F5 - Starts running the powerpoint from the current slide
   B - puts a blank slide up while running powerpoint
   Ctrl-M - creates a new slide

Interactive Tabs in Powerpoint

Here's my first official attempt at making a video with Camtasia. This isn't technically for a flipped lesson, but I wanted to try to increase my skills a little on something that wasn't for my students, before diving into that.

This video shows how to add a cool interactive tab onto a powerpoint slide so you can hide information that you might not need, but can reference if necessary.  I stole this idea from the SMART Notebook software I used for a week this May when I had access to a smart board, and thought of how I could implement it into powerpoint.  Hope you enjoy!