Ever finish writing an essay or research paper and dread the thought of having to complete the bibliography? Or find that you lose your train of thought when you build your reference list as you work on your paper? …or just want to use technology to make your (school) life easier? Tech Tips understands and we’ve got you covered!

RefWorks is an application available to students through the Library and Academic Services department. This application simplifies the process of research, collaboration, data organization, and writing by providing an easy-to-use-tool for citation, bibliography, and reference management. Better yet, it’s already incorporated into Office!

To get started, the Library and Academic Services department has tons of information available on their website to help you become familiar and comfortable using RefWorks:

• Getting started with RefWorks, including reference, instruction and success guides
  Webpage: RRC Polytech, Getting Started with RefWorks
• Step-by-step instructions on how to create an account
  Webpage: RRC Polytech, Create an Account
• How to add references from OneSearch, PDFs, webpages, and other citation applications
  Webpage: RRC Polytech, Add References
• How to use RefWorks in your papers, including tools like the RefWorks Citation Manager, which is the version of RefWorks incorporated into Office that allows you to create your in-text citations and a reference list while working on your paper
  Webpage: RRC Polytech, Using RefWorks
• How to keep yourself, and your references, organized with RefWorks
  Webpage: RRC Polytech, Get Organized with RefWorks

Clicking on links and reading pages of information not working for you? Again, we understand, and the Library and Academic Services Team has already put together an online recording and slide presentation that are available for you to view at your own pace.

• Video: RefWorks Presentation
• Google Slides: RefWorks Presentation Slides

Want to connect with someone directly for RefWorks support? No problem! You can visit in-person at the Notre Dame Campus, room CM43, email rwoodby@rrc.ca, or call 204.631.3424.

Thanks to the Library and Academic Services department for taking the time to share this amazing (and FREE) resource!

P.S. They have so many other resources available and listed on their website!

Immersive Reader is a free set of tools developed by Microsoft built into the latest versions of Word, OneNote, Outlook, Teams, and Edge (among other applications). If you are one of the many, who finds reading or retaining information when reading difficult, Immersive Reader may be for you!

Let’s unpack each of the tools that are a part of Immersive Reader…

Read Aloud

Is a tool that audibly reads text on a page (it reads it aloud 😊). In the Read Aloud tool you can navigate through the text, skipping to only the most important information, or re-reading (re-playing) key pieces of information, and you can also adjust the voice options, changing the readers’ voice or slowing down/speeding up the reading pace.

Text Preferences

Text preferences allows you to adjust the text, including text size, text spacing, column size and page themes.

• Adjusting text size to either increase small and difficult to see fonts, or decrease large fonts to better fit on your screen
• Adjusting text spacing increases the white space between words, which can improve reading comprehension and speed
• Page themes allows you to choose from a variety of page and text colors, which can reduce the experience or severity of eye strain from computer use

Grammar Tools

Is designed to support reading comprehension by allowing you to split words into syl·la·bles, as well as highlighting parts of speech such as nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.

Reading Preferences

Features settings designed to support visual tracking, comprehension and memorization.

• Line focus allows you to highlight a set number of lines at a time, this can be useful if you experience difficulties with visual tracking, or find that you often lose your place while reading
• Picture dictionary brings up a basic image of many of the words in your text, which may help with word comprehension, and may also support memorization in more visual learners
• Translate changes all of the text on the page into another language, supporting individuals to read and understand text not in their main language

Why should I use Immersive Reader?

Immersive Reader allows each individual to customize their reading experience to better match their learning styles, preferences and needs.

…but wait… Immersive Reader, Kurzweil 3000… which is better?

Neither! They’re both awesome! …so why highlight two resources that are the same? While Immersive Reader and Kurzweil 3000 are similar, they are not exactly the same as each resource has features that the other does not. For example, Kurzweil 3000 allows you to highlight and extract important pieces of information, while Immersive Reader has additional reading preferences and grammar tools that Kurzweil 3000 does not. Kurzweil 3000 also goes beyond reading supports with writing and study supports built-in as well. Keep in mind, both are FREE resources, and there is nothing wrong with using both!

• Webpage: RRC Polytech, Kurzweil 3000
• Webpage: Tech Tips Blog Post, Kurzweil 3000

Resources:

• Webpage: Immersive Reader in Microsoft Edge
• Webpage: Immersive Reader in Word
• Webpage: Immersive Reader for OneNote
• Webpage: Immersive Reader in Microsoft Teams
• Webpage: Immersive Reader in Outlook
• Webpage: Languages Supported by Immersive Reader

Did you know that Red River College Polytechnic offers the latest version of Office 365 applications such as Word, PowerPoint and OneNote, free of charge to students? True story!
Webpage: RRC Polytech, Microsoft Office 365

Now with that being said, Tech Tips wants to highlight a powerful tool within Office 365 – OneNote. For those unfamiliar with OneNote, think of it as a digital 3-ring binder. Take notes, edit your notes, use Immersive Reader to listen to your notes, add in images and visual content, and more, across all of your courses, throughout your program. No more carrying around multiple paper notebooks and heavy binders or forgetting your notebook at home.

OneNote has so many great features built into it that we cannot possibly cover it all in one blog post. So, to start, we are going to look at the basics of OneNote: what is OneNote, creating notebooks, and taking notes.

Step #1 – What is OneNote?
Webpage: What is OneNote (video and text descriptions)

Step #2 – How do you take notes in OneNote?
Webpage: Taking Notes with OneNote (video and text descriptions)

Step #3 – Formatting your notes
Webpage: Format Notes in OneNote (video and text descriptions)

Think of this as a start to exploring all that OneNote has to offer. We’ll be back in the coming weeks to look into more of the amazing features that OneNote, and other Office 365 applications have.

(One)Note: while OneNote does allow for audio recording, this feature may not be used without instructor permission or an approved accommodation through Accessibility Services.

Welcome 2023! We hope you all had a restful, relaxing, and enjoyable holiday season. To returning students, welcome back! To new students, we are happy to have you join

For those of you who are new to the Tech Tips: Work Smarter, Not Harder blog post, our goal here is to show you different technologies, or different ways of using technology, to make your academic life easer.

To start off the new year and the new term, we’d like to take a look back at our posts from 2022 (that’s what are the cool blog posts are doing these days, right?!):

• Kurzweil 3000 – is FREE software primarily designed as Text-To-Speech (read-aloud technology), but also many other features built-in to support writing, comprehension and studying
• Brightspace Pulse – is a FREE app developed by the same company that developed the LEARN platform. This app communicates with LEARN and helps you organize and remember important dates across all your classes
• Accessibility Features of WebEx – this blog post focuses on user-enabled accessibility features built-into WebEx, a web conferencing platform used by many programs within the college
• The Academic Success Centre did a take-over of the Tech Tips blog and highlighted two very important technology resources they have available to students:
  • Technology Literacy Module
  • Tech Peer Tutors
• Pomodoro & Forest – this blog post offers a suggestion to support students with the ever-increasingly difficult task of time management. But, with a fun spin that can lead to trees being planted in the real world!

As for this year, who knows what the tech tips blog will explore! Voice dictation? Immersive reading? Bionic reading? Fonts designed for specific disabilities? Apps for mental health? Citation technology? Website blockers? The possibilities are (quite literally) endless!

Have an idea for a tech tips blog post? We’d love to hear from you! Please email your ideas to eament@rrc.ca.

What is Read&Write?

Read&Write (also known as R&W), is an application available (for free) to all staff and students at Red River College Polytechnic. Features in the application support learners with reading, writing, studying, and more!

Main Features

This page will be expanded as we introduce all of the features of R&W and develop resources for them. For now, here are the main features being introduced: 

Reading

One of the main features of R&W is its ability to read digital text, both off of a file on your computer, or off of the internet, aloud. Simply click on the text you want read and hit play! You can even adjust how content is read to best suit your needs. R&W supports comprehension of the content you are reading in quite a few different ways:

Highlighters

While R&W is reading, use the built-in highlighters to emphasize important information, information that you want to review, or definitions of important terminology (just to name a few examples). Once you are done highlighting, you can export those highlights into a separate document, creating yourself a study guide personalized for you!

Dictionary

R&W has both a dictionary and a picture dictionary built right in, allowing you to generate both a text and image-based definition of a word you may not know (and you can even have R&W read that definition aloud to you!). 

Translate

The translation feature allows you to take text and translate it into another available language, and most translated text may also be read aloud in the new language!

Accessing R&W

We’d suggest that you self-enroll in the Read&Write Introduction Course in LEARN. This course will walk you through installing R&W and familiarize you with how to use it to support your studies.

No time to take the LEARN Course?

You can go through the R&W Deployment Guide which will ask you to confirm how you are setting up and accessing R&W:

• On the first page, select “I don’t have a product code”
• On the second page (Products), select Read&Write” and then select all the platforms you want to use R&W on
• On the third page (Licenses), select “Unlimited”
• On the fourth page (Authentication), select “Microsoft 365”
• On the last page, download the products listed in the “Download Products” section (do not download anything from the other sections!)

The Tech Tips Team is back, and before we dive into our next blog post, we wanted to extend a warm welcome to the Academic Success Centre for sharing some of the tech resources available for students!

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming! This week we’d like to talk about something we all struggle with at some level – do you need help with staying on task?  Do you get anxiety thinking about deadlines or due dates? Wonder if you are working on the right task at the right time? Or need a little extra motivation when it comes to completing your schoolwork?

You are not the only one! Students these days have more demands and obligations on their shoulders than ever before, and sometimes even deciding what to do can be the biggest hurdle.

So what’s the solution? Well, do you like video games? Or trees? (Yes, we’re still in the same blog post…)

Forest is a fun app built off of the Pomodoro Technique. The Pom-oh-door-oh-what?… The Paa-muh-daw-row Technique. This technique structures your time into smaller chunks of work and break periods, with the thought that it is easier to focus for a short period of time, rather than a longer period of time. Knowing at the end of that work cycle you get a break, also helps motivate you to stay on task during the work cycle. It can be less overwhelming to break your day into short work cycles and stack them on top of one another, than to think about working all day long. The goal is for solid focused work, even in short periods – it’s the quality of your work that matters, not necessarily the quantity (amount of time).

…and if that didn’t sound good enough on its own, let’s throw Forest into this mixture for success.

Forest is an app available for both android and iOS, as well as a web extension, that takes the Pomodoro Technique, and gamifies it! When you start a work cycle, you plant a seed. As your work cycle progresses, your seed grows. If you successfully complete your work cycle, your tree is planted into your (wait for it) Forest! The more successful work cycles you complete, the more trees you plant, the more trees you plant, the more coins you get, which can be used to buy different tree seeds to plant.

Not into growing a digital forest, but like the idea behind the app? What if we told you that instead of using your coins to buy different tree seeds, that you could spend those coins to plant real trees?!?! Now not only are you using the Pomodoro Technique to help motivate you and keep you on track, but you’re having fun while doing it, and making a positive impact in the real world!

Forest has both freemium and premium platforms available, meaning you can give it a try before you spend any of your hard-earned (real-world) coins on it!
Webpage: Forest, Chrome Web Extension
Webpage: Forest, App Store Download
Webpage: Forest, PlayStore Download

Note: this will be our last Tech Tips blog post for the 2022 year. Thank you to all who have read and supported the blog!

ASC here again! We haven’t given up our takeover of the Tech Tips blog just yet!

Last post we talked about the Technology Literacy Module. Maybe you enrolled and worked through the course, but are finding you are still in need of some tech supports? Never fear, the ASC is here!

Did you know you can book an appointment with a Tech Peer Tutor for individualized help with navigating your online courses? (Hint, the answer is yes!)

Tech Peer Tutors can help you familiarize yourself with a specific College application and help you gain the basic-foundational tech literacy skills you need to be successful online.

To book an appointment with a Tech Peer Tutor, please visit Webpage: ASC, Supports for Students – Tech Peer Tutors

Are you feeling a little overwhelmed with all of the different technology platforms that you need to use as a College student? WebEx? LEARN? Teams? Other?… Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered!

The ASC (or Academic Success Centre) has taken over the Tech Tips Blog this week and is here to tell you about the Technology Literacy course you can self-enroll in!

The Technology Literacy module is a self-directed tutorial designed for students that provides basic skill development for using College-approved applications, including LEARN, HUB, Webex, MS Teams, and Office 365. There is even a section on “Technical Support at RRC” which lists units within the College that provide technical troubleshooting support to students including ITS Service Desk and LEARN Support.

Bonus! This module is developed with UDL or Universal Design for Learning (also known as Inclusive Design for Learning) in mind and provides content through a variety of means.

To find out more, or to self-enroll in this module, please visit – Webpage: ASC, Supports for Students – Technology Literacy

In honor of the college’s inaugural Inclusion Week, this Tech Tips blog post is focused on inclusion and accessibility features of WebEx. Features you can enable for yourself!

Color Themes: allow users to pick a theme with contrasting colors that best suit them
Webpage: Adjusting Color Themes in WebEx

Font Size: control the size of the font in the chat
Webpage: Adjusting Font Size in WebEx

Screen Reader Support: WebEx regularly tests the platform with different screen reading software, and provides guidance on seamlessly using screen reading software in WebEx
Webpage: Screen Reader Support in WebEx

Keyboard Shortcuts: allow a user to navigate and participate in WebEx using their keyboard rather than mouse clicks
Webpage: WebEx Keyboard Shortcuts

Closed Captions: are an automatic text display of spoken content. This allows users to read what is being said, rather than listen. WebEx also allows for captions to be generated in a variety of additional languages other than English!
Webpage: Closed Captioning in WebEx

Do you have trouble staying on top of all of the test dates and assignment due dates across all of your courses? Have you tried to write them all down but forget to look at your calendar (or forget to write them down)? Well we’ve got a bright idea for you!

Brightspace Pulse is an app developed by the same company as the LEARN platform (think of Brightspace Pulse and LEARN and best friends who talk all the time). That means if LEARN knows something, Brightspace Pulse knows it too – if your assignment due date or test date is listed in LEARN, Brightspace Pulse knows about it too.

So if LEARN and Brightspace Pulse have the same information, why do I need the Brightspace Pulse app? The benefit to having the Brightspace Pulse app is that you are able to visually see, across all of your courses, important dates for the week (month, etc…). You can even set up notifications to help remind yourself of upcoming due dates or test dates.

I’m sold! But…what does this cost? Zip, zilch, nada. It’s totally free to download and use. 🙂

Downloads:

• Apple Users – Download Brightspace Pulse App
• Android Users – Download Brightspace Pulse App

Additional Resources:

• RRC Polytech, Brightspace Pulse App
• Webpage: Connecting Brightspace Pulse and LEARN
• Webpage: Viewing Notifications in Brightspace Pulse

NOTE: While this app was developed with integration and communication between the app and LEARN in mind, students are responsible for ensuring accuracy of important dates, or adding in any dates that might not already be reflected.