Humbly Learning From My Kids

I admit it.  I am NOT smarter than a fifth grader.  Every day I am increasingly aware of how little I know about technology.  This lesson comes mainly from my children.  Here I am thinking I'm cool because of what I'm learning in class, yet I am constantly surprised by what they know how to do on the computer.  I wanted to share with all of you something my daughter showed me that will make life ten times easier for certain tasks.

It is called "Snipping Tool."  As my daughter informed me, "it comes already on your computer." Unfortunately, this is true only if you have a PC.  I did a little research on Macs, but found they do not have this capability.  The closest they come is a screen shot, but this is exactly what I'm trying to avoid!  So, on you PC, just click on the start button, type "Snipping Tool" into the search bar, and voila! There it is.  I always did a screen shot, pasted it into paint, then cut what I wanted or added what I wanted to the image.  With snipping tool, you can do that all in one step!  As the computer describes, you can use this tool to "capture a portion of your screen so you can save, annotate, or share the image" without ever having to open another program.  Fantastic!!

Here are a few my daughter snipped, then put into paint to add the words:








I asked my daughter how she learned about this tool - of course, she found it on YouTube.  Here is a basic video on how to use it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVn0av_6nqY
And here's one with a little more info and insight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUyV3Hjrahc

As you can see from the video, there are a variety of ways to use this tool.  There are tons more videos with even more examples. Of course, the tool may not be practical for all projects/applications, but for the most part, it is a great time and space saver!