Royalty Free Clip Media

At JCCC, we periodically have faculty members ask about clip media that can be used in handouts, in class or online without concern for copyright infringement. There is a good blog posting at http://weblogs.about.com/od/startingablog/tp/FreePhotoSites.htm that discusses 6 different web sites that have (potentially) royalty free images available. Be sure to carefully ready any restrictions associated with a specific image (the blog discusses sites such as Stock Xchange, Flickr, Morguefile, Dreamstime, FreeFoto and Picapp).

Keep in mind, you can also use clip media from Microsoft’s clipart site, if you or your campus has a license agreement with Microsoft; e.g., you have purchased or licensed Microsoft Office (see http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/clipart/default.aspx ).

Microsoft Office Help

Microsoft publishes an online newsletter (the Microsoft Office Insider) with tips, news, latest support articles, templates and clip art. To subscribe, check out http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA101864261033.aspx. As an example, the August issue includes the following tip:

Do you e-mail documents to yourself or others?
There's a new development that's faster and easier. Download this plug-in for Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and save documents to a free Workspace on the web. Access, view, and share documents with the people you invite - anytime! Here's the free plug-in. http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9382158. What's a Workspace? http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9382159.

Keyboard Shortcuts

If there are actions you perform repeatedly in one of the Microsoft Office applications or in Microsoft Windows, you can often save considerable time by using a keyboard shortcut, rather than re-positioning the mouse pointer and clicking. Microsoft offers a nice web site with all of the shortcuts listed. Check out: http://www.microsoft.com/athome/moredone/compshortcuts.mspx.

Some of the more common and helpful short cuts include:

• Ctrl+C to copy selected text
• Ctrl+X to cut selected text
• Ctrl+V to paste selected text
• Ctrl+S to save

Mac users can substitute the Command (Open Apple) key for Ctrl.