Hello Everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful week!

This week we'll be focusing on using our word processing software so we become familiar with some of the basics tools available. Since different people use different software, we are going to focus on the top 2 and practice a few steps for each.

Microsoft Word

If you are using Word at home please practice the following:

• Open up a new document in Word

• Type the following statement "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog."

• Make sure you are on the 'Home' tab at the top of the screen.

• By holding down your left mouse button, drag your cursor over the word 'fox'. It should now be highlighted. (Pro Tip: You can also just double-click on the word 'fox' to highlight it.)

• At the top of your screen we are going to use the following tools:

• Click on the words "Calibri (Body)". A list of different fonts should appear. Choose a different font besides Calibri and our highlighted word "Fox" should change fonts as well. You can also change the size by clicking on the number 11 next to the font box and selecting a different number.

• Now highlight the word "lazy".

• Underneath the box that says which font you are using there are three letters. The first is a B, followed by an I and then a U. If you click on the B it will make the highlighted word BOLD. If you click on the I it will make the highlighted word italicized. If you click on the U it will underline the highlighted word.

• We should all know how to save a document by now since we have practiced this with PowerPoint soooooo many times but here's a reminder...

  • • Click "File" in the upper-left hand corner.

    • A new menu will appear and you will click "Save As"

    • As I am always saying, MAKE SURE YOU KNOW WHERE IT IS BEING SAVED! Your document should be to "This PC" and then to either your Documents or your Desktop folder. Please be sure you practice this to avoid lost work!

That's all for Microsoft Word! There is a whole lot more that this program is capable of and we'll be covering that next year. For now, I hope this will be enough to help you successfully get your assignments to your teachers!

Google Docs

Google Docs is a free web based app that lets you create and save all of your documents in the cloud. That means you can access your work anywhere you have a computer/phone and internet access. Pretty cool right? It's also FREE! (The only issue is you have to have created a Gmail account to be able to use it.)

If you have a Gmail account you can do the following:

• Make sure you have created and are logged into your Google account.

• Go to https://docs.google.com/

• Click on the colorful plus sign that has the word "Blank" written underneath it. This will open a blank document that's ready to be typed.

• Where it says "Normal Text", you can click on that box to select different size font for things such as titles and headings of your paper.

• Type the following statement "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog."

• At the top of your screen we are going to use the following tools:

• By holding down your left mouse button, drag your cursor over the word 'fox'. It should now be highlighted. (Pro Tip: You can also just double-click on the word 'fox' to highlight it.)

• Click on the words "Arial". A list of different fonts should appear. Choose a different font besides Arial and our highlighted word "Fox" should change fonts as well. You can also change the size by clicking on the number 11 next to the font box and selecting a different number.

• Now highlight the word "lazy".

• To the right of the box that says which font you are using there are three letters. The first is a B, followed by an I and then a U. If you click on the B it will make the highlighted word BOLD. If you click on the I it will make the highlighted word italicized. If you click on the U it will underline the highlighted word.

• A great feature is that your work is automatically saved in the cloud as you are typing!

• If you need to email your paper to someone simply click on the blue "Share" button in the top-right hand corner. All you need is their email address

• If you need to save a copy of your work to your computer click on "File" in the top-left menu and select "Download" and the format you prefer

Practice these little tricks to make submitting your work super easy! If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask.

Have a great week!