In this edition of the Technology and Physical Education I would like to discuss, "Defragmenting your hard drive."  Send me information, questions or problems you are having with your hard drive being slow and as always I will try to help you find answers.

As we save items to our hard drive we use folders and other ways of keeping track of where we want to keep our material.  As we look for material we think that all is neatly and efficiently filed.  What we don't see is that this material is stored allover our hard drive and as we delete or revise files the neatness and efficiency of the FAT (File Allocation Table) may be impaired.  As the hard drive spins material is place in clumps that can efficiently be written and read to utilize the space on the hard drive.  With newer faster and larger hard drive we don't think about how the space is used, but we should.  Most of us have not defragmented our hard drive in the last 6 months if ever.

When you have a significant amount of fragmentation your hard drive will slow down noticeably.  You have a basic defragmenter in you system files: Start> Program> Accessories> System Tools> Disk Defragmenter, available to use in Windows.  There have been some questions about the stability of this program.  There are defragmenter utilities available from companies such as Diskeeper (www.execsoft.com), VoptXP (www.vopt.com), and Norton Utilities (www.symantec.com) which can automate the process and provide other services.

Sincerely, 

Michael W. Dumin,
Technology Section Editors

Looking for health and fitness news online check out these sites:

www.allergylearninglab.com is a site for learning about allergies, weather and pollen counts in your area.

www.mayoclinic.com is the Mayo Clinic web site, you can have your student's check out the area of Take Charge of your Health section to look at there current status.

www.nutrition.gov is the U.S. governments site for fitness and nutrition information can keep you and your student up to date with accurate information

Looking for screen capture software to add graphics to your brochure.  Try going to http://www.longfine.com/ for Longefine Easy Screen Capture.  You can use print screen to capture the entire screen and then edit, but this allows you to capture only what you need.  A free trial is available.

How to create a brochure in Word 2002.

Brochures are a useful tool for promoting your program.  With today's digital cameras and color printers it is easy to create a quality looking brochure for use in your program.  Using a standard 8.5x11 inch sheet of paper turned sideways and folded into three sections you have the basics of the brochure.  Use File> Page Setup >Margins to set the page to Landscape and reset the margins to no more the 1" on the sides, top and bottom, I like to use 0.7 on ones that I create. 

Now chose Format> Columns> 3> Equal Column Width.  You can have lines between the columns by checking the Line Between box.  The brochure will have two pages.

The pages are laid out with Right panel: Front of brochure. Middle panel; back. Left panel: revealed when brochure first open.  The second page has the 3 panels viewable all at one time.  At the end of each column you need to insert a break, Insert> Break> Column. 

You will need run the fronts and back on two passes.  Use heaver stock to avoid bleed through.  Run a test copy front and back to make sure you have it inserted into the printer correctly.

Rough out a sketch with pen and paper to see how headlines text and graphics fit together.  You can use graphics, font size, Drop Caps (first letter of paragraph larger),  or any other feature.  Make sure you don't get carried away and put to many font sizes or colors that it becomes distracting.

 mdumin@radford.edu via email.