Be More Productive with Focus.me and Writer!

by | Oct 12, 2017 | How To, Student Blog, Teacher Blog

Downloading Focus.me

To download Focus.me you must first access the chrome web store . Once here type in the search bar focus.me and hit enter. Focus.me will be the first option under the title ‘Extensions’. Click ‘add to chrome’ and you can begin your experience.

Options and Settings

To access options, right click on the icon

  • User Preferences: In this part of the options and settings page you can select the time increments for site blocking. You can also modify the list of sites to be blocked when focus.me is activated.
  • Import and Export: In this part of the options and settings page you can import or export your list of blocked websites. This can be helpful when sharing lists with others who have the same extension

How Focus.me Helps You

Focus.me is a unique extension that aims to help you stay focused by blocking self-selected websites. One of the key features of this extension is that once you set the time for websites to be blocked, you can’t unblock them until the time runs out.

How to Access Writer

First things first, you must download Writer. To do so, you must go to the chrome web store and type in the search bar “writer”. This app will be the first option under the tab labeled “Apps”. Click add to chrome and you are ready to begin. To access the app click on the 9 little box icon in the top left corner of your screen. This will pull up all your apps. Select writer and begin writing your masterpiece!

How it Works

Once you open the app you can begin writing. To access options click on the gear icon at the bottom middle of the screen.

  • Interface: This tab is where you can choose the color of the font or background. You can also choose the font type and size as well as line spacing. You can also enable typing noises and keyboard shortcuts. On the right-hand side of the screen, you can see a sample of the changes you make to the display.
  • Account: In this tab, it displays your user information such as OpenIDs and your email address. Here you can edit personal information and change your password.
  • Extras: In this tab, you can select different options to aid you in writing. You can type in how many words to a page for page counting and other features. This tab also shows features you can use if you upgrade to a pro account.

Why does Writer Help You Stay Focused?

Writer helps you stay focused when writing because the interface is simple. There are limited options as far as things you can do to the document so it is easier to stay focused when writing. The default settings for Writer are a black background and green font so this blocks out all distractions on the screen. This app helps you to stay on task while writing masterpieces!

Stay Focused With Turn Off the Lights

by | Oct 3, 2017 | Student Blog, Teacher Blog

Stay Focused with Turn Off the Lights

Turn Off the Lights is an extension in which you can block out the background of any web page or site that has a video. This makes it to where you can focus solely on the video instead of all the background nonsense. It is also useful for those who are sensitive to light or the bright glow of computers.

How to Download Turn Off the Lights

The way to download Turn Off the Lights is to access the chrome web store. Click on the option ‘extensions’ on the sidebar. Type “turn off the lights” into the search bar and hit enter. The first option will be the extension you use. Click ‘add to chrome’ and the extension will be added to your toolbar. The icon for the extension is a light bulb that will appear in the top right of your tool bar. To get to options right click on the icon and select ‘options’.

How it Works

Basics:

  • Screen – these options allow you to change colors, opacity, and background of the screen behind the displayed video.
  • Autoplay – this option allows you to decide if you want Turn Off the Lights to automatically dim the screen when you press play on a video, brighten the background after the video stops, or automatically dim certain sites.
  • Autostop – autostop options do the exact opposite of autoplay; once selected videos will stop automatically when you access select website.
  • Youtube – this option allows you to pick and choose what you want to show on Youtube when you use Turn Off the Lights to dim the screen

Visual Effects:

  • Atmosphere Lighting – with atmosphere lighting options users can add a colored blur behind the video  or other visual effects.
  • Fade In/ Fade Out – this option controls how the effect appears; with this selected the effect will fade in and out when the video is selected or clicked off of.
  • Reflection – adds reflective effect to video
  • Audio Visualization – here you can change the  video audio visualization opacity

Advanced Options:

  • Flash Detection – this option when activated detects Flash objects which can sometimes interfere with the playing of videos.
  • Dimness Level Bar – when lights go out you can choose to see the dimness level bar or not during your viewing experience.
  • Video Volume Slider – this option creates a slider where you can change the volume of the video by scrolling on the mouse whenever turn off the lights is activated.
  • Video Toolbar – when this option is activated you will see a toolbar below your video screen and will be able to access many tools to aid in your viewing experience.
  • Video Hover – after a certain amount of seconds when you hover your mouse over a video element it will automatically play
  • Video Speed – here you can change the playback speed of the video
  • Eye Protection – this option allows you to choose when the screen dims whether it be during videos or when certain web pages open up.
  • Shortcut keys – in the advanced options tab there is a compiled list of key shortcuts that you can use when this option is enabled.
  • Bulb – here you can choose your favorite lamp icon and change the themes of your web page brightness when turn off the lights is used

Night Mode:

  • With the Night Mode option, you can switch modes from light to dark depending on the time of day.
  • If you are sensitive to light this is especially helpful
  • In this tab, you can select certain sites to activate night mode on as well as what time of day night mode can be accessed
  • Another option is where the switch that you click to access night mode appears on your screen

Camera Motion:

  • To use this feature you must first enable the camera motion option.
  • With this selected when you move your hand/fist from the top of your screen to the bottom, the dark background will slide down.
  • To make sure the camera motion works correctly you will have to make sure of two things:
    • Make sure that your room has enough light, but the camera is not receiving direct sunlight
    • Make sure you use your front-facing camera

Speech Recognition:

  • When you enable this option you can speak one of many commands to the browser lamp:
    • Turn off the lights
    • Turn on the lights
    • Play video
    • Pause video
  • To turn this on you have to select the dialect of which you speak

TOtL Welcome Guide:

  • This tab is where you can access the TOtl welcome guide. This guide allows you to learn even more about the extension Turn Off the Lights and explore its many features.

Help:

  • In this tab, you can report an issue or access the extensions website and developers.

 

Declutter with Toby

Declutter with Toby

by | Oct 2, 2017 | How To, Student Blog, Teacher Blog

Declutter with Toby

Everyone hates having millions of tabs open at once. It’s super stressful and looks cluttered. Luckily, there’s Toby, a useful extension that de-clutters your tabs and organizes them into one page.

How to get Toby

  • Click on the link here which will download the extension. The extension will appear next to your search bar
  • Sign up for a free account with your email

How to use Toby

  1. Now that the extension is downloaded, every time you open a new tab the Toby screen will appear. The tab will read “New Tab- Toby.” On this screen, it displays all of your open tabs and lists. A list is a collection of websites that you have saved. These can range from project references to funny youtube videos.
  2. To add a new list for homework, school, research papers, etc. just click the pink plus sign at the bottom right side of the page. This lists organizes all your tabs into one list for quick and easy access. From here you can add open tabs onto that list.
  3. You can access your lists by opening a new tab or by clicking the Toby icon in the upper right-hand area.

When you open the Toby Tab, it should look something like the image to the left.

Get Crafty with Your Emails- Get Boomerang!

by | Sep 28, 2017 | Student Blog

As a student, writing emails to teachers, counselors, and potential colleges can be stressful. You don’t know what to say and sometimes, a lot of the time, they don’t respond to you as fast as you would like to. If you know me, you know I love to get the information I need in a quick and easy way, and email is the fastest way to get that information for me. The time of day, the day it is, and just the person you’re sending the email to are contributing factors to the response time of your email. But never fear, Boomerang is here! Boomerang is the ultimate productivity tool for email. It helps you track emails, send them later, and even has an automated helper named Al that helps you improve the content that you are sending.

 

Downloading Boomerang

To download the Boomerang extension for gmail, go to the chrome web store. Once you’ve gotten to the chrome web store, type in the search bar “Boomerang”. Click on the first option under “Extension”. Click on the button “add to chrome” and you are ready to start using Boomerang! To get to Boomerang, open up your gmail. You’ll find The Boomerang extension under the search bar beside the more button. Downloading this extension is quick and easy, and the tools given by this app can surely improve your emailing productivity.

 

Schedule Emails to Send Later

With Boomerang Installed, we suddenly have a beautiful red button that allows us to pick any day and time to send your email. Before Boomerang, you only have one option: to send the email immediately after you write it, but with that setting our important emails get lost in the spam. Clicking the button that says, “Send Later” allows you to send an email automatically with no internet connection, Gmail will send the email automatically at the time you request to send it. When you click the button a screen of pre-set times such as: tomorrow morning, in  1 hour, or even a specific time you wish to set to send the email. When you click the send later button, the email will be sent at the time you requested.

 

How to Set Reminders

To set a reminder, you just have to click on a message, then click the Boomerang button. When you boomerang a message, it will take the selected message out of your inbox, then push it to the top of your inbox when you would wish to be reminded. When you push the button to set the reminder, again, a list of preset time will pop up. You can pick one of the preset times, or you can set a customizable time, that can be located under the preset times, to receive your reminder email whenever you wish! This feature is a bliss when a project or assignment is put off, Boomerang has your back!

 

Boomerang Respondable

Do you ever wish you could have your English teacher just follow you around to fix every little mistake to make any literary piece of your’s perfect? You probably have never thought about it. But Boomerang has this feature you will soon realize you cannot live without. Just as you are going to send an email down on the Boomerang bar, on the far right, Boomerang Respondable can tell you if your email is likely to get a response, if the subject length is adequate, the word length is enough or too much, If your question count is far too many or far too light, and if the reading level of the email is suitable for the subject of the email. The scales range from green to red help you edit your email to be the best it can be to get a high response back from the receiver. This is a key feature when sending emails to college admission counselors. Getting our emails read and getting an answer is the goal, but impressing them is the key, boomerang respondable is the tool to help us get there.

 

These Boomerang features and others can help you build better emails to send to peers, teachers and admissions. So get ready to be on time and proactive with your day-to-day emails! It really helps!

 

Qmlativ

by | Sep 13, 2017 | Student Blog

Qmlativ is “the new Parent Portal” since Parent Portal is no longer used for grades and attendance 

Locating/Logging into the Site

  1. Go to RCHS Bookmarks on the top left under the search bar and click on “Qmlativ Student Access.” This will take you to the login page for Qmaltiv.
  2. The login is the same as your login for desktop computers. The user name is the first part of your email which is your last name and first and middle initial. Ex. John Alex Smith would be smithja. The password is your ID number (lunch number). 
  3. Once you log in, you can see your attendance and grades.

Noisli

by | Sep 8, 2017 | Student Blog

If you’re like me, you might have a tad bit of trouble when it comes time to do homework at the end of the day. Weather it be the television playing in the background or upbeat music that I  swear helps me concentrate, I always end up finishing up all of my homework at 10 or 11 o’clock at night. Productivity is a thing that I don’t really think about when I’m just trying to get things done. But what if there was a simple and customizable tool that could help us get our homework done faster? Noisli is your best bet for improving this pesky problem! Noisli is an awesome site that helps you boost your productivity in any work environment. Weather you are in an environment that is too loud or too quiet Noisli lets you customize the perfect work environment wherever you are to help you concentrate in a more productive way!

 

Downloading Noisli

To download the Noisli extension, go to the chrome web store. Once you’ve gotten to the chrome web store, type in the search bar “Noisli”. Click on the first option under “Extension”. Click on the button “add to chrome” and you are ready to start using Noisli! To get to Noisli, look at the top right hand corner of your screen. The Noisli extension icon should be to the right of the three dots, which is super conveniently placed because you will use this extension all the time!

 

Finding your Perfect Productivity Tune

By experimenting different tunes you are sure to find the perfect sound to fill your ears in any environment. So on the main Noisli page there are a variety of sounds like rain, fire, and the sound of a train on train tracks. You can measure the amount of each sound to make perfect harmony. If you would rather hear more rain than wind turn the volume up for rain and turn the volume down for the wind. Testing out a variety of sounds will help you find the perfect one for you. You can also hit the productivity button at the top and Noisli will automatically pick a sound that will boost, you guessed it, productivity. There’s also a Random button and a Relax button that could also help you find a sound that could please your ears.

 

Saving Sound Combos

To save the sound combos you can create an account by linking your google account to Nosli and then you’re good to go! When you find an amazing sound that helps you find your zen, save it and the sound can be found under the extension for easy access!

 

Happy Listening!