AlphaSmart Tricks

 

1.       Sit right!  Sit straight in chair, chair comfortably close to table, feet flat on floor or leaning on box if needed, knees bent, shoulders relaxed, elbows bent with forearms parallel to floor, wrists straight (not bent up or down), Alpha Smart centered on table in front of you. 

 

2.     All in a name.  At the beginning of a file, use the CAPS LOCK KEY to type a name for your file.  This will help you find your subjects more quickly later.  Put your name there too.

 

3.     No place like home.  At the end of your writing, press the HOME key before you leave your file.  When you re-open your file, it will open at the beginning. 

 

4.     Leave the blanks blank for now.  When writing ideas for the first time, if you can’t think of a word, just type a dotted line.  If you can’t spell a word correctly, spell it the best you can. Trust yourself and your writing process—there will be time to improve it later.

 

5.     Test your speed!                                      Apple Find            

You can test your typing speed!  Press Apple Find, type your document, press caps lock and you’ll find out your speed in words per minute. Press esc to finish.

 

6.     Get your file back!                                  Option-Apple-R              

If you accidentally erase a file or part of a file and want it back, enter Option-Apple-R and it will come back, as long as you haven’t typed anything else.  If that doesn’t work, try pressing shift-ctrl-option-Apple-R to recover your file.

 

7.     Spellcheck                                               spellcheck or Apple-spellcheck

To spellcheck a whole file, press the spellcheck key.  To spellcheck one word, put cursor on the word and press Apple-spellcheck.

 

 

AlphaSmart Tips

 

1.       Turn AlphaSmart on using on/off key.  When you are not using it, it will save what you wrote and turn off automatically in 4 minutes. 

 

2.  Choose the file that has the document you want to use. (F1, F2, F3 etc)

 

3.     Use home and end keys to get to beginning or end of text quickly.

Use arrow keys to move cursor in the text.

 

4.     Use backspace key to delete.  Place cursor one space after the letter you want to erase, then press backspace.

 

5.     To Print:

  1. Open a Microsoft Word or other word processing program on your computer. Do this first.
  2. Connect square cable to AlphaSmart 3000 where it says “Computer”. Make sure you hold cable so “top” is facing up. 

(If you have AlphaSmart 2000, you will use round blue cable.)

  1. Press send key on AlphaSmart. Your text will appear on the computer screen.  Unplug AlphaSmart and make final changes using computer keyboard:

·        Add your name, date and title of document

·        Use spellcheck

·        Change font – try using cursive!

  1. Save to your class folder—very important!
  2. Press print. 
  3. If this is a final draft and you no longer need to save your file on the AlphaSmart, press clear file to erase. If you erase in error, press “option-apple-R” to recover file. If it still doesn’t come back, try “shift-control-option-apple-R”.
  4. Turn off AlphaSmart.

 

Congratulations!  You are successfully using your AlphaSmart Board!